Herbert Leland Carter . . . Echoes of excellence
Biographical sketch of Herbert Carter. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.Citation for this article is: "Herbert Leland Carter . . . Echoes of excellence, " Pieces of Eight, March 15, 1984.
Instrumental music education in the schools is meaningful to the student as an art, as an activity, and as a skill. Music as an activitiy involves participation and good habits. The skills and disciplines necessary for good performance will be reflected in his mature life. His appreciation of music through aesthetic development will remain with him always. -- Herbert Carter.
One late summer day in 1946, young Herbert Carter got of fthe bus at the Greenville station on West Fifth Street. With a brand-new MA from Columbia University and a solid band performance background, he was eager to begin faculty duties at East Carolina Teachers College, possibly picking up extra income on weekend dance band jobs in the area. His first thought was that he was in a suburb. Entering a nearby drugstore, Carter asked the clerk where he could catch a bus to the "main part of town."
The clerk replied, "Brother, you're in it!"
Like scores of travelers before and since, Herb Carter had come to the "wrong" Greenville. He had readily accepted the job offer, liking what he'd heard about the college and on the basis of population statistics for Greenville, SOUTH Carolina -- at that time nearly five times larger than the Greenville to the north. Dance band gigs in this town were going to be scarce indeed.
"I planned to stay here nine months," he recalls. Now almost four decades later, he is still at East Carolina and doesn't regret his decision to stay on.
The history of Herbert Carter's career on campus almost exactly parallels the surging development of music instruction at East Carolina. He came as the fifth and youngest member of the music faculty, and was assigned to teach all the wind instruments and re-establish a college band from scratch.
His First Band
East Carolina had boasted a campus band during the '30's, but it vanished with the onset of war. It took all of Carter's investigative and persuasive ability to locate students who could play an instrument and recruit them for his band. "We had very few music majors then," he said. "I went around knocking on dorm room doors whenever I heard about students who could play." Within weeks, Carter had assembled 35 musicians, mostly veterans who had played in service bands. This first band, wearing very old uniforms and playing very old instruments, was shortly joined by a swing band, The Collegians, and a marching band, both led by Carter. "In those days, the Pirates played football at Guy Smith Stadium. There was no grass, just mud," Carter said. "I remember at one game the field was so muddy one of my horn players walked right out of her shoes."
During the next few years East Carolina's music program developed rapidly, and as numbers of students, faculty, degree programs and performing groups increased, the department outgrew its facilities in Wright and Old Austin and moved to Whichard. "We were on the way," says Carter. Since then, the band program, under his leadership, has become one of the nation's finest.
In his present position as director of bands, Carter oversees some half a dozen ensembles directed by younger faculty members but remains conductor of the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, the music school's select touring band. He has coordinated some 70 music campus and band clinics for school-aged musicians here at ECU and conducted and judged at numerous music festivals in the U.S. and Mexico. His Wind Ensemble has performed original works by such noted composers as Giannini, Persichetti, Gould and Dello Joio -- with the composers themselves visiting ECU at Carter's invitation to guest conduct.
Always Active
On and off the podium, Herb Carter has always been active. His involvement with music began while he was a lad in Mayfield, Kentucky. Clarinet studies led to joining the school band. "Then I got the jazz bug," Carter explained. At Murray State College, he was lead alto sax player and clarinetist with a campus dance band, whose players got two meals a day at their own training table and long engagements at Daytona Beach every summer.At Murray State also, Carter met and married Louise (Put) Putnam, daughter of the voice faculty chairman. Upon graduation came war service in Air Force bands, and later, as a grad student at Columbia, Carter continued to play with jazz bands. He first got the news of his East Carolina job offer after returning at 3 a.m. from a dance band engagement on Long Island.
When the shock of finding themselves in a small town wore off, the Carters began to enjoy life in Greenville. They raised their two daughters here and have been active in the community. Both are avid golfers and play frequently here and at courses near their three-acre mountain retreat near Brevard.
In Touch with Students
On campus, Carter sets aside time from teaching, conducting and administrative duties to advise and write recommendations for his students. He makes good use of his network of key people in school systems and graduate programs throughout the country, among them his brother Morris, an administrator at the University of Illinois School of Music. Another current project is taping old German marches for U.S. music publishers, in collaboration with a former student who is editing the original instrumentation."There are so many of our alumni out teaching and performing; I wish I had a roster of them all," Carter says ruefully. One alumnus is southern division president of the Music Educators National Conference; another directs a national award-winning school marching band. Others are leaders in state and regional band directors' associations.
"When we get ready to book a tour, we depend on our alumni to sponsor us. The Wind Ensemble's tour of eastern Pennsylvania last year was planned around alumni contacts in the Philadelphia area."
And so the network grows and spreads. As each year's new crop of music majors appear on campus, Carter is delighted to discover many who chose ECU because their band directors -- Carter's former students -- urged them to come here. "It is a real pleasure to see the loyalty our alumni still have for the ECU School of Music," he said.
Alumni Tributes
Those who have played under Carter's baton find much of that loyalty centered around the influence of Herb Carter, as they take up teaching and directing themselves. "There's a bit of 'Herbology' in every Winthrop instrumental major," confessed one alumnus, director of bands at Winthrop College.Two memorable tributes have been paid Carter at recent eastern district meetings of the state band association. This winter the group announced that it will commission a new major work for wind ensemble in his honor, and Carter is to choose the composer. Last year Carter was given a bound collection of congratulatory letters from 60 colleagues and former students, and from Governor Hunt, whose 1977 inauguration ceremony featured a performance by Carter's ensemble. The letters were collected by an East Carolina band alumna, now vice president of the Women Band Directors National Association.
Carter's achievements have bene recognized; he has been awarded a National Band Association Citation of Excellence and was selected one of the nation's 10 most outstanding music directors by School Musician magazine in 1975. It's his students' accomplishments that mean most to him, however.
"My main happiness is seeing our graduates become successful, and seeing how they 'rub off on' other people," Carter said. "I'm tied to all the activities and accomplishments of our alumni; I feel I have succeeded if they have succeeded."
