The A. L. Phipps Family

The Phipps Family from Kentucky was known as a musical family “in the Carter Family tradition”.

Founded in the last years of the depression, Arthur Leroy Phipps and his wife Kathleen Norris Helton started to play their own songs of traditional mountain music. Their friendship with A.P. Carter and the Carter Family, as well as the demand for this style of music, made the Phipps Family to pivot to become a cover band.

Personally, I learned to appreciate the music of the Carter Family by discovering the Phipps Family and I still prefer their slightly sinister, weird twist on some of the Carter songs.

The Phipps Family started their own record business, toured extensively and were quite successful, as A.L. stated in his last interview.

Well we begun on a radio station in Middlesboro; WCPM. It was a pretty good sized station; it had a good coverage. And then there was another already in Middlesboro, WMIK, so they bought it (WCPM) out and then we went over and broadcast on WMIK for a period of time.

https://www.angelfire.com/ky2/cumberlandgapbc/phippsinterview.mp3

And by doing my research on Henry Harrison Mayes, I realized, the Phipps Family lived just 35 minutes North of Middlesboro, KY and came to Middlesboro frequently, to play at the local radio station.

From afar this looks like an interesting intersection, but maybe it was just daily life. Coal mining, holiness church and Carter Family style mountain music.

The end of the Phipps Family is quite tragic. Kathleen got cancer, fell in a coma for several months and died in November 1992. Arthur got his life taken in 1995, in a gruesome murder, by a guy who rented from Arthur.

These days they seem quite forgotten, there were CD reissues of their 1962 album and the Folkways Records release, but that’s it.

Play

• All Phipps Family releases (download)
• The Cumberland Gap Broadcasting Company (Fansite)
• The Folkways Records Booklet as PDF