DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, you want to talk about a family that helped build the sound of American music, you start right here, right on the border, with the Rio Grande rolling between two countries and a radio signal powerful enough to reach just about everywhere in between. The Carter Family — A.P.
Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law Maybelle — they weren't strangers to music. But national acclaim? That came calling from a most unexpected direction.
See, just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio sat XERA, a radio station owned by a man named Dr. John R. Brinkley.
And when they say powerful, friend, they mean powerful. That signal didn't politely stop at the state line. It reached listeners around the country.
The Carter Family first broadcast from XERA during the 1938-39 season, and for the next few years, the airwaves carried something the whole nation needed — gospel standards, folk standards, the early building blocks of what the world would come to call country music. They'd often open their show — called the Good Neighbor Get-Together, which is just about the finest name for a radio program you'll ever hear — with Keep on the Sunny Side. And at times, other family members joined in too, voices layering together right there on the border.
That family's influence on American music didn't stop when the microphones went quiet. It carried on for many decades. Country music's First Family, they call them.
And the road that led there? It ran right through Del Rio.
What the marker says
Known as country music's First Family, the Carter family first found national acclaim while on XERA radio. Owned by Dr. John R. Brinkley, the powerful radio station across the Rio Grande from Del Rio reached listeners around the country. A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law, Maybelle, first broadcast from the station during the 1938-39 season. For the next few years, they and others performed gospel and folk standards, early elements of country music. Often opening their "Good Neighbor Get-Together" show with "Keep on the Sunny Side," the group at times included other family members, who continued to influence American music for many decades. (2005)