RIP Allen V. Carter

[russiantuba]

I received word another one of my good tuba friends, Allen V. Carter, passed away today. For those on the old forum, he used to post under the handle “porkchopsisgood”.

Allen had a career as a theme park musician before going back to finish his degrees at Temple University under Jay Krush and Truman State University under Steven Seward. I first met him when he was on faculty at McMurry University, and I was beyond impressed with his playing and took several lessons, where I was equally impressed with his energetic teaching. I purchased a f tuba from him that I later sold to Sam Pilafian, though I was going to sell it back to him, he convinced me to sell it to Sam instead.

Allen went into truck driving, and I can’t tell you the number of hours we were both on drives where we chatted about tuba, about life. Allen gave me some of the best advice over the years and helped me through a lot, and learned a lot about entertaining audiences, tuba oral history, freelancing, etc.

I hadn’t heard from him in a few months, very unlike him, until last Thursday, briefly but he seemed his old energetic self in his response, so not sure if he was dealing with health issues.

[MartinMan]

Tragic news. I never met him in person, but I had the chance to get to know Allen over regular zoom calls in the TubaBass studio. He always bright a great attitude and levity to the calls and it was great to learn from him and to toss ideas back and forth.

Last we spoke, I remember him talking about how he wanted to transition out of trucking in order to devote more time to playing and it breaks my heart to know that dream never got a chance to fully materialize.

A fine player and a great person. He'll definitely be missed.

[gocsick]

Oh that is really sad.. Allen spent a long time talking about Temple and Jay Krush with my son. That was one of the big reasons he chose Temple over other programs. Allen reached out to him not too long ago asking him how things were going, and told him to drop him a line after he got settled.