By Larry Nager
A 14-year-old kid from Philadelphia, Miss., Marty Stuart found himself thrust into a bunch of new worlds after joining Lester Flatt’s Nashville Grass in 1972. One was the world of country music television. Back then, that didn’t mean multi-national corporate cable television like today’s CMT or GAC. It meant low-budget half-hour shows hosted by the likes of Porter Wagoner and the Wilburn Brothers.
“Going back to those first days with Lester, when we would do Porter’s show, I remember it was shoved into the corner of a studio at WSM,” says Stuart. They were done “on the cheap,” musicians standing on a bare linoleum floor, equipment cords running everywhere, with ramshackle rural-themed backdrops. But those $1.49 sets framed million-dollar talent, including a young Dolly Parton at the peak of her songwriting skills, along with guests from the golden age of bluegrass (Flatt, Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin) and country music (Don Gibson, George Jones, Merle Haggard). “It was intimate, it was homespun, it was folk art, it was cultural,” Stuart recalls. “But, at the same time, it was just great country entertainment.”
Eight years ago, Stuart found himself once again glued to the TV, watching those old shows. This time it was on the Marty Stuart & the Fabulous Superlatives’ tour bus. “I saw The Porter Wagoner Show and I thought I was watching somebody’s DVD they brought from home. Then they went to commercial and I thought, ‘What am I watching?’”
It was RFD-TV, a cable channel aimed at rural America. Stuart, a fan of all things authentically country, was hooked. “I’d be on the bus after shows and say, ‘Turn back to the country channel.’ And we’d watch farm reports and FFA (Future Farmers of America) conventions, and I was thinking, ‘This man is on to something.’ He’s put his arms around a culture that’s been abandoned. And that’s the same thing that I’m doing with my music.” Read more.
No comments:
Post a Comment