Pam Linton – Songs Of The Carter Family is an amazing album and will be an amazing show at Crooner’s on March 14, 2025. It was great to catch up with Pam via email. I’m always excited to see a surprising Minnesota connection to music I love.
You have led an interesting life, please tell us about you and your journey in music.
Music and entertainment have always been important to me. I told my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Symalla that I wanted to be a singer when I grew up. In my adult years I was able to have a visit with her and she shared that in her years of teaching I was the only student she could remember that had told her what they wanted for a life occupation and had gone out and done it! So, I can trace my roots in music back to age seven. I was introduced to my husband Sherwin Linton and began working in his show at age sixteen. I became a full-time member of the show in 1982. We traveled and performed as many as 300 nights a year. I remember we had a sit-down engagement at a Best Western hotel. There was a guy who had been in to see the show, he worked at a local bank. He asked me to lunch 3-4 different times, and those lunch dates always interfered with our rehearsal schedule. I never had lunch with him! I learned the entertainment business from a master. Sherwin and I married in 1988, and I have been his business manager for 37 years. I was flattered when New Folk Records contacted me about the possibility of recording a project for them. I have always been a side man. I have been content in that position and had never really had any thoughts of developing my own show. I have a great faith, and I sometimes share that God has a sense of humor! I don’t fully know what my music business plan is, but we are releasing a recording project, I am developing a concert edutainment show and I plan to work hard to share the music and history of America’s first family of Country Music, Folk and Bluegrass, the original Carter Family.
Songs of the Carter Family is a terrific album, but with so much material to choose from how did you narrow it down?
A.P. Carter was a great finder of songs and a writer. The Carter Family catalog is more than 300 selections and that is a great volume of work. For a first project it is almost mandatory that you include some of the well-known classics like “Keep On The Sunny Side,” and “Wildwood Flower” and we have done that. After making that decision, I worked through the catalog looking to develop variety. I want to touch every emotion as the album plays through, from the deep sadness and hope of “Farther On” of the romantic feelings of “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and the cautious advice of “You Better Let That Liar Alone” and “Jealous Hearted Me!” I have a great faith, so it was important to me that a song like “Walking The Kings Highway” be included because hymns and spiritual songs were an important part of the Carter’s voluminous collection of songs.
You do an amazing job channeling the Carters, but I’m wondering if you feel a Minnesota twang in your music as well? Or because, in some ways your stories are similar the music might feel more universal.
Of course I have Minnesota roots. I’m Pam Linton, I grew up in St. Stephen, MN. That’s a far cry from the hills of Appalachia. I have been steeped in the Country Music field from such a very young age that I really feel I do not have the typical Minnesota speech and singing mannerisms. Minnesota speech is often dominated by an extended “O” and the heritage often Germanic and Scandinavian. My heritage is Slovenian, though I don’t know that that makes a difference. Each of us walks our own highway, we have our own life experiences, it’s those life experiences that make the delivery of these selections relatable. The subjects of these songs are not about geography or dialect, they are about life, and we all live it in our own way.
Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow Tree is a heartbreaking song. The emotion you bring to it is palpable. How does it feel to sing it? It is cathartic or emotionally draining or empowering.
I am the vehicle delivering the story. I put myself into the story. When I take a moment to analyze the content, I put my heart there. What is the message I am trying to convey? What tools will I use to bring the audience into my emotional space, so their experience is the same as mine? This is what an entertainer and stylist does. I want my performance to be an emotional roller-coaster for the audience so when they depart, they reflect back to the ride. If I have done my job correctly the audience will have experienced a cornucopia of emotions and departed satisfied.
Here are the details for the Pam Linton – Songs of the Carter Family release event.
Where: Crooners Main Stage – Fridley, MN
Date: March 14 – 7:00 PM
Tickets: Pam Linton – Songs Of The Carter Family – Album Release – Crooners Supper Club – croonersmn.com
Mostly Minnesota 