27/02/2024
(The March 2024 edition of A! Magazine features the 50th Anniversary of the Carter Fold. The cover story is an interview I conducted with Rita Forrester, A.P. and Sara's granddaughter and Bonny Gable interviewed me about my time playing A.P.)
EUGENE WOLF and A.P. CARTER — Musical Souls Intertwined
A! Magazine March 2024
By Bonny Gable
Bonny Gable is a former theater professor and freelance writer based in Bristol,Virginia. www.bonnygable.com
When veteran actor Eugene Wolf was first approached by Barter Theatre
in 2002 to portray the iconic A.P. Carter in “Keep On the Sunny Side,” a play
by Douglas Pote about the Original Carter Family and their music, he was
apprehensive. His knowledge of their history was sketchy, and he didn’t consider
himself steeped in Carter Family music. But from the far reaches of his childhood,
he recollected the voice of his mamaw humming and singing those tunes as she
went about her chores. The call of that voice led him to what would become one of
the most successful and enduring roles of his career.
Wolf realized that being raised in Greeneville, Tennessee, by that singing
grandmother gave him a unique edge for approaching the role. “I’m from the
same dirt that A.P. was born out of,” Wolf says, “and so, there’s something about
me that already knows the landscape, physical and emotional, social and cultural
landscape of this person.”
But his portrayal of A.P. Carter was not rendered without a lot of hard
work and preparation. Tasked with also creating the vocal arrangements for the
play, Wolf taught himself guitar in order to master the Carter Family songs and
understand their structure. He trained on a nylon-stringed guitar and thought he’d
gotten his hands in shape, but Doug Dorschug, an old-time musician hired to be
the musical director for the show, had other ideas. Wolf recalls, “He brought me
an Epiphone guitar with very heavy strings, because it was similar to the steel-stringed
Gibson guitar Maybelle Carter had played. He said ‘Eugene, take this.
Practice.’ So, I had to get my hands strengthened and really learn how to play.”
Wolf gathered information about A.P. the man from as many sources as
possible. He reveled in first-hand stories from lots of folks who had known A.P.
personally. Particularly helpful was Bill Clifton, an accomplished country musician,
avid follower of the Carter Family music, and close friend to A.P. himself.
In 2004 an invaluable resource emerged with the publication of “Will You Miss
Me When I’m Gone” by Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg, the first definitive
biography of the Carter Family. It revealed new information about the Carter
family previously unknown outside of the tight community of Poor Valley, Virginia.
As playwright Pote integrated these discoveries into his script, Wolf more fully
fleshed out the character of A.P.
Although very little film footage of A.P. exists, Wolf painstakingly studied his
photographs. “I like physicality. If I understand the form of somebody, I can take
on the form and then fill it up with things I learn from the script.” A special talent
of Wolf’s is the ability to mimic physicality. “And when I say mimic, I don’t mean
‘just lay it on top,’” he says. “It’s organic. I know where the impulse comes from in
my body to make this happen.”
One example of this technique stems from the story of A.P.’s impending birth.
When his mother was eight months pregnant with him, lightning struck a tree
near her and chased her through the ground. When Alvin Pleasant Carter was
born, his mother said he came out “nervous.” His hand shook and would do so for
the rest of his life.
Wolf was able to incorporate A.P.’s physical characteristics into his
performance to a striking effect. After seeing Wolf perform, A.P.’s daughter,
Janette Carter, commented to someone, “You know that man that plays Daddy
shakes just like him. Is there something wrong with him?” High praise indeed.
But Wolf has his own theory about what the lightning incident meant for
A.P. “I like to think that he was driven. That the lightning that almost struck his
mom transferred into him, and ‘tuned’ him. He needed to find something—an
intention—back to that. And the thing he wanted most was music.”
Wolf believes that A.P.’s tremble was more than a mere physical trait. “That
otherworldly tremor in his voice is a gateway for us, because it opens something
in our hearts, and in our brains and in our psyche, our souls that lets us in to a
hundred years ago.”
When it comes to the power of music, Wolf and A.P. seem to have souls that
are intertwined. “A.P. knew that people had to have this music to survive,” Wolf says. “To get through sorrow we need music to shift the molecules in us, and when you sing
these things, you’re releasing. I understand that, and I think A.P. understood
that, too. He got such joy from the music, the performing, the singing. I get that
too. I don’t know where I’d be, I don’t know what I’d be or what I’d be doing, if it
weren’t for music.”
One of A.P.’s greatest joys came when the widespread appeal of Carter Family
music exploded between 1938 and 1940. The family traveled to Texas to perform
radio broadcasts at a Mexican border studio boasting an impressive 500 kilowatts.
Those powerful sound waves enabled thousands of listeners from coast to coast to
feel the passionate influence of their music.
“Somebody referred to them as the first Internet, in a way,” says Wolf,
“because everyone was relating to this one sound. And even though it had a
country flavor, everyone had somebody that had gone off to war, somebody they
had loved and lost, somebody that they loved but who wouldn’t love them back.
The Carter Family was singing about things that everyone could translate to their
own culture.”
That influence has reverberated into subsequent generations. Due to popular
demand, “Keep On the Sunny Side” has been reprised at Barter several times,
seen many performances at the Carter Fold and enjoyed a highly successful
national tour.
Perhaps the best assessment of Eugene Wolf’s portrayal of the iconic A.P.
Carter comes from the play’s own author, Doug Pote. In a Kingsport Times News
article dated March 1, 2015, Pote says, “I even joke to both Eugene and Rita
[Forrester, A.P.’s granddaughter] and say that if A.P. Carter came back and played
himself in the play, he wouldn’t be as good as Eugene.”
Wolf is quick to give credit where credit is due. “I didn’t come into playing
A.P. knowing all the things that I think I know now. Playing A.P. Carter reinforced
to me the transformative power of music, the love of family and the notion of
forgiveness.
“And here, a hundred years later, the Carter Family is still in our thoughts. We
have their beautiful melodies, and lyrics wrought from the Victorian language of
the hymns. Even if you’re not a Christian, or not necessarily spiritual, those songs
reach for things we don’t reach for anymore. But we’re learning that we can, again.”
29/10/2024
17/10/2024
24/09/2024
22/09/2024
16/09/2024
22/08/2024
15/08/2024
12/08/2024
29/07/2024
03/07/2024
13/05/2024
13/05/2024
13/04/2024
11/03/2024
27/02/2024
20/02/2024