Gary Stewart bio a must-read for country music fans
A little change of pace for the Ear Bliss page this week. Whereas we love to read here at Ear Bliss Central, music-related book reviews are few and far between in this space. The news last autumn of a forthcoming biography of the late country artist Gary Stewart caught my eye as a must-buy book. Stewart’s performing career ran from the early-to-mid 1970s into the early aughts when he perished as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His most successful period was the mid-1970s into the mid-1980s where he had multiple songs make the Billboard country charts, including 1975’s “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” which made it to the top of the Billboard Country chart. When it came to country music, Stewart was the ultimate outlaw, a wild and rebellious sort and his rollercoaster of a life is unearthed in forensic fashion in the new biography by writer Jimmy McDonough called I Am From The Honky Tonks. McDonough is no stranger to the form having penned biographies of a wide cast of people from the entertainment world such as Neil Young (Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography), John Fogerty (Fortunate Son: My Love, My Music), Al Green (Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green), Tammy Wynette (Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen), filmmakers Andy Milligan (The Ghastly One: The 42nd Street Netherworld of Director Andy Milligan) and exploitation king Russ Meyer (Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film), and more. At 542 pages, I Am From The Honky Tonks may appear daunting, but McDonough’s style gives us a flyon-the-wall look at the life and times of Stewart. As far as country artists go, Stewart’s catalogue has always been a favorite of mine, hence this new biography receiving the Ear Bliss love this week. Let’s get to it.
Gary Stewart: I Am From The Honky Tonks
by Jimmy McDonough Wolf+Salmon Books
There’s George Jones, there’s Hank Williams, there’s Lefty Frizzell, and there’s Merle Haggard. They’re considered by many as some of the greatest country singers who’ve ever lived. Then there’s Gary Stewart who could deliver a country tome with as much ache or rabble rousing, depending on the mood of a song, as that aforementioned trio. The country singer Tanya Tucker said this of her late friend and country music compadre Stewart: “Man, ain’t nobody could ever sing honky-tonk music like Gary Stewart. One of the greatest country singers of all time. The king of honky-tonk music. There was nobody better.” The Texas-based writer Joe Nick Patoski said this about Stewart: “’I am from the honky-tonks.’ That’s how Gary Stewart introduced himself to the Austin Municipal Auditorium audience in January 1976 before blowing them away in a wash of guitar twang. The way he said it was proudly in defiance. That was the beauty of him.”
Stewart’s heyday as a country singer was the mid-to-late 1970s. The period yielded such hits as “Drinkin’ Thing,” “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” which went to number one on the charts, “Your Place or Mine,” “Ten Years of This,” and “Whiskey Trip.” Possessing a piercing tenor voice, Stewart’s vocal performances could raise the hairs on your neck. The writer Jimmy McDonough, who has written biographies of artists such as Neil Young, Al Green, John Fogerty, and Tammy Wynette, truly came under the spell of Stewart at a performance in the early1980s at New York City’s long gone, but beloved honky tonk the Lone Star Cafe. McDonough left the performance that night with the intent on trying to revive the career of Stewart who was on the backside of his 1970s success. It ignited what has been an over 40-year journey which began with a longform piece by McDonough during
10019 which he visited Stewart on multiple occasions spending time with he and his family and the various people in his orbit. Multiple years in the making, the piece appeared in New York City’s Village Voice alternative weekly in 1988 and did in fact create renewed interest in Stewart (resulting in a multi-album deal with the indie High
Tone record label). It did not end there. At the prodding of Stewart’s daughter, Shannon, following his tragic passing as a result of suicide in 2003, it concludes with the newly released Stewart biography by McDonough titled I Am From
The Honky Tonks the foundation of which was laid with the Voice piece. At 542 pages, the book looks intimidating. McDonough’s approach is as much an oral history as it is straight biography while mixing in his own personal experience and opinions on Stewart. The book delivers a near forensic, yet lively accounting of the life and times of Stewart taking us from his hardscrabble beginnings as a youth in the coal country of Kentucky to Fort Pierce, Florida where the family moved when Stewart was a young teen (and where he remained for the rest of his life) and all the travails, warts and all, of his life as a country music singer and personality. McDonough is detective-like in his dissection of Stewart’s life. Whereas RCA Records “manufactured” the outlaw persona in country music with the rolling out of Wanted! The Outlaws, a mid-1970s compilation album featuring songs sung by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson,
Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser, Stewart, as McDonough informs, was the genuine article. No frills whatsoever, his rebellious ways, for better or for worse, built him an utterly devoted following. The environment of Fort Pierce features heavily. Once upon a time an orange grove paradise, it had fallen on hard times by the 1960s becoming a hot spot for illegal drug activity. It is where Stewart formed his first band in the late 1950s and
where he, too, got the drug bug. McDonough dives deep into the intricate family dynamics from Stewart’s father whose profession was cockfighting and his tempestuous mother who sold Avon products, to his many brothers and sisters and most importantly, the love of his life, his wife Mary Lou and their stormy relationship which lasted until her passing in November of 2003 and after which Stewart took his own life several weeks later. There are also all the “accessories” in Stewart’s lifetime from Charley Pride who hired Stewart to play in his band to Roy Dea who produced Stewart’s clas
sic country albums for RCA in the 1970s to befriending the likes of Greg Allman and Dickey Betts to various band members, managers, handlers, and friends, both good and bad. Looming large over nearly all of it is Stewart’s own addictive personality centering around his nearly constant drug use with pills his preference, quaaludes and soma the favored flavors in the early days to oxy in his later years, to his unpredictable mental state as a result of it. It was an ongoing battle that he could never conquer, nor does it seem he desired