Dean Carter

Dean Carter emerged as a singular anomaly within 1960s rock. A singer-guitarist whose core instincts and much of his sonic approach echoed the untamed rockabilly figures of the 1950s, he nevertheless produced recordings that refreshed that spirit through infusions of 1960s garage rock, touches of soul, and scattered psychedelic accents. Though he issued relatively few discs during the decade and those reached only small audiences, the 1967 Milky Way single coupling "Jailhouse Rock" with "Rebel Woman" later became prized among garage collectors, its rockabilly roots rendering it somewhat out of step with the era. He also amassed a body of unreleased sessions marked by strong quality, ranging from comparatively straightforward rockabilly to his more eccentric fusion of that style with late-1960s textures; several of these selections appeared on the 2002 Big Beat collection Call of the Wild.

Born Arlie Neaville, he took up rockabilly playing in the late 1950s in Champaign, Illinois, remaining based there for much of the following decade. Early sides surfaced on the Ping label in 1961 under his given name, on the better-known Fraternity label in 1962 as Arlie Nevil, and on Limelight in 1964 as Dean Carter. That same year he and Arlie Miller, a member of his band the Lucky Ones, opened a home studio in Danville, Illinois, to document both Carter’s work and that of other musicians. The pair also ran the small Milky Way label, which put out recordings by Carter and additional artists. Some of those sessions grew unconventional even by garage standards, featuring ukulele, accordion, dobro, and clarinet alongside the usual gritty guitars on his audacious reading of Elvis Presley’s "Jailhouse Rock."

Carter spent time on the West Coast in the late 1960s, cutting a pair of singles in Washington State with Gene Vincent guitarist Jerry Merritt for Merritt’s Tell International label. He returned to the Midwest at decade’s end to resume work with Miller and again billed himself as Arlie Neaville on record. In the early 1970s he turned to gospel music, the field in which he has remained active ever since.