John Marty Stuart (born September 30, 1958) is an American country and bluegrass music singer, songwriter, and musician. Active since 1968, Stuart initially toured with Lester Flatt, and then in Johnny Cash's road band before beginning work as a solo artist in the early 1980s. He is known for his combination of rockabilly, country rock, and bluegrass music influences, his frequent collaborations and cover songs, and his distinctive stage dress.
Stuart learned to play guitar and mandolin as a child, and by age 12, he had joined a gospel band called The Sullivans. While a member of this band, Stuart met mandolinist Roland White, a member of Lester Flatt's backing band; White invited Stuart to perform with Flatt at a concert in Delaware in 1972, which led to him becoming a regular member of that band. He continued to tour in this capacity until Flatt retired in 1978, and recorded an independent album called With a Little Help from My Friends that same year. After this, Stuart performed with Vassar Clements and Doc Watson before joining Johnny Cash's band in 1980.[3]
In 1982, he released a second album called Busy Bee Cafe on Sugar Hill Records. The album was composed of a jam session that included a number of country and bluegrass performers such as Cash, Watson, and Earl Scruggs. In 1985, Stuart accompanied Johnny Cash to Memphis and played on the Class of '55 album that also featured Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis. At the end of the session, Perkins presented Stuart with his guitar.[5] Later that year, Stuart left Cash's band and landed a recording contract with Columbia Records.[3]
Recording career
Stuart released his self-titled debut album on Columbia in 1985. The album accounted for Stuart's first chart entry on BillboardHot Country Songs charts with his first single release, "Arlene".[1] Three other singles charted from the album in 1986: "Honky Tonker" and "All Because of You", both written by Steve Forbert, and Stuart's own "Do You Really Want My Lovin'". However, these songs were less successful on the charts.[1] The success of "Arlene" helped Marty to receive a nomination by the Academy of Country Music Awards for Top New Male Vocalist, losing to Randy Travis. AllMusic writer Jim Worbois gave the album a mixed review, stating that it was "Not a great album, but made somewhat more interesting by some of the people appearing on the record and the inclusion of two Steve Forbert songs."[6] He recorded a second album for Columbia titled Let There Be Country, which charted two singles in 1988: the Merle Haggard composition "Mirrors Don't Lie" and "Matches".[1] Due to the underperformance of the singles, Columbia chose not to release the album, and Stuart exited the label to return to Mississippi.[3]
1989-91: Beginning of MCA Records tenure
After briefly rejoining the Sullivans, he returned to Nashville and signed with MCA Records in 1989.[3] That label issued the album Hillbilly Rock that year. Co-produced by Tony Brown and session guitarist Richard Bennett, the album charted four singles on Hot Country Songs. First was a cover of Cash's "Cry! Cry! Cry!", followed by "Don't Leave Her Lonely Too Long", which Stuart wrote with Kostas. While these were unsuccessful on the charts, the album's title track (written by Paul Kennerley) became Stuart's first top-ten country hit in 1990.[1] The album's final release was "Western Girls", which Stuart also co-wrote.[1]Hillbilly Rock was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1997 for shipments of 500,000 copies.[7]
His second MCA album, Tempted, followed in 1991. The album charted four singles on Hot Country Songs between 1991 and 1992: "Little Things", "Till I Found You", "Tempted", and "Burn Me Down", of which all except "Till I Found You" reached the top ten.[1] Bennett and Brown stayed on as producers, with the former also contributing alongside Stuart on both guitar and mandolin. Kennerley and Kostas contributed as both songwriters and backing vocalists; also performing backing vocals on some tracks were Billy Thomas and Ray Herndon, who were also recording on MCA in McBride & the Ride at the time.[8] Jana Pendragon of AllMusic gave the album four-and-a-half stars out of five, comparing it to Dwight Yoakam's Hillbilly Deluxe in style and saying, "Stuart kicks country-pop in its well-defined hindquarters[…]But Stuart is just as deadly when he slows things down and does a ballad."[9]
Also in 1991, Stuart co-wrote a song with Travis Tritt called "The Whiskey Ain't Workin'". Recorded on the latter's 1991 album It's All About to Change, this song was released in between "Tempted" and "Burn Me Down". It would go on to become Stuart's highest chart entry, reaching number two on Hot Country Songs in early 1992.[1] It also won Stuart his first Grammy Award, for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals that year.[10] This song's success also led to the two touring in 1992 as the No Hats Tour, a reference to the fact that unlike most contemporary country musicians, neither Tritt nor Stuart sported a cowboy hat.[11]
1992-95: End of MCA tenure
Stuart is a frequent collaborator of Travis Tritt, pictured here in 2014.
Love and Luck was his next album, released in 1994.[3] Only one single, "Kiss Me, I'm Gone", made top 40 from the project.[1] Stuart co-produced the album with Brown, while also contributing on guitar, mandolin, and songwriting. The album's opening title track featured Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, and Harry Stinson on backing vocals.[14] Also included were two covers: Billy Joe Shaver's "If I Give My Soul" and The Flying Burrito Brothers' "Wheels", as well as the mandolin instrumental "Marty Stuart Visits the Moon". Daniel Gioffre of AllMusic highlighted these three tracks in particular as being among the strongest on the album.[15] Nash rated the album "B", stating that "As a singer, Marty Stuart has all the zip of unbuttered toast, and as a writer, too many of his songs float aimlessly...Yet Stuart has genuine love for the early country greats and injects his own work with such impassioned strains of old hillbilly styles, that he charms in spite of his limitations."[16]
Following this album, MCA issued a compilation called The Marty Party Hit Pack in 1995, which contained singles from his previous MCA albums, as well as "The Whiskey Ain't Workin'", the previously-unreleased "The Likes of Me" and "If I Ain't Got You", and two cover songs previously found on multi-artist tribute albums released in 1994. These were a rendition of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel", featuring The Jordanaires and previously found on It's Now or Never: The Tribute to Elvis, and The Band's "The Weight", featuring The Staple Singers and previously found on Rhythm, Country and Blues. Both of these cover songs were produced by Don Was, while Don Cook handled production on the two new songs.[17] "The Likes of Me" was previously cut by Conway Twitty on his 1993 album Final Touches, on which Cook was also a producer.[18] Both of these new songs issued as singles in 1995, but neither entered the country music top 40.[1] Jay Orr of New Country magazine criticized "The Likes of Me" and the two cover songs, but otherwise found the album a "neat summation" of Stuart's music.[19]The Marty Party Hit Pack became Stuart's fourth and final gold album in 1998.[7]
Stuart released Honky Tonkin's What I Do Best in 1996, which produced two more minor chart entries in the title track (another duet with Tritt) and "You Can't Stop Love" that year.[1] The title track also won Stuart a Vocal Event of the Year award from the Country Music Association.[1] Nash rated the album "A−", finding an influence of The Beatles in "Thanks to You" and of Delta blues in "The Mississippi Mudcat and Sister Sheryl Crow".[20]
Career since the late 1990s
Stuart released another album in 1999 called The Pilgrim. It charted only one single that year with "Red, Red Wine and Cheatin' Songs".[3] A concept album based around a love triangle, the album featured vocal contributions from Pam Tillis, George Jones, and Emmylou Harris, as well as a poem recited by Johnny Cash. An uncredited review of the album in AllMusic was largely favorable, stating that "no one's idea of a commercial country album, one has to admire the sheer ambition of the project, as well as the guts it took MCA Records to release what amounts to a unique and deeply personal artistic vision."[21] After this album proved to be commercially unsuccessful, Stuart left MCA in 2000.[3]
His next album was 2003's Country Music, released on Columbia Records.[3] For this album, Stuart assembled a new backing band called Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, consisting of Harry Stinson on drums, Kenny Vaughan on guitar, and Brian Glenn on bass guitar.[22] Included on the albums were covers of Porter Wagoner's "A Satisfied Mind", Carl Butler and Pearl's "Sundown in Nashville",[22] and Johnny Cash's "Walls of a Prison", as well as the Merle Haggard duet "Farmer's Blues".[23] Two singles from the album both charted: "If There Ain't, There Ought'a Be" and "Too Much Month (At the End of the Money)".[1] Thom Jurek of AllMusic wrote that the album "is relentless in both its attack and in the pleasure it provides to the listener. There are hot licks everywhere, with great songs, vocals, and a tapestry of moods, textures, and shades that serve to leave one impression: Stuart's radical experimentation of the last ten years has resulted in his finest moment thus far."[23]
In 2005, Stuart launched a custom record label, Superlatone Records, to issue overlooked Southern Gospel and Roots music recordings. Stuart released three critically acclaimed collections on Superlatone, Souls' Chapel, Badlands, and Live at the Ryman. In October 2005, Stuart released a concept album, Badlands: Ballads of the Lakota, which pays tribute to the Sioux culture in what is now South Dakota. In 2007, Stuart produced Porter Wagoner's final album on the predominantly punk label Epitaph Records.
In August 2022, he signed with Snakefarm Records, his first record deal in nearly ten years. He also went on tour with the Fabulous Superlatives in Europe, with scheduled performances in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Sam Williams, Hank Williams grandson, was his supporting act.[24]
The Fabulous Superlatives
The Fabulous Superlatives in 2022: from left to right Stuart, Vaughan, Stinson, Scruggs
The Fabulous Superlatives, Marty Stuart's band since 2002, includes him on guitar and mandolin, Kenny Vaughan on guitar, and Harry Stinson on drums, and from 2002 until 2008, Brian Glenn on bass. From 2008 until 2015, Paul Martin was on bass. In 2015, Chris Scruggs replaced Paul Martin on bass, and also played steel guitar. Every member also sings.[25][26][27]
Musical style
In a 1992 article for Entertainment Weekly, Kate Meyers wrote that Stuart "considers himself more a stylist than a singer, meaning he gets by with a mix of approaches...rather than relying on a fantastic voice of his own", citing Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, and Muddy Waters as his main musical influences.[28] Stuart's musical image in the 1990s was also defined by his distinct clothing and hairstyle. Meyers described him as having a "striking black mane, speckled with well-earned gray...[o]ften tied in a black or pink bandana headband", faded jeans from Levi Strauss & Co., a black T-shirt, cowboy boots, a concho belt, and a rhinestone-studded suit jacket designed by Nudie Cohn (sometimes termed the "Nudie suit").[28]
Equipment and memorabilia
Stuart is known for his extensive collection of country music memorabilia. Some of his collection was exhibited at the Tennessee State Museum in 2007 as "Sparkle & Twang: Marty Stuart's American Musical Odyssey." The exhibit later appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and at the Arkansas Statehouse Museum. In early 2018, Stuart co-curated, along with the Grammy Museum, an exhibit at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, entitled "Marty Stuart's Way Out West: A Country Music Odyssey". The exhibit highlighted the West Coast impact on country music, featuring items by artists including Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, and Stuart himself. Many of the items in the exhibit came from the private collection of Stuart, including the last portrait of Cash (taken by Stuart four days before Cash died).[29]
Yvonne and Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers gave one of their father "Pops" Staples' guitars to Marty Stuart after Pop's death.[30] Mavis Staples explained, "My father was Marty's godfather. My sisters and I took him in as our brother. He's the only one that I've heard who -- when he's playing guitar, he sounds like Pop. He can play just like him."[31]
Stuart's guitars also include 'Clarence', the familiar two-tone Fender Telecaster, once owned by Clarence White. This instrument[32][33] is the original B-Bender guitar, built and designed by White and Gene Parsons around 1967, to allow the guitarist to manually raise the guitar's 'B' string one whole step to play in a style similar to a pedal steel guitar. Stuart bought this unique guitar in 1980 from White's widow,[34] and continued to play it in concert, as of 2019.
The Marty Stuart Show
Stuart is host of The Marty Stuart Show, which features traditional country music in the vein of The Porter Wagoner Show, Flatt & Scruggs, the Wilburn Brothers Show, and Hee Haw. The Marty Stuart Show began airing at 8:00 pm on November 1, 2008, on cable's RFD-TV. Although no new episodes have been produced as of 2022, the network continues to air old episodes of the show under the name The Best of the Marty Stuart Show.[35]
Each episode features music by Stuart and his band the Fabulous Superlatives. Stuart hosts and produces the 30-minute episodes, with WSM disc jockey and Grand Ole Opry announcer Eddie Stubbs serving as the show's emcee.
Stuart's first wife was Johnny Cash's daughter Cindy, to whom he was married from 1983 to 1988.[3]
Since July 8, 1997, Stuart has been married to country artist Connie Smith, whom he had admired since his childhood.[37] Stuart described encountering Smith many years earlier, after attending her concert: "I met Connie when I was 12 years old. She came to the Indian reservation in my hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi, to work at a fair. She hasn't changed a bit. She looked great then and she looks great now."[38] Stuart said he told his mother then that he was going to marry Connie Smith. Smith explains how they have sustained their marriage : "Make the Lord the center ... and commit."[39]
^Alanna Nash (March 18, 1994). "Love and Luck review". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 14, 2020.
^The Marty Party Hit Pack (CD booklet). Marty Stuart. MCA Nashville. 1995. MCAD-11204.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
