In the weeks since Beyonce announced her “Cowboy Carter” album, there’s been an enormous amount of commentary over the singer’s move into country music, and the long-overlooked contributions of Black artists to the genre since its very beginning.
There’s also been more-humorous comments about the album’s title — which comes from Beyonce’s married surname and her husband, Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter — and the long legacy left by the Carter Family, whose music is widely viewed as the single biggest influence on the country genre. The group recorded between the 1920s and 1950s and, after beginning with Sara Carter, her husband A.P. and sister-in-law/ pioneering guitarist Maybelle, later expanded to include Maybelle’s daughters June (later the longtime wife of Johnny Cash), Anita and Helen.
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