ROOTS of Country Music

The Professional Work of Gary Stewart

(May 28, 1945 – Dec. 16, 2003)

Career Highlights)

Film, Night Club, Radio & TV

• Austin City Limits, 4
• Billy Bob's Texas, 2
• Gilley’s Club, 2
• Hee Haw, 4
• Nashville Now, 4
• Pop Goes the Country, 4 

1-Film, 2-Night Club, 3-Radio, 4-TV 

Billboard Chart Data 

• No. 1 Singles: 1
• Top-20 Singles: 9
• Crossover Singles: 0
• Charted Singles: 30
• Chart Years Active: (1973-1989)

Career Label: Rca Records (1973-1983)

Billboard Top-20 Singles 

1. Drinkin' Thing -1974
2. Out of Hand
3. She's Actin' Single*# -1975
4. You're Not the Woman You Used to Be
5. Flat Natural Born Good-Timin' Man
6. In Some Room Above the Street -1976
7. Your Place or Mine
8. Ten Years of This -1977
9. Whiskey Trip -1978 

*-No. 1 hart Single

#-Biggest Chart ingle

---------------------------------------------------------------------------Gary Stewart: Contemporary Honky-Tonker

Gary Stewart was born in the Letcher County, Kentucky town of Jenkins, the son of a coal miner, who moved his family down to the Florida coast when Gary was twelve. There he learned to play guitar at the age of seventeen. Later, Stewart met and married a woman named Mary Lou Taylor, to whom he stayed married for the rest of his life.

Gary moved to Nashville and recorded a handful of memorable singles for Decca Records, while co-writing with fellow Floridian Bill Eldridge. They generated minor hits for the likes of Nat Stuckey, Jack Greene, Billy Walker and Hank Snow. The real catalyst for Stewart's success was producer Roy Dea, the man who captured the hard-country side of Gary's unique sound.

Dea was a sort of father figure to Gary and Stewart, a rough-neck, tried in vain to be a good son. Dea helped him secure a recording contract with RCA Records, although then Artists and repertoire (A&R) man Jerry Bradley wouldn't seal the deal until Gary agreed to cut his hair.

Gary was thirty before he had a successful album of his own. His debut album called Out of Hand (1974) was a formidable deadpan triumph, but by the end of the seventies he had fallen victim to self-consciousness in his singing and writing, as well as some of the vices he documented in his tough honky-tonk hits like Drinking Thing, She's Acting Single and Out of Hand.

During the following years there were more along the same lines such as Whiskey Trip, Brand New Whiskey, I Get Drunk and An Empty Glass. Just about all Stewart's songs were about getting drunk to get over someone and they were pretty easy to treat as novelty songs, especially if you weren't, yourself, getting drunk to get over someone.

Stewart didn't really fit in anywhere. He wasn't Southern rock and he wasn't Nashville country. Futhermore, honky-tonk is, almost by definition, not the sort of stuff that plays well outside a small club. What's more he was, not surprisingly, a heavy drinker, he could be a difficult man and in time he disappeared. From there, the story goes downhill. In 1980, Stewart was in a car crash that wrecked his back; in 1988 his son Gary Joseph killed himself with a gun.

Stewart continued to tour through the 1990s, playing venues such as Fort Worth's Billy Bob's Texas several times a year. On November 26, 2003, the day before Thanksgiving, his wife of nearly forty-three years died of pneumonia. Stewart, who had been scheduled to play Billy Bob's three days later, canceled his concert appearances. His friends later told reporters that he was extremely despondent after Mary Lou's death.

On December 16, his daughter's boyfriend and Stewart's very close friend Bill Hardman visited Stewart's Fort Pierce, Florida, home to check on his welfare. They found Stewart dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the neck.

Gary's unique, unparalleled style cannot be emulated or learned as his was a natural born talent. At a time when country music has strayed of course, traditional enthusiast, strive to hang on to the music and memories of such great legends as Gary Stewart. While he has passed, his unique voice and style will never be silenced or be forgotten.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------Researched, compiled and written by Richard Bell, Roots of Country Music, Jul. 15, 2009.

Gary Stewart

An Empty Glass