Anita Carter; Singer With Country Music Family

Anita Carter, a member of the legendary Carter Family country music clan who also found success away from the celebrated family’s spotlight, has died. She was 66.

Carter suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, but the cause of her death Thursday was not immediately known, according to family spokesman Lou Robin. Carter’s sister, June Carter Cash, and her brother-in-law, singer Johnny Cash, were with her when she died.

Ina Anita Carter, born in 1933 in Maces Springs, Va., was introduced to country fans as a cherubic 4-year-old singing novelty songs with her sisters and a cousin on the radio show starring the Carter Family trio. The trio was made up of A.P. Carter, his wife, Sara Carter, and his cousin, Maybelle Addington Carter, who was Anita’s mother.

The original trio’s Blue Ridge Mountains ballads helped transform country music into a commercial powerhouse, thanks to such classics as “Shall the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes.” When the seminal trio retired in 1943, Anita Carter, playing stand-up bass and singing soprano, stepped to the forefront by joining her mother and siblings in a second-generation incarnation, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.

They became regular members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1950--two years after they hired a young guitarist named Chet Atkins to accompany them--and toured with Elvis Presley in 1956 and 1957 and with Cash beginning in 1961. As the group became a Nashville fixture, Anita Carter’s beauty won her numerous suitors, including Hank Williams, but it was her vocal talents that are remembered most.

“My sister had the greatest voice of anybody in this town, absolutely the prettiest voice,” June Carter Cash said in an interview earlier this year. “She was perhaps the greatest stand-up bass player, except for when her arthritis made her stop playing.”

Carter’s death leaves June the sole survivor of the second-generation Carter family. The third sister, Helen Carter, died last year.

Anita Carter also enjoyed success away from her family, highlighted by her 1951 duets with singer Hank Snow, “Bluebird Island” and “Down the Trail of Achin’ Hearts,” both Top 5 country hits. She also had a 1968 hit with “I Got You,” a duet with Waylon Jennings.

Carter is also survived by a son and a daughter.

Funeral services will be Sunday at First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., near Nashville.