Nashville’s Historic Smith-Carter Farm Hits the Market

If these walls could talk, they would surely sing a bluegrass country folk ditty accompanied by a banjo and an autoharp.

Built in 1925, the handsome stone-walled farmhouse, which nowadays presides over 13 idyllic acres in the heart of Nashville’s suburban Madison neighborhood, about 6.5 miles north of the Grand Ole Opry, was acquired in 1952 by “Mr. Country” Carl Smith just before he was married to singer/songwriter June Carter, a member of the renown Carter Family who popularized the songs of the Appalachian Mountains during the 1930s. Smith and Carter divorced in 1956; June remained on the farm with their daughter Carlene.

June went on to marry Johnny Cash, one of her ex-husband’s drinking buddies, and the Smith-Carter family farm carried on for decades as a low-key hub for some of Nashville’s biggest and most influential names, including Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley, and Marty Stuart. So the story goes, June Carter co-wrote “Ring of Fire” while living on the farm. First recorded by her sister Anita Carter in 1963, the song was soon reworked by Cash with mariachis and became one of his biggest hits.

By some accounts, Carter’s country music legend mother “Mother” Maybelle Carter lived on the farm until her death in 1978 and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founder John McEuen wrote “Friday Night at Maybelle’s” about the home’s music room, where folks would sometimes gather after performing at the Grand Ole Opry.

The last Carter family member to own the farm, according to tax records, was singer/songwriter Carlene Carter, who sold the old family homestead in 2015 for $525,000 to Todd Mayo, a well-known proprietor of music venues including The Caverns, a magical subterranean concert hall about an hour and a half’s drive south of Nashville.

Mayo originally hoped to rebrand the property as a music venue called The Maybelle and build a brand-new 10,000-square-foot theater and he was granted an overlay permit that allows for some events. However, his grand plan for The Maybelle never came to fruition and the country music pedigreed farm served instead as a private family retreat.

Updated yet much as it always was, the vintage two-story home has four bedrooms and three and a half baths dispersed within 3,100 square feet. The kitchen has been opened up to the dining room; a slender second-floor balcony overlooks the rolling landscape; the two-car garage is converted to a family room.

With room to roam amid creeks and woods, the peaceful property includes a swimming pool, a party barn and, its most unexpected feature, a replica of the 12th hole at Georgia’s Augusta National Golf Club.

Drenched in the musical stylings of some of Nashville’s greatest legends and listed in 2018 on the National Register of Historic Places, the pastoral Smith-Carter house and farm is available at $3.5 million through Maggie Bond and Michael Jezewski of Parks Real Estate.