Tom "Pops" Carter - Denton, TX - Musician Statues on Waymarking.com

Tom “Pops” Carter (1919-2012) was a well-known and much beloved mainstay of the Denton music scene for decades, but his beginnings read like a page outta Delta Blues mythology. Born June 6th along the Louisiana banks of the Red River in a long-vanished Bossier Parish cotton town, a precocious 10-year-old Carter began sneaking out to hear the tent pole blues shows that would drift through Shreveport. When he and his friends were about to be tossed from one show by gruff tour roustabouts, a bluesman, whose name has been lost to time, intervened. “You let them kids stay,” Pops remembered the old musician growl that hot night, “They’s gonna sit here by the stage and get schooled in th’ blues.” Young Tom Carter was lucky enough to be exposed to the sounds of traveling legends like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lead Belly and T-Bone Walker.

He despised picking cotton in the family fields and received frequent beatings from his daddy for sneaking off, so the wily teen packed a pillowcase and hitch-hiked to Houston. Living with an aunt and uncle while working menial daytime jobs, Carter quickly became a fixture in the vibrant blues scene of Houston’s Third and Fifth Wards within a few years. His first band, The House Rockers, began by playing in the streets outside the hot clubs but Carter was soon jamming onstage with the most prominent bluesmen of the era. Lightnin’ Hopkins became a huge musical and personal influence. Hopkins even introduced Carter to his first-cousin, Minnie Lee. It was no surprise that the two hit if off right away. “She was telling me about all these men who done her wrong,” Pops later recalled, “and I said, ‘Mama, I can treat you better’n that.” By the time Carter died a widower at age 92 after being married three times, it was Minnie Lee, who he always called ‘Mama’, that he considered the greatest love of his life. Carter would perform in Houston’s blues clubs during the 1940s and 50s alongside luminaries such as B.B. King, Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, Freddy King, and Little Milton.

Despite his musical notoriety in Houston’s blues circles, Carter still had to cover the bills. When a good-paying construction job drew him to Denton in 1969 he was smitten by the energy and creativity of the music scene, and preferring the small-town intimacy of Denton, Carter decided he didn’t want to live anywhere else. By now, almost fifty with a lifetime of musical experience playing with blues legends, Carter came to be known as “Pops” by the campus musicians who frequented his circuit of local pub gigs during the 70s and 80s. Over the next four decades, ‘Pops’ Carter became a one-man institution of Fry Street’s music scene as a friendly mentor and jam companion to two generations of Denton musicians. Among the many future talents that ‘Pops’ influenced were Robin “Texas Slim” Sullivan, The Baptist Generals, and a young Stevie Ray Vaughn, who used to travel from Austin to the dive bars of North Texas State University when making a name for himself. Always dressed to the nines, flirty with the foxes, and singing into the rafters, the smokey-voiced ‘Pops’ electrified audiences with his smiling disposition, high-energy onstage dancing, and trademark “Hey Hey Now!” callback that made him a mainstay for years. ‘Pops’ passion was the blues, but he never hesitated to sing with rock, jazz, or punk bands when asked. “He was a local icon,” recalled one festival organizer, and while acts “were whittling about, he wanted to be on stage.” Forming his own band Pops Carter and the Funkmonsters in 1990 when he was 70 years old. The group offered a uniquely Denton fusion of blues, roots, soul, and funk with a festive campus music vibe. “The music was in him,” Funkmonsters From Outer Space member Clarence Pitts grins; “He brought the energy every time he performed. He never did stop.”