To that end, he signed with Columbia Records and released his first Top Twenty single, “Arlene,” in 1985. Stuart was also keenly interested in finding ways to take his music to mass audiences. The family of country music should never be a house divided.”
“Country music is America’s music, the language of the common man and woman, true-life blues set to simple melodies. “I was of the belief, then and now, that the entire story should move into the future and no one should be left behind,” he wrote in 2008. At a time when much of country music was shifting to pop-leaning sounds, Stuart was determined to shine his light on the people he considered architects of the genre. Cash guested on Stuart’s 1982 album, Busy Bee Cafe, which included “Boogie for Clarence,” a tribute to another one of Stuart’s heroes, guitar wizard Clarence White.
Where’ve you been?” Stuart replied with the confident truth: “Getting ready.” He spent six years in Cash’s band, soaking in perspective from the Man in Black. In 1980, luthier Danny Ferrington introduced Stuart to Johnny Cash, who said, “Good to meet you, son. Flatt retired from touring in 1978, the same year Stuart made his first album, With a Little Help from My Friends, which featured Flatt, Jesse McReynolds, Curly Seckler, and other esteemed elders.
He was an eager musical student, soaking up information from Flatt, Roland White, and others he met at bluegrass festivals, at the Grand Ole Opry, and in recording studios. The move made for a painful separation from his parents and from sister Jennifer, but Marty possessed a precocious sense of destiny. Not long after meeting Smith, Stuart made his fateful trip to Nashville. At eleven, Stuart went to the Choctaw Indian Fair, and his mother snapped a photo of him with RCA recording artist Connie Smith. He listened to the Grand Ole Opry each weekend, and he paid attention to local guitarist Lethal Jackson (father of Stuart’s childhood friend Carl Jackson, who went on to become a Grammy-winning producer and musician). Raised in Mississippi by parents-John and Hilda-who encouraged his early love of music, Stuart learned to play mandolin and guitar as a small boy. He has done so with a preacher’s fervor, a deacon’s reverence, and a musical skill set that allows him to contribute mightily onstage and in the studio with artists of varying sounds and styles.
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The child who told his high school teacher that he would rather make history than learn about it has spent his life making history, often alongside those Stuart calls country music’s “Old Testament masters,” including Flatt, Johnny Cash, Doc Watson, Merle Haggard, Bill Monroe, Porter Wagoner, and Mac Wiseman. It was a gift placed in my hands to use at will.” “The one that set me on my way and marked the true downbeat of my journey. “It seemed like a divine appointment,” Stuart wrote. At the conclusion of the weekend, Flatt asked Stuart to join his band, to play with him on the Grand Ole Opry, and, in essence, to commit his life to country music. Thus was Stuart’s entry into a Nashville music community that he has enriched over the past forty-nine years. Minutes later, bluegrass veteran Roland White picked up the thirteen-year-old in a 1965 Chevy Impala and took him to safety, and the next day White and Stuart boarded Lester Flatt’s tour bus at Higgins’s Gulf Station in Hendersonville and rode to Delaware to play a music festival. He gazed at the venerable Mother Church of Country Music and knew he had found a home, a mecca, and a mission. History books tell us that John Marty Stuart was born September 30, 1958, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, but in many ways he was born on August 3, 1972, when he got off a Greyhound bus in downtown Nashville in the early morning hours and walked the hushed city streets to the Ryman Auditorium.