4/4/2023 0 Comments Marty stuart little things![]() ![]() I was over at his house and I had just been to Folsom, California. On the last photo he ever took of his neighbor, Johnny Cash Four days later, he was gone," Marty Stuart says of his photograph. "On the third frame I said, 'JR!' and he sat up straight and pulled on that black collar and he became Johnny Cash. ![]() It was kind of like that scene in The Wizard Of Oz where life goes from black and white to color all in one sweep, and that's what happened to me. I loved it, and he offered me a job at the end of the weekend. My folks gave their permission - and that was Labor Day weekend of 1972 - and Lester heard me playing in the back of the bus, put me onstage and the crowd liked it. So he called Lester, and Lester gave his permission. I called a friend of mine who worked for Lester Flatt's band who had offered to have me come to Nashville and just ride the bus with him for a weekend. I got kicked out of school a few weeks in, because I was caught reading a country-music song roundup book inside my history book, and the teacher came up behind me and said, "If you get your mind off of that garbage and get it on to history, you might make something out of yourself." And the smart-aleck said, "Well, I'd rather make history than learn about it." They expelled me. On joining Lester Flatt's band when he was just 13 The Sullivans dropped me off at the edge of Philadelphia, Mississippi, and I felt like the circus had dropped me off at the edge of town and gone on without me. So when that summer was over, it was time to go back to school. I got to wear clothes the way I wanted to, I could wear my hair goofy, met cool people, stayed up late talking music 24 hours a day, and I got a little bit of money for it and fell in love with applause, and the spotlight charmed me just right on in. They were huge regional stars down in our part of the world, and they played Pentecostal churches, camp-meeting revivals, bluegrass festivals, and George Wallace campaign rallies, how's that?Īnd so I went on the road that summer and fell in love with the lifestyle of the road. When I was 12 years old, I went on the road for the first time with a Pentecostal gospel bluegrass group from the South called The Sullivan Family Gospel Singers. On starting his career in country music at age 12 That was the first song that we actually recorded for this project nine years ago, and we built this entire project off of that one song and that one performance. Pops was one of my dearest friends and I miss him very much, but that little recording of "Uncloudy Day" that he and his children made in the basement in Chicago still in my mind stands as one of the greatest songs in the American gospel songbook. Here, he tells Gross about playing with Lester Flatt at 13 and recording with Mavis Staples, and he plays a few songs from a new double album - country on one side, gospel on the other - called Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. The songwriter, singer, guitarist and mandolin player has five Grammys to his name, not to mention a photo exhibit currently at the Frist Center For The Visual Arts in Nashville he's also got a companion book featuring his photos of country performers and fans. ![]() "People were throwing things away," Stuart tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. His massive collection of country artifacts and memorabilia - guitars owned by Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, thousands of rhinestone and embroidered jackets designed for Porter Wagoner and Roy Rogers - began when trends in country music began to change in the late '70s and early '80s. ![]() Out of love and necessity, Marty Stuart has become a country-music historian. "I got kicked out of school a few weeks in, because I was caught reading a country-music song roundup book inside my history book," Marty Stuart says. ![]()
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