Goree Carter “Rock Awhile” 1949 Freedom record 78

Goree Chester Carter Born: December 31, 1930, Houston, TX Died: December 29, 1990, Houston, TX Goree Carter was born in Houston, Texas. He was born in the Fifth Ward, and lived at 1310 Bayou Street. He began playing blues music at the age of 12, and learned to play on a cousin’s guitar. Because there were very few guitarists in his area back then, he had no one to teach him how to play the guitar, so he taught himself how to play it by listening to some of his favorite records on a Victrola machine and picking string-by-string on the guitar. He learned a few chords from listening and then learned more about them from a chord book. When he became a teenager, he began earning a living by hoisting sacks at the local Comet Rice Mill. He had a Gibson guitar and began fronting bands in his early teenage years. In 1949, he and his jump blues band, The Hepcats, also known as Goree Carter and His Hepcats or Goree Carter & His Hepcats, signed for Freedom Records, a local record label se