Ralph Peer

It's called "the Big Bang of country music," an explosion that shook tiny Bristol, Tenn., 75 years ago this week, and eventually vibrated throughout the world. In terms of cultural impact, it's almost as if one person found and first recorded the Beatles and Bob Dylan in the same week.

It's called "the Big Bang of country music," an explosion that shook tiny Bristol, Tenn., 75 years ago this week, and eventually vibrated throughout the world. In terms of cultural impact, it's almost as if one person found and first recorded the Beatles and Bob Dylan in the same week.

Janette Carter, 82, the last surviving child of country music's Carter Family, who in recent years preserved her parents' old-time style with weekly performances in Kingsport, Tenn., died Sunday at a hospital in Kingsport of complications from Parkinson's disease and other illnesses. Carter was the daughter of A.P. and Sara Carter.

The name Charlie Poole could cause even a lot of country music aficionados to plead ignorance, yet he's described as "the patron saint" of the genre in liner notes for the new three-CD box set "You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music" (Legacy Recordings, www.legacyrecordings.com).

"They didn't know it, of course, but their (1927 recordings) would change American music," Charles Wolfe says of the Carter Family, whose body of work stands as one of the cornerstones of country music. Wolfe's detailed and entertaining liner notes add greatly to the appeal of Rounder Records' valuable nine-volume series of Carter Family recordings, the first two of which have just been released.

Imagine a record executive going on a talent search at the outset of the rock era and discovering Elvis Presley and the Beatles within two weeks of each other. Ralph Peer came close. In 1927, when the New York talent agent traveled to Bristol, Tenn., he discovered Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, who were every bit as important to country music, artistically and commercially, as the King of Rock 'n' Roll and the Fab Four were to rock.

Joanna Kerns, who played journalist-mother Maggie Seaver on the ABC sitcom "Growing Pains" (1985-1992) and will direct and co-star in the "Growing Pains" TV movie to air in May, has sold her Brentwood home for $3.4 million. Kerns and her husband, architect Marc Appleton, plan to build a new home in the area. Appleton renovated the Brentwood house in 1993, after he and Kerns were married. Kerns had purchased the home in late 1988.

Two notable things happened on Oct. 7, 1927: Babe Ruth hit a World Series home run and Jimmie Rodgers' first record went on sale. Even though Ruth was at the pinnacle of his fame and Rodgers was unknown, the intersecting events form a neat symbolic link between two defining figures of the century. Ruth's prowess and charisma transformed the game of baseball. Similarly, Rodgers single-handedly changed the shape of American popular music.

Ridin' on that midnight train, Lord, my head's ahangin' low. These awful blues will follow me Wherever I may go. --"Ridin' That Midnight Train" * When the Inheritance Bluegrass Band sailed into this Stanley Brothers classic to open their Saturday night show at the Carter Fold, the broad concrete slab in front of the stage was empty.

Larry Lessig is a 41-year-old Stanford University law professor who still looks like a graduate student, someone who has spent years in library stacks researching arcane subjects, miles from the real world. He's very pale and very quiet, as if he doesn't want to bother the fellow in the next cubicle. His hair sometimes sticks straight up, but he doesn't notice. Lessig has a student's idealism, too; he wants to change the way the world does business.

1900 Theater Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre greets the new century. With Chekhov as house playwright, the Moscow Art Theatre by 1900 had become an influential source of new-style, unfussy, emotionally realistic acting. The Method led in America to Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg's politically progressive Group Theatre in the 1930s and, later, Strasberg's Actors Studio. Downside: not much training in diction or movement. * 1907 Art Pablo Picasso, "Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon."