Big Lucky Carter carries the torch

The recent deaths of Junior Wells and other first-generation electric bluesmen bring home the stark reality of a diminishing first-hand blues heritage. But while many lament the passing of an era, one of Memphis' own lesser-known musical heroes quietly remains a living link to this vital past.

Levester Carter, better known by the Saturday night crowd at Wild Bill's juke joint as Big Lucky Carter, will turn 78 this month. If that figure isn't impressive enough, consider it in context: Junior Wells was born in 1934; the mighty Howlin' Wolf in 1910; and Charley Patton, one of the first to popularize performance blues in the Delta, in the 1890s.

Big Lucky was born in 1920, in the midst of it all, in a small Mississippi town called Weir, which is "not the Delta," he quickly points out. "This is the hills of Mississippi, east of the Delta." Growing up on a farm passed down from his grandfather to his grandmother, Big Lucky was drawn to music as a boy. He's been playing now for almost 70 years.

"My grandmother had a big baby grand piano. Oh hell, that was the biggest piano I ever seen," Carter says. "I used to get so many whippin's about that piano, man. Our house was over the hill from my grandmother's house. I had to go get water from my grand-mother's to bring back over to our house. I couldn't bear the idea of passin' that piano. I had to go in and just touch it, do something. And my mother would be waiting for the water.

"I didn't come with the water. So she came for me, and she always found me at the piano. Boy, she'd whip my butt up off that piano so many times it's not funny."

Instead of being deterred from music, Carter dreamed of being a professional musician. "I loved music. I knew that early on. I used to make my guitar out of a board, put me some screen wire strings on it. I only had four strings. And I'd take a bottleneck. I wanted to be a slide guitar player like Tampa Red. Tampa Red and Blind Lemon Jefferson were my idols, really."

But the fervor didn't come, as may be supposed, because there was a history of it in the family. Despite the fact that Jessie Mae Hemphill and Ed "Prince Gabe" Kirby, both accomplished musicians, are blood relatives, there were no musical role models for Carter growing up.

It would seem safe to assume that Carter, growing up in Mississippi through the most crucial years of blues development, would have had his dream sparked by seeing Charley Patton or Robert Johnson or some other traveling bluesman. Not so. The music of such men, living scarcely 100 miles to the west, reached Carter, but not in person.

"I listened to Robert Johnson records as a boy and didn't know who I was listening to until years later when I started going back into the blues," he says. "I used to listen to Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tampa Red, Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey... on the records. We didn't have radios then. I tell everybody Sears & Roebuck played a great part in spreading black music. Most people would order their records from Sears. They called them race records at the top of the page, that's how you knew you were getting black music. And on the records was written, 'No license for radio broadcast.' The only way you could get this music was to order it."

Despite his early aptitude, Carter didn't get a chance to play music professionally until he moved to Memphis in 1946, where his cousin Prince Gabe already had a band together. Prince Gabe asked him to join his band.

"I bought a guitar and a little Mickey Mouse amp. I got back and Gabe said, 'Man, you know you can't play with that.' So I went back and got me a Gibson guitar and a Fender amp. My first job was at Orleans and Vance. They had a club over there called the Fiesta Room."

Carter witnessed Beale Street in its heyday. And once again, conventional wisdom doesn't quite match with his personal recollection.

"To tell you the truth you had more music off Beale Street than you had on Beale. There wasn't too much music really on Beale Street," he says. "You had the theaters, they used to have the amateur shows and stuff. Most of the music was at clubs up the street like the Fiesta Room."

Even so, Beale Street was the de facto musical hub of Memphis for one simple reason: Sunbeam Mitchell. His saloon, located in the building now occupied by the Center for Southern Folklore (where Big Lucky plays with members of the Hollywood Allstars every Thursday evening), was the place to meet.

"The greatest musicians you had was upstairs at Sunbeam Mitchell's. All of the musicians would come through up here," Carter says. "He had lodging for them, he had food - his specialty was chili. It was hard to find a hotel then. Musicians would come through here, they'd stop by Sunbeam's upstairs and play for their supper. That was the baptizing place for musicians. If you come out of there, if they said you was a musician you was a musician."

Though his recording accomplishments may seem rather humble by today's standards (he never had anything place in the national charts), Carter cut records with some of the best people in the business. While playing with Prince Gabe and the Rhythmaires, he recorded for Sam Phillips at the Sun Records studio in 1956. "It got released, but it didn't do any good until it was reissued years and years later" as part of a series called the Roots of Rock, according to Carter.

After the Sun sessions came a few recordings for Savoy out of Chicago, subject to similar obscurity.

The first time Carter recorded under the name Big Lucky Carter was in 1968, when he began recording for Willie Mitchell's Hi Records. "That was my best deal," Carter recalls fondly. "I got a better deal out of Willie than I did anybody.

"I was doing a radio show then at WDIA every Saturday afternoon with A.C. Williams called 'Saturday Night Fish Fry.' Somebody said, 'Man, you should record this.' So we went over to Willie's studio and got it. A.C. Williams was really the one that steered the way for me to even get in and record. He was a disc jockey at WDIA. We called him Moo Haw. He helped a lot of guys."

Carter cut five records for the Hi subsidiary M.O.C., which could be part of a series called Roots of 21st Century Blues. With the soul-infused sound of Teenie Hodges and the Hi Rhythm Section - the band behind Al Green and Ann Peebles - backing Big Lucky's distinctive guitar stylings, the sum is more than the parts; the music is more than the blues. Interestingly, Carter reports that he "always wanted to be a jazz player."

Always dressed impeccably with his fedora and crisp handkerchief, it's easy to imagine Carter as a New York jazz hipster in a bygone era. Yet here he is today, in Memphis at the age of 78 playing the blues.

Though his musical schedule isn't rigorous, it is regular. And Big Lucky Carter shows no signs of letting up, as his body shows no casual signs of age. He still tours Europe periodically, usually under the management of University of Memphis musicologist David Evans.

He recently contributed several solo acoustic tracks to a recent Europe-only CD release, produced by Evans, called The Spirit Lives On: Deep South Country Blues and Spirituals in the 1990s. Recently he was contacted by a label in North Carolina about the possibility of cutting a new record, though the details are unclear. Beyond that, Carter says he would like to cut a jazz record and continue touring.

Most of all, Carter remains one of Memphis' strongest connections to the past. And lately, too many legends of that past have died. Big Lucky Carter is a legend in his own right. But don't take our word for it. Go see for yourself some Saturday night at Wild Bill's. It is an opportunity you don't want to miss.