Gary Stewart article
Coop
By Charles Passy, Palm Beach Post Arts Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Gary Stewart's whole life was a country song. Several country songs, in
fact.
It was a honky-tonk song, a rambling journey through the trail of
small-time, beer-soaked, hole-in-the-wall dives where the hard-partying
country star -- and Nashville renegade -- loved to play, even at the
height of his mid-'70s success.
It was a love song, written for the woman he adored for more than four
decades, a dark-haired beauty by the name of Mary Lou -- Lou, for short
-- who kept him on course when his fame evaporated, his partying got the
best of him and his world started crumbling.
And it was a song that ended, like so many country tunes, in tragedy.
On Dec. 16, Stewart was found dead in his quiet, colorful Fort Pierce
home. He had killed himself with a bullet to the head, less than four
weeks after Mary Lou, his wife of 42 years, passed away in her sleep
from an apparent heart attack.
Stewart, the man Time magazine once dubbed "the king of honky-tonk," was 59.
It was a loss that reverberated throughout the country world: Though it
had been years since Stewart appeared on the charts, he remained a
revered figure in certain circles.
His fans ranged from Nashville legends -- Toby Keith, Tanya Tucker,
Ronnie Dunn -- to New York sophisticates with an appreciation for
traditional, rocks-rocking country. Even Bob Dylan sang his praises.
But the loss was felt differently in his blue-collar hometown of Fort
Pierce, where Stewart had lived since he was a teenager and where almost
all his friends and family members remain. This wasn't just a local
hero's passing. It was the end of a romance that's been described as a
"Romeo and Juliet story to the max."
Gary and Mary Lou experienced it all, from riches to rags, happiness to
heartache. So when Mary Lou made her untimely exit, few expected Gary to
continue.
"He didn't die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound," says Shannon Stewart,
the couple's only surviving child.
"He died of a broken heart," says Lee Schwartz, a family friend.
Shivering country
If you listened to country music in the '70s, chances are you remember
Gary Stewart.
He was the guy with the vibrato-laden voice -- a "shivering, redneck
tenor," as one critic called it -- who helped give Nashville back its
edge in an era when John Denver and Olivia Newton-John ruled country radio.
His songs told of alcohol-fueled adventures: Drinkin' Thing, Whiskey
Trip, Empty Glass, Your Place or Mine and his sole No. 1 country hit,
She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles).
The key, however, is how Stewart elevated the material, using all the
rockabilly swagger he could muster. "Stewart didn't sing them as if they
were novelty songs," wrote Jim Lewis in the online journal Slate after
Stewart's death. "He sang them as if he had reached down his own throat,
grabbed hold of his misery, and yanked it out of his chest."
Lewis heard a "quavering voice that was part George Jones, part Roy
Orbison, and part who knows what -- Dion, maybe, or something out of New
Orleans." Others heard different influences. There was Hank Williams,
whose classic Honky Tonkin' Stewart covered with an extra shot of
rocking attitude.
"He was as skinny as Hank too!" recalls country star Mel Tillis, who
grew up in Pahokee and crossed paths with a young Stewart. "He could
change clothes in the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun."
And there was the Stewart who mesmerized audiences on stage.
"A Gary Stewart performance was an amazing thing," wrote veteran
Nashville observer Chet Flippo, who first encountered Stewart when he
worked for Rolling Stone in the '70s. "Think of Jerry Lee Lewis boiled
down into an even more devilish imp who was not going to let you get
away without a Holy Ghost blessing from the fount of rockin' country."
Today, Flippo, editorial director for the Web site of CMT, the
country-music cable channel, says there's no question of the source
behind that passion. "He just lived the music," he says.
Or more to the point, he just lived.
"I don't think he ever thought about success," Flippo says. "It's a
cliché, but I don't think he was ever interested in anything but wine,
women and song."
And he paid a price for that.
His reckless habits led to periods of depression and more than a fair
share of drinking and drug use. His music also proved a little too wild
-- at least for strait-laced Nashville execs.
So, what kept Stewart from going completely over the edge? There doesn't
seem to be much doubt that it was Mary Lou, even though she liked to
party herself.
"We always said he was the boss on stage, but the minute he stepped off,
Mary Lou was the boss," says Lee Schwartz.
Impoverished beginnings
Gary Stewart was -- literally -- a coal-miner's son, born on May 28,
1944, in Letcher County, Ky., the oldest of nine children, all with a
first name beginning in "G." To say it was a hardscrabble existence
doesn't begin to explain life in rural Kentucky.
"You know that movie Deliverance?" says Stewart's longtime local friend
and bandmate Donnie Coleman.
After Stewart's father was injured in a mine accident, the family moved
to Florida in 1958, packing all their belongings in a '53 Hudson "like
The Beverly Hillbillies," says Stewart's daughter Shannon.
While Stewart's father found work running a dump-truck business, Stewart
found music and forgot about high school. He taught himself to play
guitar and piano and formed a local band, the Tomcats. He easily stood
out from the crowd.
"As soon as I met Gary, I knew he was different than all the rest of the
musicians (in town)," says Tommy Schwartz, Lee's husband and Stewart's
closest friend. "I knew Gary was going to be a star someday."
But before he became a success, Stewart saw Mary Lou Taylor at a dance
party. He was about 16, she was about 20; both had a shared passion for
all kinds of music.
"Yes, yes, she had the rhythm, boy, an' she was no wimp," Stewart
recalled in a lengthy 1988 Village Voice profile. "An' she had the
records -- Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed. We had a whole lot
in common."
Their first significant meeting was at a drive-in hamburger place, Mary
Lou recalled in the Voice story: "'This kid says, 'Mind if I get in the
back seat an' sit down? I had all my 45s... thrown in the back seat. So
I said, 'All right, but watch my records, boy.' I about died when I
found out how old he was, but it was too late -- I already loved him."
Within months, they were married, tying the knot when Stewart's parents
were away. And then Stewart, who was earning a steady paycheck working
for an aircraft manufacturer, set about making a living in music.
His first break came courtesy of Mel Tillis. He had met Stewart at the
Wagon Wheel, an Okeechobee club. "It was a very popular place, and Gary
made it even more popular," Tillis recalls. "He could play almost any
instrument. He'd have those Okeechobee cowboys and girls dancing on the
tables and bouncing off the walls."
Tillis advised Stewart that his immediate future was in songwriting. So
Stewart formed a partnership with Bill Eldridge, a Fort Pierce cop with
a similar love of honky-tonk. "We thought we'll sink together or swim
together," recalls Eldridge, who still lives in town.
The pair started to sell songs to Roy Rogers, Cal Smith, Stonewall
Jackson, Billy Walker and Nat Stuckey. The latter scored a Top Ten
country hit with Stewart and Eldridge's Sweet Thang and Cisco. Stewart
then recorded for the Kapp and Decca labels, but his solo career
stalled. Still, he and Eldridge, who both relocated to Nashville, were
doing well.
There was just one problem: Stewart couldn't stand Nashville.
"It got to where it was like an assembly line and my heart wasn't in
it," Stewart told The Palm Beach Post in 1975.
And Stewart had just discovered the Allman Brothers' seamless mixing of
Southern blues, country and rock.
"Hearing them was an education," he said. "I knew there was something
else I wanted from that moment, and I felt I could find it easier by
sitting back and playing my music in my hometown."
So in the early '70s, the Stewarts returned to Fort Pierce. And Mary
Lou, who by then had given birth to their children -- Gary Joseph and
the younger Shannon -- was crushed.
"When we got home we were on food stamps," she told the Voice. "My mom
said, 'Mary Lou, I don't understand what you're doin'!' I said, 'Hey,
Gary's lookin' for a sound, a new thing's comin'.' "
Where no one had been
Out of Hand, Stewart's debut album for RCA in 1975, was that new thing,
although today it seems relatively tame. But context is everything. For
starters, it was honest-to-goodness country music, which wasn't exactly
in vogue. And there was Stewart's delivery -- more intense and heartfelt
than the Nashville norm.
Stewart's RCA deal derived from, of all things, a tape he had made of
Motown covers. The demo caught the ear of producer Roy Dea, whose
successes included Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich. He signed Stewart
to the label.
The New York Times said Out of Hand had "as much rhythmic energy as
anything that's come out in a long time." Today, Jay Orr, a senior
director with the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, calls it his
favorite album.
The acclaim for Out of Hand meant that Stewart could get his family off
food stamps, but there were no mansions or fancy cars. Stewart led a
simple -- and relatively inconspicuous -- life in Fort Pierce.
"He didn't care for them big Yankee things," says Stewart's brother
Gregory, an occasional musical partner.
But if life was simple, it wasn't slow. By the mid '70s, Stewart was in
full-throttle embrace of the "modern-day hippie country family"
lifestyle, as Tommy Schwartz calls it.
"If there was any discipline, it was probably the kids trying to apply
it to the parents," Schwartz adds.
Shannon Stewart agrees. "It was just like The Osbournes," she says. Dad
was often out of town. And when he was back home, he didn't exactly
demand order.
When Shannon, then a high-school junior, complained she couldn't get any
sleep on school nights because her father was kicking his heels on the
hardwood floor as he played his guitar, he told her, "Oh, just quit school."
But when she did, he showed his love and parental authority by buying
her a Ford Mustang and telling her to "get out there and go to work,"
she adds.
Mary Lou, on the other hand, provided more stability -- but on her own
terms. The house was never left untended, but it was decorated in the
funky manner of an alt-country palace, cow skulls and all. When Gary was
in town, she insisted the family gather for her home-cooked suppers of
fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and unsweetened tea.
And what did Stewart do in his free time on the road or at home? Well,
he wasn't spending his days in church.
Although friends insist he could quit any substance at any time, Stewart
never shied away from a quick high: Alcohol, marijuana and cocaine all
played their part. (A famous tale, recounted in the Voice profile, had
Stewart digging through a Nashville Dumpster in search of a lost stash
of coke.)
Stewart also loved the ladies. "Musicians, they are some characters,
now," he once said. "I live 10 years to everybody's one."
It couldn't have been easy on Mary Lou, but their marriage seemed to be
guided by an unspoken set of rules. "My wife understands me and puts up
with me," Stewart said in 1979. "She's a real lady. She knows I love
sex, women and drugs."
It didn't take long for Stewart's music to catch up with his high-speed
life. Following Out of Hand, he dared to rock without the pretense of
playing nice for Nashville. Listen to 1978's Little Junior, and you'll
find cuts that ooze a raw licentiousness.
"Like my daddy, I've been around too/And as far as cravings, I've got
quite a few/Long-legged women, diamonds and cars/Old-aged whiskey and
all-night bars," he snarls on the title track.
Stewart and Dea frequently locked horns with RCA over everything from
cover photos to the endless need for hit singles. "RCA never promoted
the albums -- if Gary had been marketed like some of those rock and
rollers, there would've been no end in sight," lamented Dea to the
Village Voice.
Right around this time, Stewart fulfilled a dream by playing on the rock
circuit with the Allman Brothers. "It was like bein' in the eye of the
hurricane -- better than anything in the world," he recalled.
Still, it's a mistake to read Stewart's career as the failure of an
artist to pick one genre over another. Rather, it's about someone who
suffered for being too real in every style.
"One thing I've read about him was that he was too rock for country and
too country for rock," says Orr of the Country Music Hall of Fame. "In a
way, I think he was too country for country and too rock for rock."
Either way, by 1983, RCA decided it had enough and dropped Stewart. But
that was only part of his troubles. In 1980, a car accident left him
with unbearable back pain that would result in a dangerous dependence on
prescription painkillers.
And that same year, he was arrested at home for possession of cocaine:
Stewart insisted the drugs weren't his, but he refused to name names.
The case was eventually dismissed, but not without grabbing headlines.
Worse yet, there were strains in his marriage -- the police had been
called to his house in the first place because of a domestic dispute.
Tommy Schwartz says it was not unusual for Gary and Mary Lou to have
"knock-down, drag-out fights."
By the late '80s, the couple's finances were in disarray and Stewart had
slid into an unmistakable depression.
They persevered, but their bond faced its most crushing test when the
couple's son, Gary Joseph, committed suicide at the age of 25 in 1988.
He suffered from depression and was convinced he was dying of an
incurable disease, so he decided to end his life on his own.
"My dad just shut down," says Shannon, describing the aftermath of her
brother's death.
Gradual emergence
It's hard to say when Stewart turned the corner from his son's death,
but sometime in the '90s, he eased into a semi-graceful middle age.
He had a new record deal with the independent HighTone label, which gave
him the opportunity to make unapologetic honky-tonkin' music. And he had
a fairly steady concert career, based largely in Texas, where the
country's biggest honky-tonks thrive.
He generally limited his schedule to weekend gigs, flying back to Fort
Pierce on Sundays for one of Mary Lou's home-cooked meals.
"He had found a stress-free groove that was still fast-paced enough for
him to be a complete entertainer," says Terry Porter, who worked as
Stewart's right-hand man -- part bodyguard, part road manager -- in Texas.
And while not every gig was a decent payday -- Porter recalls one place
where they scrounged up "whatever change they could get out of the
vending machines in the bathroom" -- that was probably OK by Stewart. He
loved his dives.
Stewart's life at home also found a groove. He and Mary Lou watched
videos -- O Brother, Where Art Thou? was a favorite. Stewart also read
history or tuned into the Discovery channel -- he was something of a
closet intellectual.
And he was a grandfather as well.
Shannon gave birth to a son, Joseph, named after her brother, in 1989.
Stewart and Mary Lou took easily to their role as doting grandparents.
And by the time Joseph was 4, he was jamming with grandpa -- Joseph on
drums, Stewart on guitar.
By last year, Stewart was "fixing to get a whole other comeback," in
Shannon's words.
He had a new live album out -- his first original disc in 10 years --
recorded at Billy Bob's, a legendary Texas honky-tonk. And there was
talk of a collaboration with Toby Keith. He also was planning on tending
to his still aching back, hoping to have surgery in early 2004.
But that was before Mary Lou died.
She had been sick with pneumonia -- and suffered from lupus as well. But
she gave no indication her condition was grave, except for horrific
nightmares she suffered in her final days. After one sleep-deprived
night, she finally crashed on the morning of Nov. 21 and never woke up.
Mary Lou was everything to Gary: his lover, best friend and business
manager all rolled into one. Some kidded that Gary couldn't put on his
pants without her, but it wasn't a joke.
He depended on Mary Lou. When the air-conditioner broke and Stewart was
desperate to replace it, it was Mary Lou who surprised him with a wad of
cash she had been saving for emergencies. When a club was late in paying
Stewart, it was Mary Lou who collected the debt.
In the days following her death, friends and family members kept a close
eye on Stewart, fearing he might try something. Shannon insisted that
the guns he kept in the house -- for protection -- be removed.
And country star Tanya Tucker, a friend and songwriting partner since
the '80s, said she wanted to take Stewart, whom she affectionately
called "Junior," for a swamp ranch vacation.
"I told Junior, 'I know you're in pain, but Lou would want you to go on,
to keep on trucking,' " she recalls.
And there were signs that Gary would. He went with Tommy Schwartz to
Pineapple Joe's, a local restaurant and club, where he surprised
everyone by getting on stage and singing a few tunes. He made
arrangements, through Terry Porter, to take his grandson to Texas for
the winter holidays. He even asked Porter to pick up Christmas presents
for the teenager.
And he convinced Shannon to return his guns, saying he needed to protect
"my casa."
"He said, 'Shannon, I'm here for you. I'm not going anywhere,' " she
recalls.
But now, Tommy Schwartz, who visited Stewart two days before his body
was found, suspects his friend was simply putting up a good front. "We
had all these plans... But he knew what his plans were," he says.
Schwartz and others started to become suspicious. They banged on his
door, called numerous times on the phone. But no one answered.
When Shannon finally got into the house and discovered her father had
committed suicide, there was an outpouring of shock and grief in Fort
Pierce.
While Stewart's death made the national news -- The New York Times,
People, Rolling Stone -- it was felt most in this working-man's Florida
town that's a little less country-fied with each passing year.
All the Treasure Coast clubs that Stewart played through the years --
the Palomino, Rialto's, Town and Country -- are long gone. Just to the
south of Fort Pierce, Port St. Lucie, a place that barely existed in
Stewart's youth, has become the prototype of the modern-day Florida suburb.
And Stewart's residential neighborhood has gone from dirt roads to paved
streets. The blue-collar families moving in these days are largely
Mexican -- with an altogether different kind of country music.
More than 700 mourners paid their respects to Stewart at the local
funeral home where he was memorialized. "I stood there for five hours
and shook hands. Everytime I looked up, I saw there was a line out the
door," Shannon recalls.
There were other tributes. A Treasure Coast country station, WAVW-FM
92.7 FM, devoted three hours to Stewart's music. And at local record
stores, Stewart CDs and greatest-hits compilations reportedly became a
hot commodity. "They were grabbing them 10 at a time," Tommy Schwartz says.
Lasting effect
What will become of Gary Stewart's legacy?
It's a question that many have asked in the months following his
passing. There's talk of special concerts in Texas and Nashville. But in
many ways, Stewart's talent still goes unappreciated by the music-biz
establishment.
He's not in the Country Music Hall of Fame. And when it came time at
this year's Grammy Awards to recognize artists who recently died,
Stewart didn't merit a mention.
Perhaps that's the way it was meant to be, says Tanya Tucker.
"He was just anti-establishment," she says. "He didn't go with the flow.
He wasn't one of their esteemed citizens. He did what he wanted."
But she's quick to add: "Deep down inside, you know they all love him."
The fans certainly never stopped loving him. HighTone Records founder
Larry Slovin says Stewart's listeners were always the most loyal and
earnest. "If you saw a hand-scrawled letter in pencil, you could tell it
was for Gary," he says.
Stewart's friends and family members would like to tap some of that
passion and release more of Stewart's music. Shannon and Tommy Schwartz
say they have several suitcases' worth of unreleased tapes, including a
love song co-written by Gary and Mary Lou.
A Touch of You has taken on special significance since the pair's passing.
In it, the two almost prepare each other for their deaths: "I lost my
best friend the day I lost you/Oh honey, I sure could use a touch of you."
Stewart never stopped caring about Mary Lou. And she never stopped
caring about him.
Together, they were Cisco and Pancho, their chosen respective pet names,
taken from the old Western series.
"I feel that God has put me here for Gary, just as he's here for me,"
Mary Lou told the Village Voice. "So I'll never be without him -- 'til
death. An' then somewhere in time I'll find him."
And that's just what's happened.
As Shannon puts her mother and father's affairs in order, she's decided
to move back to the family house -- a three-bedroom, single-story
residence with a patch of green for a front yard. There's plenty of work
to be done: painting, remodeling, the general process of starting anew.
Shannon says she will not properly grieve for her parents until the job
is completed.
She's already finished one bedroom, converting it into a shrine to Gary
and Mary Lou. The space is filled with bits and pieces of two lives
lived to the fullest -- Elvis collectibles, Indian artifacts, old straw
hats, a state proclamation declaring Gary an "Honorary Texan," even a
painting of a sensuous, scantily clad Mary Lou.
Shannon points to a marble urn behind a glass-enclosed case. It's the
couple's ashes.
"Gary and Lou are mixed together right there," she says.
Balecox
P
cowgirlmusic
Gary rec'd about 10 minutes worth of mention on my local radio station
in Fla the day following his death.
Better than nothing, but hardly enough.
Nola Daniell
cowgirlmusic wrote:
> Thanks for sharing...engrossing article.
My sentiments exactly. I don't think that Gary was well-known outside
of the US, certainly not in Australia anyhow. But I've heard a couple
of his songs on compilation CD's and I sure am sorry I missed him.
Did you ever see him play live Patsi?
Nola
mslinda
I know I did and he was absolutely magical. *Damn* that story's sad.
Linda C.
Balecox
A couple of times...he was stunning.
P
Brit
I bought the first two Gary Stewart albums I own in the U.K. in the
late 70s. I also had the chance to meet him a couple times.
On another note, I can see it's the same old group -- spam, trolls and
cross posted political rubbish. (Though one could hardly not agree
with a couple of the posts on those illegal alien Mexicans).
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> Nola