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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 10, 2014)
8 street roots O ct 10, 2014 up, I thought, “Aw, this is too good. He’s ascending into heaven.” And so I made the sign of the cross like the pope would make, you know like waving my hand in the air? And the last thing I saw of him was him throwing his head back and slapping his knee and laughing as he disappeared into the ceiling. ! made Johnny Cash laugh. Three weeks later he was gone. Mother Maybelle, far left, and the Carter Sisters, with June doing the jig in the middle. S.Z.: The film focuses greatly on Maybelle and Sarah Carter and how their music has influenced musicians across the board. B.H.: They both made incredible contributions (to music) that have been lost to some degree in time. In terms of our consciousness. Obviously what they’ve done still resonates, but I don’t think most people could turn and point to them and say, “The Carter sisters influenced me.” Sarah’s voice is iconic. She was one of the first people to Cultivate that sound: the bluegrass voice that sends chills up your spine. . Maybélle’s contribution to guitar playing is really unrecognized. She helped invent a certain way of. playing a guitar that popularized it as more bf a lead instrument when it was really just a percussion instrument in those days. Out of necessity, she learned how to fill in those gaps musically with her guitar. That became the “Carter Scratch” that launched the guitar into a whole new place in American music all thanks to this little lady from a small town in Virginia. P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F J U N E C A R T E R A N D J O H N N Y C A S H F A M IL Y /T H E W IN D IN G S T R E A M Family values Portland filmmaker Beth Harrington talks about her project documenting June Carter and Johnny Cash, with one memorable appearance from the Man in Black himself BY SUE ZALOKAR STAFF WRITER S.Z.: In March your film, "The Winding Stream, ” made its premiere at SXSW. Since that time, it has been screened all over the world. The film took you a decade to complete -* 1 * mostly due to raising the funds for the film. B.H.: The thing about film is that you get to be in all of these different worlds. Every single film is sorhe learning experience in some new arena that you never im agined you would be in. yjiy teá so n Tffi rharried to a volcano scientist is because in 19911 was given the job of being an associate producer on a NOVA (episode) that was about the eruption of a volcano in the Philippines. Never in a million years did I think I would a) marry a scientist, b) he’d be a volcanologist, c) that he would live in the Pacific Northwest, and d) that I would move there. But here I am. Film takes you to all sorts of places. I was trying to wind up my courage to ask her that and was so relieved, but I asked her if he was up for it? He’s just lost June, he’s sick, is this a good time? She said, “There isn’t going to be a good time. Now is the time. You’ve got to do it.” S.Z.: What is it like When my crew and to be a woman in the Beth Harrington I arrived in Nashville, independent film we learned that industry?. (Johnny Cash) had gone to the hospital that day. Rosanne told us to sit tight and B.H.: Honestly, I felt at tire beginning hopefully he’ll be out of the hospital in a that it was a little bit of a struggle. That was couple of days. We really couldn’t afford to 5 a long time ago. Then it seemed to get sit around in Nashville, and then just before easier as I kind of proved my worth as a we were ready to leave, we got the call. filmmaker. And lately, I’ve been looking He was totally animated. He obviously around and thinking, “Where’d all the girls wasn’t feeling WeH, but he didn’t let that go?” stop him from telling us stories. I’m 59 years old, and I look around for The funniest part of the whole interview, my peers and I think, “No one else is crazy was he came into the room in an elevator enough to be doing this? Is that it?” I think that came down out of the ceiling. And so it is. the image of Johnny Cash that is forever ortland is such a musical town. I t makes sense that the first time I met Beth Harrington, it was at a women’s music night at a mutual friend’s home. I remember she wanted to play “Dancing B.H. I don’t have kids of my own, but my Barefoot” by Patti Smith. Immediately, I Was nephew is 12 and I started this film hefore smitten. my nephew was borft.; For all of his life, I It wasn’t until much later that I would have been working on this film. And you realize Beth Harrington was a filmmaker know what? It’s been about a quarter of m y with a Grammy nomination under her belt life. It’s crazy. I never expected to work on a for her film, “Welcome to the Club: The project for that long. Women of Rockabilly.” Once I was entrusted with the material — Harrington works for Oregon Public I had one of the last interviews with Johnny Broadcasting and has worked in public Cash — I thought I can’t walk away from television contributing to such programs this. I have to g etit done. American Experience, NOVA and Frontline. She’s been making films for more than 30 S.Z.: One of the last?; years. In March, Harrington debuted her latest B.H.: It turned out that Kurt Coder from film, “The Winding Stream” at South by MTV went to Johnny Cash’s house after we Southwest, the annual music festival in ; were there and interviewed him for the Austin, Texas. The film is about The Carter MTV awards. But I’m pretty damn sure that Family and Johnny Cash — their effect on ours was the last interview that he talked one another as well as the effect they had about the Carter family and June and their together on American music. The film relationship. features one of the last interviews before Ours was an interview that meant a lot to Cash’s death in 2003. The film currently is him. He clearly wanted to talk about June burnt in my mind is him in this being screened worldwide. and Maybelle. (transparent) phone booth, descending into Harrington has contributed a solid this room. documentation of The Carter Family legacy. §.2,.: Johnny Cash is timeless. I loved him, It took a long time. It probably took a She would love to see a wider distribution of my grandfather loved him. What was it like to minute for the thing to come down out of The Carter Family story. She is also interview Johnny Cash? the ceiling so my crew and I - we were all currently looking to archive much of the nervous as cats - and we’re waving to him material and. footage she has at a University B.H.: For one thing, it came up very and he’s waving back. library. suddenly. I had interviewed Rosanne Cash. You will appreciate also that at the end of “The Winding Stream” will be shown at She had been very helpful to me - not only the interview, he stood up to get back into the Reel Music Film Festival tomorrow,. with this film, but she also narrated the elevator to go back upstairs and he said, Saturday, Oc. 11 at the Portland Art “Welcome to the Club.” We did a short ' “I’ve gotta get back in the Popemobile now.” Museum’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW interview and she said, “You know what you Which erf course tickled me to no end. And Park Avenue. should do next? You have to interview my then as he got in and went back up. father.” It took another minute for him to go back P S.Z.: It seems youhave an affinity for history and the natural world. And of course music... S.Z.: You were raised Catholic. You wrote, directed and played the lead character (you) in a film called “The Blinking Madonna” that offered a gentle critique of the Catholic Church in 1996. It screened first at Notre Dame to a . room full of priests, nuns and Catholic scholars. B.H.: (laughs) Ha! Yes it was! S.Z.: How was that received? B.H.: Oh my god! It didn’t occur to me See HARRIN GTO N , page 9
