When the Rolling Stones played every beer joint in Austin
Leon Carter and his honky tonk men found satisfaction on the local country scene
Mick Jagger was 10 years old and and Keith Richards, nine, when Austin country musician Leon Carter, just back from the Korean Conflict, registered his band’s name “the Rolling Stones” with the Travis County clerk’s office on August 28, 1953.
The name was suggested by Carter’s booking agent Johnny Stone because of the guitarist/singer’s wandering ways. Let’s not forget that O. Henry founded a newspaper in Austin in 1894 called The Rolling Stone, so the term was not new ‘round these parts.
Born in the East Texas town of Lone Oak to a musical Pentecostal family, Carter ran away from home at age 12 after his parents, who he said beat him regularly, separated. As a teen, he hooked up with Hawkshaw Hawkins*, a singing G.I. stationed in Texas whose band performed regularly on KPLT. Also singing on that Paris, TX radio station was a kid from nearby Greenville named Orville Frizzell, who was not yet called Lefty. The teenagers, both born in 1928, hitchhiked to West Texas, with Frizzell continuing on to New Mexico, while Leon ended up in Dilley, 70 miles southwest of San Antonio.
Dilley is where Carter started his first Rolling Stones in 1946. The second version was formed in Austin in 1952 when Carter returned from being stationed in Japan. Leon Carter and the Rolling Stones released only one single in 1953, with “New China Night,” a novelty number Carter sang entirely in Japanese, on one side. A true character, Leon picked up stuff quick in his travels.
When “England’s newest hitmakers” became a rock sensation in the ‘60s, Carter wanted to sue these upstart Rolling Stones. “I called two lawyers, but they’re scared of it,” Carter told John Kelso in 1984. Carter apparently only registered the band’s name in Texas. Besides, Mick and the boys had a legal team that would squash any lawsuit.
In Austin in the ‘50s, the Rolling Stones played all over town- the Skyline, Big Gil’s, Cinderella Club, Flossie’s, etc. In 1958, Carter bought the former Owl Supper Club at 12415 N. Lamar, and changed the name and format to the Spur Club country & western bar. Leon and the Stones played there a couple years before Carter turned management over to Lamar Gillum, though he still owned the building. By the end of 1960, it was Shirley’s Club, with a major innovation- a nursery for staff and patrons.
The original Rolling Stones disbanded in 1971 after the death of drummer Shorty Wilson, and Leon went solo. One of his favorite places to play was Willie’s Pool Hall on South Lamar, run by Pop Nelson, Willie’s father. Leon and Pop ended up forming a seven-piece Western swing band called the Pool Hall Playboys. When Pop passed in 1978, Leon sang “Faded Love” at the funeral.
Besides music, Nelson and Carter shared a passion for junk stores and garage sales, which got them up earlier than most touring musicians. “We wore out two mobile homes,” Carter told the Statesman. Leon bought every musical instrument, every record player, and every bit of C&W memorabilia he could find, and after a few decades of that had amassed so much that his wife Chick said he had to find a building to put it all in. So, in the early ‘80s, Leon tore down his former Spur Club, poured a new foundation, and used the wood to build the Texas Noteables Museum, with a Pickin’ Barn dancehall inside. On display were over 50 fiddles, 200 guitars, vintage Seeburg jukeboxes, and the like. Sitting in front was a 16-foot tall concrete guitar. The Museum was open to the public only a few years before closing in 1989.
“I play life by ear,” Carter told the Statesman in a 1990 article that celebrated his 50 years in the music business. He was always ready to chase a new venture, though he made his money installing septic tanks, among other construction jobs. He was quite handy with his hands, playing a guitar he made out of a toilet seat in his last band, the Texas Funteers. He also made a bass out of a wagon wheel and a fiddle from a cedar post.
The great, eccentric Leon Carter lived to be 94, passing away on Oct. 1, 2022, spending the last decades of his life in Buda. He’s buried at the Walnut Creek Baptist Church Cemetery at 12062 North Lamar, the old Dallas Highway, just four blocks from where he opened the Spur Club 63 years ago.
*Hawkshaw Hawkins died in the 1963 plane crash that also killed Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas.
What a character! What a life.
Thank you, you're doing well by my taste. I wouldn't be surprised if my Austin relatives had been to his early venues (they left town in 1971) but I can't ask them now, time has moved on.