One of Henderson Chatmon's many musical sons, Bo Carter was a performing, and occasionally a recording, member of the 30s string band the Mississippi Sheiks, alongside Walter Vincson and his brothers Sam Chatmon and Lonnie Chatmon. He played on guitar and violin, but it was as a solo singer and guitarist that he was best known on record. A talented and original player whose steel guitar provided him with an instantly recognizable sound, he was the first to record the standard 'Corrine Corrina' (in 1928), and could compose sensitive, introspective songs such as 'Sorry Feeling Blues'. However, both his guitar talents and his sensitivity were underemployed on record, where he recorded many tracks with titles such as 'Banana In Your Fruit Basket' and 'Please Warm My Weiner' with stereotyped accompaniments. Carter went partly blind during the 1930s. He settled in Glen Allan, Mississippi, and despite his vision problems did some farming but also continued to play music and perform, sometimes with his brothers. Blindness and changing fashions ended his career in the early 40s, and he died in poverty.
Carter suffered strokes and died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Shelby County Hospital, in Memphis, on September 21, 1964.
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By Jim O'Neal
Bo Carter (Armenter "Bo" Chatmon) had an unequaled capacity for creating sexual metaphors in his songs, specializing in such ribald imagery as "Banana in Your Fruit Basket," "Pin in Your Cushion," and "Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me." One of the most popular bluesmen of the '30s, he recorded enough material for several reissue albums, and he was quite an original guitar picker, or else three of those albums wouldn't have been released by Yazoo. (Carter employed a number of different keys and tunings on his records, most of which were solo vocal and guitar performances.) Carter's facility extended beyond the risqué business to more serious blues themes, and he was also the first to record the standard "Corrine Corrina" (1928). Bo and his brothers Lonnie and Sam Chatmon also recorded as members of the Mississippi Sheiks with singer/guitarist Walter Vinson.