b. Rebecca Carlene Smith, 26 September 1955, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Carter is the daughter of country singers Carl Smith and June Carter and the granddaughter of Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family. She learnt piano at six years of age and guitar at 10, having lessons from Carl Perkins. Her parents divorced and, when she was 12, her mother married Johnny Cash. Carlene Carter herself first married when 16, and had a daughter Tiffany, but she and Joe Simpkins were divorced within two years. After college she joined her mother and stepfather on the road and was featured on Johnny Cash's family album The Junkie And The Juicehead Minus Me in 1974. Carlene then met Jack Routh, a writer for Cash's publishing company, and within three months they were married. They had a son, John Jackson Routh, but they separated in 1977. Carter brought her new boyfriend, Rodney Crowell, to the UK where she made an appealing, upbeat rock album with Graham Parker And The Rumour. Crowell's song "Never Together But Close Sometimes" was almost a UK hit, and her song "Easy From Now On" was recorded by Emmylou Harris.
Carter had an assertive personality but she struggled with the dance tracks on her second album, Two Sides To Every Woman, which was made in New York. Musical Shapes was produced by her new husband Nick Lowe; the songs included her "Appalachian Eyes" and a duet with Dave Edmunds, "Baby Ride Easy". Her 1981 album Blue Nun was also produced by Lowe and featured members of Rockpile and Squeeze. The album, with such titles as "Do Me Lover" and "Think Dirty", was an explicit celebration of sex, but just as she seemed to be rejecting her country roots, she joined her family onstage at the Wembley Country Music Festival for "Will The Circle Be Unbroken?". Carter, whose marriage to Lowe broke up, was prevented from calling her next album Gold Miner's Daughter, and settled for C'est Bon. She was featured in Too Drunk To Remember, a short film shown at the London Film Festival, based on one of her songs. In 1985 she won acclaim for her role as one of the waitresses in the London cast of the country musical Pump Boys And Dinettes, which starred Paul Jones and Kiki Dee. In 1990 Carter, by making an album, I Fell In Love, aimed to please rather than alienate country fans. Produced by Howie Epstein, the musicians included Dave Edmunds, Kiki Dee, Albert Lee, Jim Keltner, and such songs as "Me And Wildwood Rose" celebrated her country music heritage. Carter has the potential of a fine country songwriter, and the song "Guardian Angel" shows she has enough experiences on which to draw. Unfortunately, Carter may have discarded much of her personality in order to become a mainstream country artist. Little Acts Of Treason was comparatively bland, a word not previously associated with her.
