MARTY STUART BIOGRAPHY
Marty Stuart was making the best music of his life in 2006. If you caught him in
Nashville in September, for example, you’d find him in front of his band, the Fabulous
Superlatives, a name that sounded less and less like hyperbole with each show. “Cousin”
Kenny Vaughan, on guitar, wore a white cowboy suit with cactus embroidery; “Brother”
Brian Glenn, on bass, wore a black jacket, bell-bottom jeans and white boots; and
“Handsome” Harry Stinson, on drums, sported a matching tan jacket and boots.
Out front, his hair rising improbably into the air, his black cowboy jacket outlined in
red piping, and his black-leather pants blending into his black boots, was Stuart himself,
picking his guitar and mandolin and singing with unprecedented authority. His show was
full of terrific original songs, but periodically he played a touchstone of country music
history, beginning with the bluegrass of “In the Pines," continuing through the
Bakersfield honky-tonk of “Buckaroo” and climaxing with the gospel original, “It’s Time
To Go Home."
As he shifted gears through all these styles and more, Stuart never lost momentum.
His stabbing mandolin notes and aching vocal evoked the desolation of the abandoned
lover in the pines; his jumping electric guitar captured the abandon of a Saturday-night
buckaroo, and his yearning drawl revealed the peace that can be found in accepting death.
Where did this new-found confidence and charisma come from? How, at age 48,
when many country-music veterans are slouching towards oblivion, has Stuart so
improbably reached new heights?
Unlike most show-biz success stories, he doesn’t claim the credit himself. He knows
his current achievement would never have been possible if he hadn’t walked every single
mile of the highway that got him here. And he never would have made it if not for the
mentors who showed the way and the partners who walked beside him. Those are his
“Compadres,” and his story can’t be told without them. Stuart realized as much when
John L. Smith, the researcher who compiled the Johnny Cash discography, started on one
for Stuart.
"When he started sending me session sheets," Stuart explains, “I started seeing all the
collaborations I had done and I realized how well they told my story. I strung them
together on a CD, let some fall by the wayside, and put the remainder on another CD.
What was left told the story of a young man's journey, starting with Lester Flatt and
arriving at the Fabulous Superlatives. It was the story of a kid who showed up with a
mandolin and a dream, became a guitar player in the Johnny Cash Band and became a
songwriter, an arranger and a producer. I look at it and see the unfolding of a life."
The journey began in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Stuart’s father worked long
hours at the local factory. The only chance the young boy had for quality time with his
dad was Saturday afternoons when they’d sit down together to watch the syndicated
country-music shows on TV. Even on the family's small, black-and-white set, the stars’
costumes sparkled and dazzled, exerting a magnetic pull on a small-town kid with big
ambitions. And when little Marty finally saw one of those suits in person, the time Ernest
Tubb came to the Neshoba County Fair, it was, he says, “the most beautiful thing I’d ever
seen; it was as if my black-and-white TV were coming to life in full color.”
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So when Stuart joined Lester Flatt & the Nashville Grass at age 13, his first ambition
was to play on the Grand Ole Opry and his second was to buy a suit like Tubb’s. He
played the Opry and then, on his first trip to California, he had the bus drop him off at
Nudie's Rodeo Tailors in North Hollywood on Lankershin Boulevard, “the street of badboy fashion." This was where everyone from Tubb to Elvis Presley went “shopping for
clothes," and the teenager had $250 of savings in his pocket.
“I tried on a suit," he remembers, “and asked how much it was. When Nudie [Cohen]
said, ‘$2,500,’ my heart sank through the floor. That sounded like more money than I’d
ever have. Just then I felt this presence come up behind me and it was Manuel Cuevas,
the same guy the older musicians had told me was the best tailor of all. He said, ‘Some
day, you’ll be able to buy every suit in here, but today you’re going to get a free shirt.’
He handed me a white shirt with red and blue flowers and said, ‘You’re my compadre.’
"I’d never heard the word before, but I soon found out what it meant. It meant he’d
always be there for me as an advisor, a friend, a brother, a kindred spirit, a soul mate,
someone who had my back. And he was. That’s why I’ve dedicated this album to him,
even though we’ve never played a note together. This album is a recognition that you
don’t get anywhere in life without help from your mentors and your peers—your
compadres.”
That’s true of everyone—whether one is a hillbilly star or a carpenter, a third
baseman or a math teacher. But many a star will try to convince you that he made it on
his own, a lone ranger finding his way in the wilderness without help or influence, a longmisunderstood genius finally recognized by the world. It’s always a good story, but it’s
never true. None of us succeed without teachers and teammates. Stuart is no different in
that regard; he’s just more honest about it.
A loquacious talker, he eagerly tells stories about Flatt, Cash and his other
compadres. A lifelong collector, he eagerly shows off the mementos he has gathered from
them. He still has the shirt that Cuevas gave him 34 years ago; he still has Flatt's ribbon
tie, Cash’s man-in-black suit, Pops Staples’ guitar and Merle Haggard's hand-scribbled
lyrics. And he still has the recordings that make up this album.
"I believe in ‘Honor Thy Father,’” he explains. “I got swept up in ‘Urban Cowboy’
movement, due to my age, but I saw no reason to turn my back on my history. To be
acknowledged by George Jones or Merle Haggard or Johnny Cash is something I’ve
never taken lightly. Those were graduation ceremonies. I always considered Lester as my
formal education and Cash as my finishing school. They were always my chiefs, but we
got to a point beyond boss and employee. We were compadres.”
Stuart spent the summer of 1972 playing mandolin with the Sullivan Family, an
Alabama bluegrass/gospel group. He was only 12, but he attended Pentecostal snakehandling services, George Wallace campaign rallies and bluegrass festivals.
"It was a summer of wearing cool clothes and long hair, of learning about girls, of
hanging out with cool people and get paid for doing so. I felt I had found my life. I felt
like I had run away with the circus. But when school started, I had to go back to the ninth
grade after experiencing all of that. It was horrible; I hated it. I didn’t fit in any more.”
So he leapt at an invitation from Roland White to play a show in Delaware with
Lester Flatt & the Nashville Grass. Stuart played the next date and the next, and pretty
soon he was a regular member of the band. Flatt was still rebounding from a painful split
with Earl Scruggs in 1969, but he had recently reconciled with his former boss, Bill
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Monroe. Flatt's band often shared bills with Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys on the
new, burgeoning bluegrass-festival circuit, and Monroe frequently found room on his bus
for the teenaged Stuart.
"It was like learning from an Indian chief," Stuart recalls. “He’d never say anything;
he’d just sit on the bus bench across from me and play a lick, and I’d play it back. When I
finally had ‘Rawhide’ down, he invited me out on stage. It got a big reaction every night.
Lester saw it and said, ‘We should do that in our show.’ ‘Rawhide’ became my showcase
number with the band and when we recorded the ‘Live! Bluegrass Festival’ album at
Vanderbilt University in 1974, that was on it. I’m including it here as a tribute to both
Bill and Lester.”
On the cover of the original album, the baby-faced, 15-year-old Stuart is standing to
Flatt’s right in a mop-top haircut and black cowboy hat, a head shorter than anyone else
on stage. The haircut reflected the changes blowing through bluegrass. The new
bluegrass-festival circuit was growing bigger each summer, and the music had been
discovered by “the Woodstock audience," as Stuart puts it. At a showcase for college
concert bookers, Lester Flatt & the Nashville Grass found themselves on the same bill as
Chick Corea and Kool & the Gang.
"Lester had just recorded ‘Feudin’ Banjos’ around the same time the film
‘Deliverance’ made the song famous,” Stuart says, “and when we did it live, the roof
came off the place. The next day we were rock stars with bookings at colleges all over the
country. There was no sense of tradition in the college audiences, but they were wild and
enthusiastic. We always did ‘Orange Blossom Special,’ and the more the kids screamed,
the faster the train got.
"But Lester never changed the set, and that was a life lesson for me. When I ran out
of commercial gas at the end of the ‘90s and had to chart a different course, I
remembered that lesson. It’s not always about changing and chasing. Sometimes it’s
about standing and staying who you are.”
Another date on that tour was at Michigan State, where the bill included Lester Flatt
& the Nashville Grass, the Eagles and Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris. It was a night
that changed Stuart’s life, he claims. For the first time, he heard how traditional country
and rock'n'roll could be merged without compromising one or the other. It was a lesson
he would apply to his own solo records in the ‘90s.
"I didn’t even know who Gram was," Stuart remembers, “but I was drawn to him
because he was so unusual—this guy in a nudie suit and black fingernails, talking in a
fake cockney accent. We jammed backstage on old Louvin Brothers and George Jones
songs.
"Gram and the Byrds had the right idea, but their records didn’t sound like country
records. They couldn’t follow a Buck or Merle song on the radio. It took Brian Ahern,
Emmylou’s producer, to transform Gram's idea from black-and-white to Technicolor.
Just as George Martin took the Beatles’ Cavern sound and made it work on pop radio,
Brian took Gram’s country-rock sound and made it work on country radio. That's one
reason why I included ‘One Woman Man,’ which he produced."
When Flatt's declining health finally forced him off the road in 1978, Stuart and the
rest of the band played the already booked dates without him. It was during this time that
the youngster met Bob Dylan.
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"Bob said, ‘How are Lester and Earl? Are they still friends?’” Stuart recalls. “Not
really. There are a lot of things unresolved.’ Bob said, ‘That’s sad. That’s what happened
to Abbott and Costello. They always said they were going to get back together but they
never did. And then the fat guy died.’ Dylan went on to do his show, and I went straight
to a pay phone and got Earl's phone number. I said, ‘Earl, this is Marty Stuart; I’d like to
meet you.’ ‘Come on,’ he said.
"When I got to his house, I said, ‘Lester's dying, and I know he’d want to say
goodbye to you.’ Earl said, ‘I heard he wasn’t feeling well.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s dying.
Here’s my number and here’s the room where Lester is.’ I went off with the band to
fulfill Lester's dates without him, but when we got back, Lance {Leroy, Lester's
manager} was standing there to meet the bus with tears in his eyes. ‘Earl visited Lester,’
was all he had to say. They were country boys with mountain pride, but they finally
overcame that pride. I knew they loved each other."
Stuart finally got to collaborate with the other half of the Flatt & Scruggs team when
Scruggs guested on Stuart’s second solo album, 1982's "Busy Bee Cafe." The final song
on the 2001 album, “Earl Scruggs and Friends," is an unaccompanied duet between
Scruggs’s banjo and Stuart’s guitar on the instrumental medley, “Foggy Mountain
Rock/Foggy Mountain Special."
But the performance that Stuart picked for this collection was the unaccompanied
mandolin-and-banjo version of “Mr. John Henry, Steel Driving Man” from Stuart’s
ambitious 1999 concept album, “The Pilgrim." The theme is familiar, but the variations
are not. The unorthodox digressions and the fleet-fingered tangents bear out Stuart’s
contention that the best bluegrass bands resemble jazz ensembles.
"There are some things that live inside of me," Stuart explains, “things that feel like
home. The sound of Earl’s banjo is one of those things. The sound of his banjo is part of
America; it's in the air we breathe. The first notes I heard on a record player came from
Flatt & Scruggs. It felt like family then; it feels like family now. The day we recorded
that track, it was a simple affair, just two microphones in the middle of the room. Earl
and Louise Scruggs, the engineer, and I were there and that was it. We recorded four or
five songs, but this was the one with the magic in it."
Though Stuart is best known for his electric-guitar country recordings, bluegrass has
been an unbroken thread through his career. From his first tour with the Sullivan Family
in 1972 to “Live at the Ryman," his remarkable bluegrass album with the Fabulous
Superlatives in 2006, string-band music has been a constant in Stuart’s life. And he
rejects the conventional wisdom that the best days of bluegrass are in its past.
He cites the Del McCoury Band, Alison Krauss & Union Station and Ricky Skaggs
& Kentucky Thunder as contemporary examples of the music at its best, and he submits
“Let Us Travel, Travel On," his collaboration with the McCoury Band, as evidence. The
track comes from the 2003 tribute album, “Livin’ Lovin’ Losin’: Songs of the Louvin
Brothers," with Stuart singing Charlie Louvin's part and McCoury singing Ira Louvin’s
part.
“Some people tend to water it down the more successful they become," Stuart says,
“but the more successful Del gets the more he strips it down to the real thing and that's
what makes him great. He's an encyclopedia on the music of Bill Monroe and Flatt &
Scruggs, and he’s glad to talk about it. When I play with that band I never have to think
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about anything, because it's already taken care of. I feel like I’m among master
craftsmen.”
After brief stints with Vassar Clements and Doc Watson in the wake of Flatt's death,
Stuart landed the job he’d always wanted: playing in the Johnny Cash Show. The first
three albums Stuart had ever owned were ‘The Fabulous Johnny Cash,’ ‘Flatt & Scruggs’
Greatest Hits’ and ‘Meet the Beatles.’ He’d already played with Lester Flatt and he had
long ago traded in the Beatles album for more country records. Cash, Stuart knew, was
the professor who could complete his education.
"Johnny Cash's records had once transported me from my bedroom in Philadelphia,
Mississippi, to the rest of the universe," Stuart explains, “so I’d always wanted to meet
him. When I finally did, there was an immediate connection. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he
asked me. I told him, ‘Getting ready.’ And he said, ‘OK, let's go.’”
Away they went, down the road for six years of tours that included June Carter, the
Carter Family, and the Tennessee Three. Stuart even married Johnny’s daughter Cindy
Cash for several years, joining a collection of sons-in-law that eventually included
Rodney Crowell, Nick Lowe, and Jack Routh. They all became ex-sons-in-law, yet Cash
not only remained a friend but also recorded songs by all of them.
"At one point he was my father-in-law and at another point he was my ex-father-inlaw,” Stuart says, “but we never let that get in the way of the music. He was a mentor to
me. He became my next-door neighbor later in life. When my own career took off, I went
to him countless times as an advisor and trusted friend.
"The last time I hung out with Johnny Cash was four days before he died. I had just
recorded ‘The Walls of a Prison’ for the ‘Country Music’ album, and I played it for him.
I was sitting at his feet, and when it was done, he opened his eyes and said, ‘Excellent,
my son. I never heard you sing like this before.’ ‘I never felt this way before,’ I said. I
felt a sense of completion that day. I’d quit chasing, quit worrying about it. I stopped
looking at the charts and just started doing. I let my heart speak, and that's the greatest
lesson I took from Johnny Cash.”
Cash sang with Stuart on “Busy Bee Café” and on the Nashville Grass version of
“Mother Maybelle,” but it wasn’t until Stuart had some success of his own under his belt
that he could finally engage his former employer as something of an equal. The album
was Stuart’s 1992 “This One's Gonna Hurt You," and the song was “Doin’ My Time," a
prison number written by Jimmie Skinner and recorded by Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe,
David Grisman and the New Grass Revival. Cash had cut it for Sun Records, had often
sung it on stage with Stuart and revived his clickety-clack railroad rhythm for this track.
Cash's baritone rumbles like a locomotive engine; Stuart's voice calls like a train whistle,
and the arrangement's pell-mell momentum suggests the way temptation leads to crime,
crime leads to prison and prison leads to remorse.
After six-plus years with Cash, Stuart realized you can’t stay in school forever; at a
certain point you have to leave the classroom and apply the lessons you’ve learned. His
first two albums had been largely acoustic projects on small bluegrass labels, but his third
album, “Marty Stuart," was a big-budget, country-rock effort on Columbia Records,
aimed square at the charts, and it deserved a supporting tour. So, with some reluctance,
he resigned from the Johnny Cash Show, pulled together his own band and hit the road. It
worked, to an extent. The first single, “Arlene," snuck into the Top Twenty, and the
second, “All Because of You," snuck into the Top Forty.
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Stuart has some regrets today about the synthesizers and some of the songwriting on
that album, but the disc did crackle with the 22-year-old singer's infectious mix of livewire rockabilly energy and hard-country roots. As a result, music journalists grouped
Stuart with four more country artists—Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, and
Randy Travis—who also emerged that year with records that reached back to older music
yet sounded paradoxically fresher than most of country radio. Each of the five singers put
multiple singles into the Country Top Forty. They were called “The Class of 1986."
"When I first started making records at Columbia,” Stuart remembers, “three names
began to represent a new movement in country music—Steve, Dwight and me. We were
the three new kids on the block that people wanted to watch, because we had a kind of
legitimacy about us after the Urban Cowboy craze. So I first saw Steve on the pages of
magazines. When I met him, I loved him because he was so serious about his craft. We
became buddies; we had a lot of the same heroes, a lot of the same demons, a lot of the
same struggles.
"The pendulum had swung back from the glossy, glitzy ‘Urban Cowboy’ sound to
something rootsier. We were closer to the source. A magazine did a photo spread of
young stars with their mentors, and they shot me with Johnny Cash. There was a torch
being passed. We were inspired by a tradition, but we weren’t imitating it. It’s not about
following the parade; it was about leading the parade. It was a vote of confidence to line
up alongside these people.”
“The Class of 1986” was a moment of great possibility. For a brief instant, it seemed
as if the narrow gates of country radio might swing open and allow a gutsier, rootsier
brand of country music to go out over the airwaves. Before long, though, the gates closed
tight again. By that time, Yoakam and Travis were safely inside, but Stuart, Earle, and
Lovett were left outside. By 1988, none of the three could be heard on country radio.
Lovett didn’t feel comfortable at country radio, and asked MCA to transfer his
contract to the pop division. Earle’s struggles with drug abuse alienated him from Music
Row and eventually landed him in prison. Stuart thought he’d take advantage of his
initial breakthrough to make the album he really wanted to make, a session that would
revive the hard-hitting honky-tonk of Bakersfield. That’s not what Columbia was looking
for and the label refused to release “Let There Be Country.” Both sides dug in their heels,
and Columbia wouldn’t release “Let There Be Country” till 1992, after Stuart had moved
on to MCA and racked up a bunch of hits.
In the meantime, Stuart was scuffling, unwilling to go back to being a sideman,
unable to give up on his dream of being a bandleader, looking for a record company that
might share that dream. In one of his darkest moments, when he was unsure whether he
should keep trying, Stuart was walking behind Columbia Records when a long car pulled
up and the rear window slid down. Out popped the head of none other than George Jones,
who asked, “What are you moping for? Don’t let them get you down.” The window slid
back up, and the car rolled away. It was a funny incident, but it gave Stuart the shot of
encouragement he needed. Hell, if George Jones believed in him, why shouldn’t he
believe in himself?
The Possum proved that he meant it by inviting Stuart to join Jones’s 1991 album of
duets, “The Bradley Barn Sessions." The song was “(I’m a) One Woman Man," which
had been a #7 hit for songwriter Johnny Horton in 1956 and a #5 hit for Jones himself in
1989. It was also a highlight of Stuart’s “Let There Be Country” album, which should
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have been released in 1987. The shift from Stuart’s warble to Jones’s bottomless baritone
reinforces the recording’s gravity-free sense of falling in love.
"An intense blizzard hit Nashville while we were recording,” Stuart recalls, “and
knocked out the power everywhere but Bradley's Barn. So all these rock and country
luminaries gathered there and made music with George Jones. Keith Richards was pacing
in the hall outside; he was very nervous because he was a huge George Jones fan.
Meanwhile, George was nervous because he didn’t know who Keith was. George asked
me, ‘What's the name of that boy that came to play?’ I told him. ‘What's that bunch he
plays with?’ ‘The Rolling Stones,’ I said. ‘Are they hot?’ he asked. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘pretty
damn hot.’”
Stuart launched his comeback on his new label, MCA, with the 1989 album,
“Hillbilly Rock," produced by the Steve Earle team of Richard Bennett and Tony Brown.
The title track, which became a Top Ten single, summed up Stuart’s new approach: “Beat
it with a drum; playing the guitars like shooting from a gun, keeping up the rhythm,
steady as a clock; doing a little thing called the hillbilly rock.” This was hillbilly music:
songs about small-town girls, restless wives, hard-working husbands, and rural outlaws,
delivered with a twang of the guitar and a drawl of the voice.
The difference was the drums. Drums had always been implied in bluegrass and
buried in honky-tonk, but now they were brought out front along with the rhythm guitar
and bass. This was country music with an irrepressible optimism and a franker sexuality,
a combination perfect for a 25-year-old single guy just coming into his own. The next
album, 1991’s “Tempted,” used that approach to put four more singles (“Little Things,"
“Till I Found You," “Burn Me Down," and the title track) into the Top Twelve. Fueled by
success, Stuart started writing songs as fast as he could come up with them, often with a
new circle of compadres.
One of the most oft-heard phrases in Nashville is “Hey, let’s get together and write a
song.” One of the many partners that Stuart co-wrote with was Ronnie Scaife, and they
came up with “The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’." Stuart didn’t need the song, because he’d
just released “Tempted” and wouldn’t start another album for many months. So they sent
it to Hank Williams Jr., but he passed. Then, one day while Stuart was at a drive-in
burger joint in Birmingham, he heard the radio play “Country Club” by a young singer
named Travis Tritt. Stuart was so impressed that he decided to send a demo of “Whiskey”
to the newcomer. Not only did Tritt want to record the song, but he wanted Stuart to
recreate the guitar part he’d put on the demo.
"I had finished the guitar part and was walking out of the studio," Stuart relates,
“when the producer, Gregg Brown, called me back in and said, ‘Sing the second verse;
maybe we’ll turn it into a duet.’ The next thing I know it’s not only a duet but also a hit
on country radio. I still hadn’t spoken with Travis, so I went up to him at Fan Fair and
introduced myself. He said, ‘Why don’t you come on out on stage and sing it with me?’
The crowd went nuts, so we decided to make a video for the song. At the end of the
filming, we shook hands and hugged, and I said to him, ‘When we’re old and fat and bald
and ugly and nobody cares anymore, I’ll still be your brother.’ And that's the way it’s
been."
“The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’” became a #2 smash, and it was followed by such
duets as 1992's #7 hit, “This One's Gonna Hurt You (For a Long, Long Time)," and
1996's #23 hit, “Honky Tonkin’s What I Do Best." The friendship implied in many
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country duets is often an on-stage act more than an off-stage reality, but Tritt and Stuart
forged a real bond. In 1992, they hit the road on the “No Hats Tour,” an irreverent rebuke
to the many “hat acts” dominating Nashville at that time. Stuart contributed songwriting
to Tritt's next three albums (“t-r-o-u-b-l-e,” “Ten Feet Tall and Bulletproof” and “The
Restless Kind”), played guitar on two of them and sang a duet vocal on “Double Trouble”
from the last one.
Meanwhile, Stuart continued to rack up hits of his own. The 1992 album, “This
One's Gonna Hurt You," yielded not only the title-track duet with Tritt but also three
other Top Forty singles: “Now That's Country,” “High on a Mountain Top," and “Hey
Baby." Things started to slow down with the 1994 album, “Love and Luck," and the 1996
disc, “Honky Tonkin’s What I Do Best." It was at that time that MCA decided to make
the tribute album, “Not Fade Away (Remembering Buddy Holly),” and it made sense to
include the singer of “Hillbilly Rock." But Stuart insisted that he record with one of his
old compadres, Steve Earle.
"Steve had just gotten out of prison, and the record company didn’t want anything to
do with him," Stuart recalls, “but I said I wouldn’t do it without him. Richard Bennett,
who had produced both Steve and I, was the coordinator for my track on the Holly album,
and he helped make it happen. I was never so happy to see someone back in my life as I
was to see Steve, because I’d thought we’d lost him. The first time I heard Steve sing
‘Guitar Town’ back in 1986, I believed I’d heard the future of country music. I still
believe that."
Stuart and Earle teamed up on Holly's 1958 song, “Crying, Waiting, Hoping." The
bluesy slide guitar at the beginning is just something Stuart was fooling around with in
the studio that the ever-alert Bennett captured by pushing the record button. The song
itself gets its delicious tension from the contrast between Earle's “Crying, Waiting” low
tenor and Stuart’s “Hoping” high tenor, between Earle’s chunky rock guitar and Stuart’s
trilling slide. When Stuart received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana
Music Association at the Ryman Auditorium in 2005, Earle was the presenter and
publicly thanked Stuart for giving him his first paycheck after prison, his first chance to
get back in a recording studio.
Stuart owed MCA one more album on his contract, and he decided that instead of
chasing after elusive radio airplay he was going to make the record he’d always wanted
to make. Although he had written skillfully and knowingly for Country Music Magazine
and other publications, his song lyrics had largely stuck to simple radio fare. Although he
was president of the Country Music Foundation and had assembled one of the world’s
foremost private collections of country-music artifacts, he seldom let that history seep
into his own songs. Now he would.
“In truth,” he admitted at the time, “on the last couple albums, I was trying to be a
good little artist and color inside the lines. I liked the music, but it wasn’t coming from
the depths of me and after a while it wasn’t selling that great. About three years ago, I
said, `I’m done compromising; I want to do something that's really me.’ Change was
inevitable. There were two options: I could chase radio again and die a horrible death. Or
I could walk to my death honorably."
The result was a concept album entitled “The Pilgrim,” Based on a true story from
Stuart's Mississippi hometown, the songs describe a title character who falls in love with
a woman at work, discovers too late she's married, watches her husband kill himself, flees
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the town for years of drunken wandering, and finally finds redemption in religion and
marriage. Here are the great themes of hillbilly music—infidelity, violence, rambling,
alcoholism, church and family—wrapped up in an ongoing narrative.
To give that story the scope it deserved, Stuart employed the full range of country
music, from the cranked-up, drum-driven country-rock of his recent records to the
bluegrass and honky-tonk of his work with Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, from old-time
mountain songs and Western swing to countrypolitan. To help him pull it off, Stuart
called on his compadres: Cash, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris, Earl Scruggs, George
Jones and Pam Tillis. The Scruggs collaboration is included on “Compadres” but any of
them could have been.
“I have enough styles of music under my belt to do it,” Stuart said in 1999, “and
enough numbers in my phone book to make it happen. I knew I had to do it now, because
I’ve gone to too many funerals for the old-timers over the past 10 years. Plus it's the end
of the century, the first century of country music, and I wanted to sum up.”
“The Pilgrim” was critically hailed as the highlight of Stuart’s career, but radio
ignored it, and it would be four years before he released another album. He was dropped
from the MCA roster, but at least he was in good company.
"In the late ‘80s, MCA had the strongest roster of country music acts since Columbia
had Cash, Flatt & Scruggs, Johnny Horton, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price and Marty Robbins
in the late ‘50s. MCA had George Strait, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Marty Stuart, Patty
Loveless, Reba McEntire, the Mavericks, Vince Gill, and Trisha Yearwood. It was an
awesome time of creative freedom, but MCA let most of it get away from them.
"I still believe that given the opportunity, the masses will respond to the real thing.
The chink in country music’s armor is in its identity crisis. When it chases pop trends,
when it dresses up and tries to go to town, it loses its power, its authenticity. It always
enjoys a surge of success when it tries to cross over, but it soon sounds like everything
else and that success evaporates into nothing.”
In 1998, Music Row made a gesture in the direction of tradition by organizing an
album of contemporary stars such as the Dixie Chicks and Randy Travis singing songs by
the likes of Tammy Wynette and Merle Haggard. Stuart was asked to come up with a
new song that would tie all the tracks together into a unifying theme.
"I thought, ‘Let's go back to the getting-on place, to the station where country music
got on the train of American culture,’" he recalls. “’Let’s go back to Bristol, to the place
where the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers made history. Let’s make a story out of
that.’ I wrote the first verse and threw it away. Connie {Smith, his wife} literally pulled it
out of the trash can, smoothed it out on the table, and said, ‘Don’t throw this away; it's
too good.’ So I went back to Merle's tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, ‘Same Train, Different
Time,’ and I turned that title into a story. I asked Merle if he’d mind, and he said, ‘No,
just let me sing on it.’”
Merle wasn’t the only compadre to join Stuart on “Same Old Train," released on
the 1998 album, “Tribute to Tradition.” Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis from the
“Class of 1986” also joined as did such contemporaries as Travis Tritt, Patty Loveless,
Pam Tillis, Alison Krauss, and Ricky Skaggs and such allies as Earl Scruggs and
Emmylou Harris.
"Emmylou was a godmother to all of us who were looking to go a different way,"
Stuart acknowledges. “From the first time I saw her with Gram at Michigan State, it was
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obvious she was a rock star with a folk musician's heart. Every time I get the guts to try
to make a new musical path, I find she's already been there. She had a lot to do with
crashing the door open for the ‘Class of 1986.’ ‘Blue Kentucky Girl’ and ‘Roses in the
Snow’ made it OK for roots because they’d been done by her. That's why I call her
‘Queenie.’"
A few years earlier, Music Row had organized a similar multi-artist collection.
Instead of trying to illustrate the connection between old and new, “Rhythm, Country &
Blues” illustrated the often overlooked links between country and R&B. To shine some
light on those ties, Vince Gill and Gladys Knight sang the R&B hit “Ain’t Nothing Like
the Real Thing," while Al Green and Lyle Lovett sang the country hit, “Ain’t It Funny
How Time Slips Away." At his own request, Stuart was paired with the Staple Singers on
the Band's “The Weight."
"I had never heard of or seen the Staple Singers till 1978 when I saw ‘The Last
Waltz,’” Stuart admits. “But when the camera in that movie panned to Pops Staples, I
thought it was Moses. Then I heard him sing and knew I was right. I went out and bought
all the Staples Singers records I could find. Then I finally met them. Just like with Johnny
Cash and Travis Tritt, the first time I met Pops it was like, ‘Where’ve you been all my
life? Let’s get going.’ In all these instances, it was music that led to everything else.”
Stuart's hometown, Philadelphia, Mississippi, became a symbol of segregation
throughout the world when three Civil Rights workers were brutally murdered there in
1964. Tensions within the town itself were as tight a new barbed wire. It was a long time
before Stuart could hang out again with Virgil Ivy Griffith down at the Busy Bee Café.
Griffith taught school during the week and led an R&B dance band at juke joints on
weekends. He turned the young Stuart onto R&B records, and Stuart turned him on to
country records. So, from an early age Stuart realized just how much the two musics had
in common.
"If you put ‘Rocky Road Blues’ and ‘Got My Mojo Working’ nose-to-nose,” he
insists, “there ain’t a nickel's worth of difference between them. They both have that train
rhythm. If you think of the influence of Leslie Riddle on A.P. Carter, of Tee Tot on Hank
Williams, and of Arnold Schultz on Bill Monroe, you know that African-American music
has always been part of country music. I was talking to Sam Moore {of the R&B duo
Sam & Dave} about the Staples once, and he referred to them as a bluegrass band.
"The Staples Singers told me that they always listened to country music going down
the road. I said, ‘That’s funny because I always listened to the blues.’ Country music is
the white man's blues. To be a blue-collar white guy in the South was not a whole lot
different from being a struggling black person in the South. Hate was a commodity that
politicians could sell, and as long as people could be turned that way, they could be
controlled. But to me it’s more of a stretch to get away from the black influence in
country music than to stay with it. The older I get and the deeper I get into it, the more I
emphasize that connection.”
After that first collaboration with the Staples, Stuart stayed in close contact with the
family. When both Stuart and Pops Staples were inducted into the Mississippi Music Hall
of Fame in 2001, the ceremony was held in the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, a
building that Staples couldn’t have entered as a young man in the days of segregation. On
this morning, though, he not only entered but commanded the attention of the Mississippi
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Senate. He asked everyone to stand and hold hands, and while Stuart played the guitar,
Staples led everyone in ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’”
"If I could take one day with me to heaven,” Stuart declares, “it would be that day.
When I heard Pops leading the Mississippi Senate in song, I knew something had
changed forever. After Lester was gone and when Cash was unavailable, I never made a
move without calling Pops and discussing it with him. When Mavis and Yvonne Staples
gave me Pops’ guitar after he died, I felt like I’d been bequeathed Excalibur, a mighty
instrument of light.”
Mavis joined Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives on Stuart’s 2005 gospel album,
“Souls’ Chapel,” for a song that Pops wrote, “Move Along Train." As Stuart and Mavis
toss the melody back and forth, they generate the musical momentum that will carry “the
gospel train” with its “heavy load … safely home."
"Singing with Mavis is like singing with Mother Earth," Stuart marvels. “She sings
from such a been-there, done-that place. She embodies so many people when she sings,
because she had to sing on behalf of a struggling race that needed to have their voices
heard. She must be one of God's favorite singers."
Stuart met B.B. King at the Grammies one year, and quickly realized how much they
had in common. They were both country boys from Mississippi and both loved a wide
swath of music. So when King decided to record an album of duets, “Deuces Wild," in
1997, he invited Stuart to be a duet partner alongside Eric Clapton, Van Morrison,
Bonnie Raitt, and the Rolling Stones. The song was “Confessin’ the Blues,” the 1941 Jay
McShann hit. The two men trade verses and guitar licks as if they’re having the time of
their lives.
"I had always loved B.B.’s tone, because it sounded like he was plugging into the
earth," Stuart says of the sessions. “So I asked him, ‘What kind of amp do you use?’ He
said, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s when I realized that tone comes from the player, not the
equipment.”
It took Stuart several years to recover from the disappointing sales of “The Pilgrim,”
his best record of the 20th century. By 2002, however, the musical itch was bothering him
so much that he had to scratch it. He decided to put together a new band, and the first
person he called was Kenny Vaughan.
"I first heard Kenny Vaughan on the ‘Austin City Limits’ TV show with Lucinda
Williams," Stuart explains. “After a few measures, I got so fascinated with Kenny that I
forgot to watch Lucinda. I always liked guitarists like Luther Perkins or Don Rich, Joe
Maphis or Roy Nichols, who were the stars of the show for certain listeners. There aren’t
many guitar slingers like that left, but when I saw Kenny on TV, I said, ‘He’s got it.’”
The second person Stuart called was Harry Stinson, who had been a crucial part of
Steve Earle’s earliest records and of Stuart’s biggest hit singles. Stinson was not only a
solid drummer but also a terrific harmony singer and arranger. Vaughan suggested that
bassist Brian Glenn audition and from the minute the four men played their first song
together, the line-up was set.
"I basically shut down the auditions, locked the doors and went to work," says Stuart
of that first song. “I immediately knew it was the band of a lifetime; there was nothing I
threw at them that they couldn’t handle.”
The Fabulous Superlatives have now released four albums. The 2003 , “Country
Music,” lived up to its title by demonstrating a command of every sub-genre that might
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possibly fit under the country-music umbrella. The two 2005 albums, “Souls’ Chapel”
and “Badlands," were organized around themes, gospel music and American Indian
songs, respectively. And the 2006 release, “Live at the Ryman," showcased the group's
bluegrass side. On all four titles, there’s an unmistakable push-and-pull of a real band
where each member stakes out his own ground.
"It’s a matter of perspective," Stuart comments. “A lot of people prefer someone up
front singing with hired musicians behind them. The world is full of that. I prefer to be
part of a band. It's that ‘compadre’ thing. When people have asked me why I gave up so
much of the spotlight on ‘Souls’ Chapel,’ I said, ‘I don’t see it that way. When Paul
Warren played a fiddle solo, it didn’t diminish Lester Flatt’s spotlight; it enhanced it.
When Anita Carter sang on the Johnny Cash Show it didn’t detract from Johnny Cash; it
helped him. When I let Harry or Kenny or Brian loose, it doesn’t detract from me; it
helps me."
Of all the compadres in Stuart’s life, none means more than his wife, Connie Smith.
Her 1966 album, “Miss Smith Goes to Nashville,” was a favorite album of Stuart’s
mother, and as a young boy he would stare at the album cover, mesmerized by a
photograph as captivating as the music. When he was 12, he heard Smith at the Choctaw
Indian Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and the spellbound youngster got the singer's
autograph and had his picture taken with her. On the way home he told his mother that he
was going to marry her some day. Twenty-five years later he did.
"In 1994, Connie came to my dressing room at the Grand Ole Opry and said she was
thinking about making a record," Stuart continues. “She asked if I would produce it, and I
said, 'Absolutely.' She hadn’t made a record in 21 years, because after making 50-some
records early in her career, she had called a time-out that stretched on and on.
"At the time we were acquaintances but not close friends. I knew she could sing
beautifully but I suggested she might want to write the songs for her next album. I called
Harlan Howard and the three of us wrote a country shuffle called ‘How Long.’ I call it
our first date, because there’s nothing like a good country shuffle to kick off a
relationship. Then we wrote 'Hearts Like Ours,' and, well, you know how it is: you start
writing love songs for one another and pretty soon you’re living the songs."
“Hearts Like Ours” was a highlight when the album was eventually released by
Warner Bros. in 1998 as “Connie Smith." She sang it by herself, but because the song
was so important to the couple’s 1997 marriage, Stuart decided to add a duet vocal to the
track for the “Compadres” album. Even if you didn’t know the two singers were married,
this ballad would let you know that something was going on between them.
"Constance is the most reluctant superstar I’ve ever known," Stuart points out. “Her
treasure has always been her family, not her accolades. That’s why she took all that time
off; she was dedicated to seeing to her kids. And she has a wonderful family to show for
it. She’s well versed in the art of home, whereas I’m well versed in the art of career.
Because of that, Connie's a good balance for me, because I’m a career-driven maniac.
"Loretta is my wife's favorite singer,” Stuart adds, “so she lives in the atmosphere of
our house. Lately, I’ve also lived with Loretta on our bus, because we’ve been watching
her on videos of the Wilburn Brothers’ show from the mid-‘60s. I’m always amazed by
how spot-on she is as a singer. Unlike the other people on this record, Loretta was
someone I’d admired from afar rather than knowing as a friend. When we recorded the
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track, it was the first time we’d ever sung together, but when we did, it was so easy, it felt
as if we were family."
Stuart chose “Will You Visit Me on Sunday” for their duet, because he’d always
wanted to record a Dallas Frazier song. After all Stuart's wife has recorded 68 Frazier
songs, and this was a 1968 hit for Charlie Louvin. In this new version, Stuart sings the
role of a death-row prisoner torn between his impending doom and his final Sunday visit
with his darling wife. Lynn sings the role of the wife torn in similar ways between the
horror of execution and the relief of one last embrace.
"Next to Hank Williams,” Stuart argues, “Dallas Frazier may be the best songwriter
in country-music history. I go through his catalogue and keep saying, ‘I didn’t know he
wrote that; that's a great song.’ A lot of songs you can take apart and change this chord or
that line, but you can’t do that with his songs because they are that rock solid."
In 2003, Stuart came up with the idea for an Electric Barnyard Tour of small
American towns that are usually bypassed by big country tours. He wanted to travel the
back roads and play for “the forgotten people," as Merle Haggard calls them. The tour
featured Stuart with his Fabulous Superlatives, his wife Connie Smith, BR-549, Rhonda
Vincent, the Old Crow Medicine Show and Haggard himself. The tour would pass
through neglected towns such as Hutchinson, Kansas, and Tuscumbia, Alabama, but also
towns like Tulare, California, and Saginaw, Michigan, that are associated with famous
country songs.
"In scoring films, I learned that the music should line up with the visuals," Stuart
explains. “When I drive the back roads of any state in the union, I see people still riding
tractors and still hanging their laundry out on the line. When I play traditional country
music or bluegrass in those places, the audio and the visual line up perfectly. But when I
listen to the Country Music Meltdown in those places, the audio doesn’t fit the visuals.”
Stuart wanted to climax each show with a duet between himself and Haggard, but he
needed to find just the right song. It was “Farmer's Blues,” a rural lament that he had cowritten with his wife. It felt right. Both of Stuart’s grandfathers had been farmers, and as
the “poet of the common man,” Haggard was drawn to the subject.
"I met Merle in Louisville before the tour," Stuart recalls, “and said, ‘I’ve got the
song.’ Merle said tell me about it.’ So I sang the first verse: ‘Who’ll buy my wheat?
Who’ll buy my corn to feed my babies when they’re born? Seeds and dirt, a prayer for
rain that I can use. I walk the land; I watch the sky and wonder why, but it's the only life
I’ve known, these farmer's blues.’ Merle said, ‘Change one word. Instead of ‘I walk the
land,’ say, ‘I work the land.’’ I did and we sang it every night."
Another act on the Electric Barnyard Tour, the Old Crow Medicine Show, has led the
recent revival of old-time string-band music. A quintet of kids in their 20s, all of whom
played in rock bands at one point, Old Crow recalls the era in the 1920s and ‘30s when
mountain bandleaders such as Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett attacked their fiddles and
banjos with the reckless ferocity of punk-rockers in the 1970s.
Stuart highlights that connection by having Old Crow and the Fabulous Superlatives
(featuring former punk-rocker Kenny Vaughan) play the Who’s 1967 rock'n'roll hit, “I
Can See for Miles," on acoustic instruments. The surging power of Vaughan's acoustic
guitar, Ketch Secor's fiddle, and Willie Watson's guitar demonstrate that the real energy
in music comes not from electricity but from a musician's soul.
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"I saw the Old Crow Medicine Show for the first time at the Uncle Dave Macon
Days Old Time Music Festival in Murfreesboro," Stuart remembers. “They were playing
this high-energy, old-time music with their guitar cases open for tips. I liked them so
much that I brought them down to the Ryman and had them play on the Grand Ole Opry.
They got a big ovation, but then I couldn’t find them. When I finally tracked them down,
they’d gone out to the front of the Ryman and they were busking again.”
This album demonstrates not only the art of collaboration but also the value of
apprenticeship. But when you work closely with a mentor—as Stuart has with Lester
Flatt, Johnny Cash, Pops Staples, and others—you inherit not just a body of knowledge
but an obligation as well—an obligation to pass that knowledge on to the next link in the
chain. Stuart is doing that with the Fabulous Superlatives, the Old Crow Medicine Show,
and as many others as he can reach.
"When I see a kid standing in front of the stage with that look like he’s really getting
it, I know I have a responsibility to pass it on to him like Lester passed it on to me. About
two years ago, for example, I spotted this little kid in the autograph line at a show near
Bristol, Tennessee. His name was Trey Hensley; he was 11 years old with braces. But
when I asked him to play something, he played a Maybelle Carter riff perfectly. That
inspired me to invite Trey and Earl Scruggs to one of my shows at the Opry. It was one of
those nights where it all lined up, where you could see the tradition being passed from
generation to generation to generation.”
Back at his office in Hendersonville, Stuart holds up a hefty red cube in his right
hand and waves it about. “This is what I want," he declares. The cube is the cloth-bound
box set, “The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks," a handsome package of the jazz
singer's classic interpretations of the great mid-century songwriters, accompanied by a
thick booklet. Stuart says he wants to sum up his own, many-faceted career with a box set
just as ambitious and just as handsome. Someday, he hopes, “Compadres” will be one
disc in that box set, because he could never sum up his career without the characters on
this album.
"The people on ‘Compadres’ come from a wildcat America, a less tamed America,"
Stuart argues. “Pops Staples, Steve Earle, Earl Scruggs, B.B. King, these are the kind of
people who made America a more interesting place—sonically, visually, spiritually.
Those are the people I wanted to emulate as a kid, those are the people I ended up
traveling with. I like to think I ended up one of them. They didn’t represent a simpler
time; their times were just as complex as ours. And they brought that complexity to their
music; they brought their sweat, their soul, their lives.”
"Edward S. Curtis called the Indians he photographed in the early 20th century ‘the
vanishing race,’ and I call this era of country music ‘the vanishing race.’ Singing with
Johnny Cash is like singing with Sitting Bull. Singing with Merle Haggard is like singing
with Geronimo. Just as Curtis documented his chiefs with film, ‘Compadres’ documents
my chief with tape .
"When I listen back to all these recordings, I think of that line I wrote in ‘The
Pilgrim’: ‘What a journey I have known.’”
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