Dave Carter

One song, "Gentle Arms of Eden", was added to the hymnal in at least one Unitarian Universalist congregation. More of Carter's songs were recorded by Tracy Grammer on her 2005 album Flower of Avalon.

Carter died of a massive heart attack Friday July 19, 2002 in a hotel room in Hadley, Massachusetts after returning from an early morning run. She and Grammer were slated to play that weekend at the Green River Festival in Greenfield and were booked that summer to play many of the nation's top folk festivals and folk clubs. She was 49. Carter's death came as a great shock to the folk music community. Tracy Grammer gave her account of Carter's final moments in a letter to fans:

Grammer decided to keep the duo's appointment to play the 2002 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival the following week and a tribute concert was arranged. The tribute included performances by a number of Carter's admirers singing her songs. Highlights included Chris Smither's cover of "Crocodile Man", Mark Erelli singing "Cowboy Singer", a rendition of "Happytown" by The Kennedys, and "Farewell to Saint Dolores" by Eddie From Ohio. Grammer herself opened the show with "The Mountain" and closed with "Gentle Soldier of My Soul". Several artists have since written tributes in Carter's honor (see below) and in 2005 Grammer released Flower of Avalon, including nine previously unrecorded songs by Carter.

In 2000 Carter revealed to Grammer that she had struggled with gender dysphoria since her early teen years. Grammer later said, "...[s]he was exploring a gender change and that altered the dynamics of our off-stage relationship. It actually made things quite difficult for us personally, but anyone on the outside would not have known that. It was just a process that we were going through and that, thankfully, we reconciled with by the time [s]he died."

Prior to her death, Carter released three albums with Grammer: When I Go (1998); Tanglewood Tree (2000); and Drum Hat Buddha (2001). The duo re-recorded many of the songs from Snake Handlin' Man, plus two previously unrecorded songs, in early 2002. The CD, called Seven Is the Number, was released by Tracy Grammer in 2006. A collection of the duo's holiday recordings called American Noel was compiled by Tracy Grammer and released in 2008 by Signature Sounds.

Dave Carter was born in Oxnard, California. Her father was a mathematician and a petroleum engineer and her mother was a science teacher and a charismatic Christian. Carter was raised in Oklahoma and Texas and would draw on her rural upbringing in many of her songs. She studied classical piano from age 4 to about age 12, when she took up guitar. At 17, she left home to hitchhike around the country, especially the Midwestern United States (Great Plains area). After graduating with degrees in music (cello) and fine arts from the University of Oklahoma, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she continued her education at Portland State University, earning a degree in mathematics. She began an advanced degree in mathematics, but a personal epiphany led her to realize that this was not to be her field. She went on to study what she called "the psychology of mystical experience" at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto and the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and worked as an embedded systems programmer for several years before taking up music full-time in the mid-1990s. Carter was greatly influenced by mythologist Joseph Campbell, who visited her college, and American mystic Carlos Castaneda. She was also influenced by the American landscape, Arthurian mythology, the environment, and transcendental psychology.

Dave Carter (August 13, 1952 – July 19, 2002) was an American folk singer-songwriter who described their style as "post-modern mythic American folk music." She was one half of the duo Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, who were heralded as the new "voice of modern folk music" in the months before Carter's unexpected death in July 2002. They were ranked as number one on the year-end list for "Top Artists" on the Folk Music Radio Airplay Chart for 2001 and 2002, and their popularity has endured in the years following Carter's death. Joan Baez who went on tour with the duo in 2002 spoke of Carter's songs in the same terms that she once used to promote a young Bob Dylan: