RIP Gary Stewart

[tcb]

Country music singer Stewart found dead

By Will Vash, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

FORT PIERCE - Gary Stewart, a country singer popular in the 1970s,
was found dead today in his home, police said.

Stewart, a native of Lechter County, Kentucky, was called one of the
most compelling country singers of the 1970s. His honky-tonk songs
include: "Drinkin' Thing," "Out of Hand" and "She's Actin' Single
(I'm Drinkin' Doubles)." In 1975, "She's Actin' Single" hit No. 1 on
the Billboard chart.

Police are investigating, although the death appears to be suicide.

His wife of 43 years died earlier this fall.

[lmofle]

Ohhhh...that is so sad to hear!! I like his music!!

[Busgaljan]

What a shocker
Makes me remember Farons passing in 1996.

[SweetNadine]

I was shocked when I read this news earlier this evening.

Rest In Peace Gary.

[DRL]

How sad I just bought Live at Billy Bob's and enjoy it very much.
Rest in Peace Gary Stewart

[SanAntonioMike]

I hadn't heard this one.

Good God, I was just thinking about Gary the other day, listening to the ol' standard "I'm Drinkin' Doubles."

[stra8tfan]

I heard this earlier and I'm just blown away. I've seen him so many times around the Houston area and he had his demons but man he put on a show. He truly was the king of honky tonk music as far as I'm concerned. Rest in peace Gary.

[DRL]

Remembering Gary Stewart (1945-2003)
By Bill DeYoung Entertainment editor
December 18, 2003

Although he only placed three songs in the Top Ten, there was a time when Gary Stewart was considered one of the great saviors of country music.

The 59-year-old Stewart, who was found dead Tuesday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Fort Pierce home, was a critically praised purveyor of honky tonk, the hard-driving, electrified form of country that had been all but obliterated by the gentrified, radio-friendly "Nashville Sound" in the mid-1970s.


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Friends and fans remembered the Kentucky-born Stewart as one of the very best of his genre. "Gary was the most authentic 'hardcore' honky tonk singer, next to Hank Williams, that I've ever heard," vocalist Ronnie Dunn of Brooks & Dunn said in an e-mail.

"The first time I heard him was on the jukebox was in a beer joint in Glenpool, Okla. Singing 'She's Acting Single, I'm Drinkin' Doubles.' He stopped me cold in my tracks -- and I understood that a man could tear the heart right out of a song."

"She's Acting Single" topped the country charts in March 1975, but Stewart's star was soon eclipsed by the likes of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, who played a similarly loose-limbed form of honky tonk.

"I can remember all the way back to being 15 years old and standing in line for tickets to see him," Rebecca DeMoss of Cleveland, Texas, e-mailed. "He's a part of a lot of 40-something people who thought his music was the greatest. May he finally find peace."

"The electricity around Gary Stewart was so powerful that it was hard to stand next to him," Marty Stuart said from his Nashville office. "He had so many sparks flying off him.

"And when he'd get through with a three-chord honky tonk song, he'd poured so much of himself into it that he was basically just shaking and had to go hang onto something when the song was over. He had a powerful energy about him."

Rodney Crowell, also calling from Nashville, said that Stewart lived the hard-drinking life he wrote about in his songs. "Gary had that thing that wasn't that far from Hank Williams. That alcohol-fueled, teetering on the edge, driving too fast, living too hard honky tonk thing. I used to call Gary 'Hank.' "

Stewart recorded the very first version of Crowell's classic, "I Ain't Living Long Like This."

Onstage, Crowell said, "It was like he just plugged into the light socket, and he was Reddy Kilowatt."

From his Nashville home, songwriter Dean Dillon, who recorded a pair of albums with Stewart in the '80s, said: "Sure we drank a lot, and back in those days did a lot of dope, but that's what everybody in Nashville was doing, so we weren't all that different.

"Gary just sadly enough could never get the monkey off his back -- he just could never beat the addiction."

Although Stewart was able to find work, regularly selling out such landmark Texas clubs as Billy Bob's -- his later years were marked by financial hardships and personal tragedy. His son committed suicide in 1988.

The death of Stewart's wife, Mary Lou, in November, Dillon speculated, pushed him over the edge. "I think Gary had lost probably his best friend in the world in Lou. They stuck through it through thick and thin, and there was a lot of thin."

The Stewarts were married for 42 years.

"It just reached a point, I guess he thought there was no reason to live any more."

An e-mail from Houston signed Elyese said: "I just don't understand how someone who is so great and his music touched my soul as well as his voice could do that. But we really do love him."

"To all of his family, we are truly sorry for their loss," said Aaron Dickson of West Palm Beach. "He feels like our family also."

Dillon remembered Stewart as a great talent and an always-intriguing friend. "You can't be the kind of singer he was and not be a very, very sensitive person," he said. "He had a dark side, but he was also a very funny guy.

"He liked dark rooms with candles, and didn't like to get out in the sun much. He just lived, ate and breathed honky tonk music."

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.