By 
Pam Linton has spent the past 44 years using her singing talent, marketing skills and business savvy to support the career of her husband, legendary entertainer and former Watertown resident Sherwin Linton.
Now, however, it’s her turn to bask in the spotlight.
Pam has just released a solo CD titled “Songs of the Carter Family” on the New Folk Records label. It has been released nationally and has been getting glowing reviews, as well as airplay on radio stations that feature folk, bluegrass and alternative country/traditional country music.
New Folk Records is well-respected in the folk-rock music world. The Minnesota-based label has more than 150 releases in its catalog.
The Carter Family was a traditional folk music group that recorded from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. Their music would influence bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock music for generations to come.
The family is generally considered to be the first vocal group to become country music stars, and they were among the first groups to record commercially produced country music.
Next up for Pam will be a tour to show off the new CD. She will perform as “Pam Linton and the Cotton Kings,” using the trio of talented musicians that usually backs up Sherwin.
“Sherwin has given his permission to retain the use of that name, even though it’s his,” she said. “So ‘Pam Linton and the Cotton Kings’ will do the songs of the Carter family in the concert shows. We can bring that show into small theaters, performing arts venues and even educational elements, because it truly is “edutainment.”
And Sherwin said he is 100 percent for it.
“She’s been a great part of my show all these years, and I’m so excited that she now has an opportunity to have her own image and career that will continue on,” he said.
The entire Carter Family project began almost by accident. In January 2023, Pam and Sherwin were at a social gathering, and there were some musicians there talking about putting together a Carter Family tribute show.
“I usually keep my mouth closed,” Pam said, “but I just commented that when they were ready and they were looking for an Anita Carter, they should give me a call.”
One of the musicians asked if Sherwin would be OK with her doing a project outside of the Sherwin Linton Show. “I said, ‘I don’t know why he wouldn’t,’” Pam said.
The musicians followed up with an email a couple of days later, saying they were going to do a test show. They paired Pam with some local Minneapolis-area musicians and put together a small stage show.
It was during a rehearsal for that show in a studio called the Villa in Savage, Minn., that things began to click. It so happened that the owner of New Folk Records, Ken Onstad, was in the studio and heard the rehearsal.
Soon afterward, Pam received a phone call from a New Folk Records marketing employee who said the label was interested in possibly producing a project for her. They asked her to go into the studio in Minneapolis and produce a few tracks they could listen to.
“We did that in November 2023,” Pam said. “We recorded three tracks for them, and then I didn’t hear anything from them until the middle of January 2024.
That’s when Onstad called and said they liked her tracks, but they wanted to move the project from Minneapolis to North Carolina.
“Would you be willing to sign an agreement with us?” Onstad asked her.
“Sherwin and I talked about it, signed the paperwork, and in March 2024 they flew us to Lincolnton, N.C., to record in the Sound Factory Studio there, with a man named Aaron Meyer as the engineer. They had arranged to bring in some very prominent bluegrass names: Corinna Rose Logston Stephens and Jeremy Stephens, and Brooke and Darrin Aldredge, all from Nashville.
“I thought, wow, they’re investing some money here. I know what things cost, so obviously they had some faith in me and my abilities.”
The Lintons were in North Carolina for a week in March 2024 to record the 15 songs. But that was just the recording process. Mixing and engineering of the tracks took another three months.
“That was Mr. Meyers hard at work mixing and engineering,” Pam said. “That’s the label doing what the label does. Aaron is a very gifted engineer, and I’m very pleased with the finished product.”
That process was a bit strange to Pam, since she and Sherwin do most of their own mixing and engineering.
“When Sherwin and I record, we are basically self-funding most of those projects on our Black Gold label, and we are in the studio from inception all the way through birth. But seeing the quality of the (North Carolina) studio, the equipment we were working with, and the history that this studio has, I was pretty confident they would have a good product in the end.”
As pleased as she was with the songs, Pam was a little less than happy with the packaging planned for the CD.
“When it came to the graphics and the images, we had to do some negotiating,” she said. “They had a product appearance in their mind, and I had product appearance in my mind.”
The two appearances did not mesh.
Sherwin explained: “For the cover, they wanted Pam dressed in a 1930s style and they wanted it in black and white. I wasn’t comfortable with that idea. You can still look traditional, but it had to be in Pam’s style, not in the 1930s.”
Pam said they were trying to get a younger audience to discover this music, so things had to be a little bit updated. The music was made to be palatable to the ears of 2025, and so did the graphics.
“The graphics negotiation was a six-week project,” Pam said. “The final product doesn’t look like what they first had in mind.”
Chalk one up for the artist.
“I’ve learned this business from a master for 44 years,” Pam said.
A CD release event will be on Friday, March 14, at Crooners in Fridley, Minn. That will be followed by a concert tour.
“We are presenting material to agents and starting to book dates,” Pam said. No dates have been scheduled yet in South Dakota. Any venue interested in hosting a show should contact Pam Linton at directly at LintonEnt@aol.com.
The beginning of shows featuring Pam and the Cotton Kings doesn’t mean an end to shows featuring Sherwin, Pam and the Cotton Kings.
“We’re booking all kinds of fair dates and festival dates for Sherwin and Pam as usual, and my shows will fit in between,” Pam said. “This catalog really fits so closely with Sherwin’s Johnny Cash tribute, because June Carter (Johnny’s wife) was a second-generation Carter family member. These songs will slide right into the Johnny Cash show.
“I told Sherwin from the very beginning that he is not being left behind in any way. If it is a Pam Linton and the Cotton Kings show, he will be in the audience and will be out front with me greeting the audience after the show. He is involved, because I am where I am because he believed in me.”
Pam and her sister Patti joined the Sherwin Linton show when she was just 16 years old.
“He believed I had a future in this business,” she said. “If you would have told us back then that we would end up getting married, we both would have argued with you. But that’s where God’s sense of humor comes into play.
“We both share the same passion for our music. We’ve been able to share it together and will continue to share it together until it can no longer happen.”
Pam Linton grew up in St. Stephen, Minn., a town of 500 people in central Minnesota. Sherwin Linton was born in Volga and grew up in several rural towns in Northeast South Dakota where his father worked for the railroad. The family eventually moved to Watertown, where Sherwin graduated from WHS.
He is a member of the Watertown Hall of Fame, the South Dakota Hall of Fame and a charter member of the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in addition to many other halls of fame around the country. Both Lintons are inductees of the National Traditional Country Music Hall of Fame.
Pam also is the owner of the Cotton Patch Boutique in Coon Rapids, Minn., where the Lintons have a home. The boutique also features an online store at https://cottonpatchboutique.com.
