A Homecoming That’s Lasted 5 Years : Carlene Carter, a Prodigal Child of Country Music, Has Rediscovered Her Roots

Family is where people turn when they don’t know where else to turn.

For Carlene Carter, the cue to look homeward came about five years ago, when her career as a rock ‘n’ roller had dwindled, and her marriage had fallen apart.

Carlene’s mother, June Carter Cash, and her stepfather, Johnny Cash, were happy to take the prodigal daughter back into the family business, which is country music. Today, Carlene is making her way quite nicely on her own, in the musical field that her forebears in the legendary Carter Family helped cultivate more than 60 years ago.

Mother and daughter currently are busy crisscrossing the country on separate tours: June in her longtime role as a part of husband Johnny’s shows, and Carlene in her new incarnation as a hit country singer. Their roads almost, but don’t quite, intersect this weekend in Anaheim. The Johnny Cash show goes on tonight at the Celebrity Theatre, while Carlene plays Sunday at the Bandstand.

In separate phone interviews last week, June Carter Cash and her eldest daughter sounded as if they have a common outlook on a lot of things, even though their lives have taken turns that, in some families, might have strained or fractured a parent-child relationship. Carlene, 35, was a feisty talker with a rich, thick twang in her voice; June, 61, was animated and warm, even though a bout with the flu had put a rasp into her musical Appalachian speaking voice.

Carlene said she grew up sensing that her parents would have been pleased if she had taken a straight line into country music (her father, Carl Smith, the first of June Carter’s three husbands, was a country singer who rang up dozens of hits in the 1950s and ‘60s).

“They kind of expected it. They would have liked it. But I was a normal teen-ager, and I grew up listening to rock ‘n’ roll music.” Still, she said, there was never any pressure to conform, and she credits her mother with making it clear to her that there was artistic life beyond Nashville.

“She was completely liberal,” Carter recalled. “She bought me my first Yardbirds record. She turned me on to Dylan. I remember her bringing his record home and saying, ‘This young man is really special.’ My mother has always been open about all kinds of music and entertainment. She wanted us to see that it was not just country music and the Grand Ole Opry.”

Still, Carlene was exposed to plenty of the family’s style of music. As girls, she and her younger sister Rosey went on road trips with the Carter Family--which included their mother, their aunts Helen and Anita, and their guitar-playing grandmother, Maybelle Carter, who had been part of the original Carter Family band that began recording in 1927.

“They learned to sing and learn the Carter Family songs when they were little,” June Carter said. “We sang in the car when we were going to shows, and they’d sing parts. It was an apprenticeship they were serving, without knowing it.” June recalls that Carlene was present at one of the creative high points of her career: the day that she and songwriting partner Merle Kilgore sat down in the Carter den and wrote “Ring of Fire” together.

“She and Rosey just paddled in and out when they wanted to, and we just sat back and picked on guitars” until the timeless number was down on paper.

By her teens, Carlene was showing a strong independent streak. At 15, she left home to marry a college student.

“There was no strain on our relationship, but it was very painful, because I knew life was too difficult, and it was way too tough to be marrying so young,” June said. But mother and daughter agree that the marriage was more an act of respect than defiance.

“We were brought up real religiously, and if you were going to sleep with someone, you married him,” Carlene said. “At that point, there was no question about it. My parents were very supportive.”

Said June: “I’d be more liberal now. They were coming up in a society that I didn’t quite understand. I felt very guilty about it later on,” because several of her daughters and stepdaughters became involved in early marriages that didn’t last.

“I was always in a big hurry to do everything,” Carlene said. “Before I was 20, I was married twice and had two kids. But I don’t regret any of it. I learned a lot about myself. I had a lot to say for someone my age, real early on, “ which she says helped speed her development as a songwriter. Her mother was “the first person who encouraged me to be a writer. She said that if I could write songs, that’s a good way to make a living, and I should try. I don’t think I would have tried if somebody hadn’t told me.”

Carlene had a taste of country performance in her teens, when she spent six months on the road with the Johnny Cash show, doing a song each night.

“I felt uncomfortable with that,” she said. “I didn’t feel as if I had an identity myself. I was interested in playing on my own, as a songwriter.” She began playing solo shows in Nashville, and by 1977 had attracted enough interest to land a recording deal--as a rock singer.

“When she decided to go the rock route, we were supportive of that,” June Carter recalled. “But I hated to lose her to England.”

Carlene went to London to record her first album with the Rumour, a roots-conscious band of Britons. London remained her base through the mid-’80s as she made a series of rock records that retained some of the country twang that she’d been brought up with.

But none of Carter’s five albums had much success, and her marriage to Nick Lowe, the classy British rocker and record producer, didn’t fare much better. In 1985, she turned to musical theater, performing in a London production of “Pump Boys and Dinettes.” But the feeling was setting in that she had lost her direction.

Then her mother called one night, and Carter found a direction. The Johnny Cash show was in London, and Aunt Anita had fallen ill. June called her daughter, asking if she could fill in for one performance.

“I said, ‘I don’t know what you do,’ ” Carlene recalled. “She said, ‘It’s all right, you’ll figure it out.’ I had so much fun that night, it was the first time I’d gotten excited about music in a long time.” Carlene stuck with the Cash revue after that, realizing it was time to turn back to her roots.

“I needed to be with my family then. I had been on my own for so long, 15 years,” she said. “My marriage had fallen apart, and that was really hard on me, because I didn’t want it to. I lived in England, and I kind of wanted to do country music, and nobody there wanted that. I decided to be around people who love me no matter what.”

Mom wasn’t complaining. “It was wonderful. I felt like my little girl was home again. I was thrilled to death to have her.”

Carlene sang with the Carter Family for two years, then set out in 1988 to rekindle her solo career. Working with producer Howie Epstein, who plays with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, she recorded “I Fell In Love,” a multifaceted album that for the first time established Carter among country fans.

The album underscores Carter’s affinity for her family legacy--a sense of tradition that she says became more vivid for her in the two years that she spent singing with her mother and her aunts. It includes versions of “My Dixie Darlin,’ ” an old Carter Family song, and “You Are the One,” a sweet, sprightly tune that was a hit for her father, Carl Smith, in 1956. Carter also wrote a warm, wistful song, “Me and the Wildwood Rose,” that fondly recalls her childhood days traveling with the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, who died in 1978.

Another original song, “Guardian Angel,” reflects on Carter’s own past. In it, she recalls wayward days, then thanks a higher force for seeing her through to a surer path. “I had a friend who committed suicide,” she said, explaining how she came to write the song. “I started thinking about all the nights I stayed up and partied with the best of ‘em. How come I lived, and some didn’t? I always knew I’d be OK eventually, that I’d end up in the right place. It wasn’t by my hand. It was God’s will.”

June Carter Cash talks in almost identical spiritual terms in giving her own perspective on a gifted but often troubled family. “A lot of them had difficult times in their lives,” she said, in a statement that covers her husband, her two daughters and her four stepdaughters. “But I always knew they were going to be OK. I believed that, and faith has never let me down.”

These days, June Carter continues performing with Johnny Cash, her husband since 1968. In 1987, she launched a side career as an author, publishing a memoir, “From the Heart.” Last year, she published “Mother Maybelle’s Cook Book,” a mixture of recipes and family lore. She has also written a screenplay, “The Wildwood Flower,” based on past Carter generations in the Virginia mountains. Her second daughter, Rosey, is an aspiring pop singer with a bluesy vocal style who, according to mom, is close to landing a recording deal. Her third child, John Carter Cash, 20, is a college student who leads his own band.

Carlene has been touring to promote her album, and finding that the family circle really is unbroken, in ways that sometimes surprise her.

One thing she never could understand about her mother, Carlene said, was why she always packed so much gear when she went on tour--”she’d take everything, vats of vitamins, you name it.” Starting out on her own tour last year, Carlene said, ‘I got on the bus, and I had my juicer, my coffee maker, I had so much stuff. I said, ‘I’ve turned into June Carter.’ ”

Johnny Cash, June Carter and the Carter Family play tonight at 8 at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. Tickets: $22. Information: (714) 999-9536.

Carlene Carter’s concert Sunday night at the Bandstand is a special promotional appearance for which all tickets have already been distributed through radio station KZLA and Boot Barn stores.