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GREENSBORO — Around N.C. A&T, Arthur Stewart is known by many names.

Singa.

Pops.

Old-School.

And Brother Arthur.

He works as a carpenter. But he also sings. He'll be in the cab of one of the university's trucks, windows down, singing a verse or two from a love ballad he knows — and he knows many — and he'll hear a student shout from the sidewalk, "Sing it, Pops! You can go there!''

He knows the transformative power of song. He learned it early in church and from his mother, Anna Stewart, who sang as she cooked or as she prodded her 12 children out of bed.

Arthur was No. 10 in her big brood. He remembers lying in bed, waking up in southeast Washington, one of the roughest sections in our nation's capital, and he'd hear his mom singing a few verses from a homemade song that began, "Lazy Bones, get right out of bed. ...''

That was a long time ago.

Stewart is now 54, a married father with two grown children. He's been working as a carpenter at A&T for nearly two years, and he sings everywhere on campus — for professors, colleagues and students passing by who need a musical pick-me-up.

And that's what led to his new gig every Valentine's Day.

Last year, without any invitation or public-relations prodding, he visited seven different departments at A&T, asked all the female employees to come together, and he sang a love ballad to let them know they're special.

He did it again Thursday. Except this time, the female employees knew he was coming. He's known around campus for giving umbrellas that he's found to students stuck walking in the rain.

But he's also known as the singing carpenter. So, when he walked into any office around campus Thursday, employees knew.

Like at the Sebastian Health Center. Everyone was knee-deep in their day when Stewart walked in. They stopped, went into the waiting room, at least 16 men and women, and heard Stewart sing The Commodores' tune "Three Times a Lady" with a few tweaked verses to fit the heart-shaped holiday.

And those women just beamed.

"Can I take you to my house?" one of the women asked after he finished.

There's something about Stewart's voice. It's a warm, raspy baritone, John Legend-smooth, that'll stop people right where they stand.

He met his second wife that way eight years ago. He was working in an antiques shop in Washington, flat on his back, singing gospel when she peered around a rack of clothes and asked, "Is that you singing?"

Now, you could say it's genetic. His paternal grandfather played drums for Duke Ellington, and Stewart's brother, Charles W., played drums for Junior Walker & The All-Stars.

And Stewart plays drums, too. He discovered rhythm when he helped his dad, Charles E., deliver newspapers for the Washington Post. His dad, who also worked as a postal clerk, would get up at midnight, wake one of his sons, and together they'd deliver 340 Washington Post newspapers to the capital's upper crust in Georgetown.

Stewart went often. He'd sit in the back of his dad's red Country Squire station wagon, tossing papers as he listened to a jazz station and beat out a rhythm on the open tailgate.

That's how a young Stewart met John Sirica, the U.S. District Court judge who presided over the Watergate case.

"You've got to do something with that voice, son," Sirica told him.

Stewart did. After high school, he played drums during his seven-year stint in the U.S. Army, and along the way, he backed up performers such as disco diva Donna Summer and jazz legend Miles Davis. Stewart also steered his own band in Atlanta, Southern Knights Band, better known as SKB.

But it is his voice people remember. He has sung to R&B legend Patti LaBelle. And today, he sings to anyone who will listen, even when he's flat on his back with a hammer in his hand.

And listen they do.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com