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Honky-tonk songs, like Pistol Packin ' Mama, came out of Texas in the late 1930s and early '40s. Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis adapted the style to rock 'n' roll in the '50s. Sometimes called rockabilly, it celebrates booze, gambling, fighting, steppin' out, temptation and, like all country music, love. Honkin' is the word for having a good time. In the olden days the distinctive instrumental sound of honky-tonk was tinny guitar and pianoplunk. Today the new rockabilly is a country-and-western/rhythm-and-blues mix, and its dominant sound is a heavily thudding rock bass.
Class Act. As a performer, Gary Stewart's special attraction is the energetic diversity he displays when given a beer and a stage. Hunched over the piano, a spindly Ichabod partial to wide-brimmed swamper hats, Stewart invites everybody to get loose to something like his own Hank Western, with a weakness for "any good-lookin' woman, any kind of booze." The delivery, in a tight, nasal tenor voice, is as seasoned as the inside of an old spittoon, but heartfelt. Says Stewart: "It's all a poor man's music that talks about troubles on the home front and hard times on the job."
When Stewart was twelve, his father moved the family to Fort Pierce following the failure of the family coal mine in Payne Gap, Ky. Two years later, Gary found a book of diagrammed musical chords. At 15 he was playing in local bars. By 17, he was married and working in an airplane factory. He began his day at the tool crib, but would soon be scribbling song lyrics on a note pad. "I lived for the weekend, and when it came I hated to see the morning come."
Shortly after turning 21, Stewart began playing piano "full time," a euphemism that translated into $55 for a weekend's work. That money, plus tips brought home by his wife Mary Lou, who was working as a bartender, allowed Stewart to spend most of the week writing. When Bill Eldridge joined him, the two began making annual summer trips to Nashville to peddle their wares.
In 1969 he moved to Nashville with Eldridge and Mary Lou. During one period in 1971, four of Stewart's songs were simultaneously rated among the nation's Top Ten country tunes. But he was not happy, and after two years he went back to Florida. "The man was paying me money," Stewart remembers. "At first the songs came without much effort, but after a while we lost what we had. I wasn't living what I was writing." At home he wrote songs by day, but on weekends he enjoyed himself playing countrified rock 'n' roll at the ancient Fort Pierce Hotel. It was a class act. His group bought white tuxedos from the Salvation Army, dyed them pink and covered the lapels with glitter.
Some of Stewart's songs today reflect a life devoted to kinfolk and lazy afternoons. In Easy People the affection and ennui are all but overwhelming:
Someone's turning in the gate off the
road.
One of you kids get a stick,
And run the dogs off the porch.
Go draw some fresh drinkin' water
from the spring.
Mama, quit peeling them peaches.
Move over, let him sit in the swing.