Longtime bluesman Roy Carter has played so many Handy Fests he can’t say how many.
But the saxophonist for Evansville’s Blues 4U does know he and bandmates started playing at the first event in 1991—when it was a local event with local people playing music in Central Park—and they haven’t let up since.
“It’s just been great to come back every year,” says Carter, 78. “And see it grow.”
Blues 4U, the longest-running act in Handy Fest history is back at it again, taking the stage Friday, June 16, at 12 noon.
Carter, a working musician his entire adult life, which has taken him on tours around the region and country, grew up in Henderson County, in Spottsville.
He graduated from Henderson County High School in the early 1960s before attending Evansville College (now University of Evansville). After three years of higher education, he got hooked up with an agent who “put me on the road.”
He started out in California, but eventually came back to Indiana and worked for different agents who put together various groups—cover bands, blues bands, etc.—and sent them on different tours. He did that throughout the 1970s.
The next decade he toured with an Indianapolis band called Smalls Yesterday that played Top 40s hits and also covers, much of it on the outdoor festival circuit.
Blues 4U came together in the 1990s. Carter says he was playing “jazz and fusion stuff” with several members of the band, when the manager of the Deerhead Tavern in Evansville approached them about putting together a blues night.
So, they started a blues band.
Searching for a name, original member Mike McKinney saw the Evansville magazine News 4U around town, and quipped, “We’ll call ourselves Blues 4U.” It stuck. Carter says they used to draw big crowds on the Sunday blues night at the Deerhead.
McKinney died about a dozen years ago. “We didn’t play for a while after that,” Carter says.
Including Carter, current members are Tommy Stillwell on guitar, Jon Rochner on bass, Carl Rodenberg on keyboards and Danny Erkman on drums.
Throughout his career, Carter has had the chance to play with legends.
He and a fellow musician/agent backed up Chuck Berry two times—once at the old Executive Inn Rivermont in Owensboro, another time in Atlanta.
He says Berry didn’t say much.
“He just came out and gave us a key,” Carter says. “We had to keep our eye on the drummer.”
He also backed up the Drifters. He says there was an agent who was getting together oldies R&B singing groups at the time, and they found backing bands for them on the road.
Through most of his career, Carter has been able to support himself only by playing music, though there were a couple stints along the way when he worked in banks—once verifying loans at Integra, another in the mailroom at Fifth-Third.
“Most of the time I just played music,” he says.
He says Blues 4U put out one album, a live CD that Carter says was recorded at a past Handy Fest.
Carter doesn’t play as much as he once did. He enjoys getting the chance to play with his son, Roy Micah Carter, who has his own band, the Honey Roy Band.
Carter says his sister still lives in Spottsville, and he has family in the area. Playing for them— “the people I grew up with”—and when the band’s having a good night, he says, “There’s just nothing like it.”
The secret of his longevity is simple.
“I just kept playing because I liked to play,” he says. “You got to really like doing it because sometimes you’re playing to hardly anyone. But sometimes it’s like magic.”
