Talk on the recent RTH Zoom touched on the last band people saw before the pandemic shut things down. Mine was Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives and the show was spectacular.<\/p>\n
I knew his name for years and saw him occasionally on tv when he appeared on random all-star events, but I never knew much about him other than he was the guy with the fancy hair and the scarves who owned Clarence White\u2019s telecaster with the original b-bender in it (not to get in the weeds here but for those who aren\u2019t familiar, a b-bender is a device that can be installed on a guitar. It has a lever attached to the guitar strap that allows the player to pull down on the strap which causes the b string to go up in pitch and makes it simulate the sound of a pedal steel).<\/p>\n
Marty appears frequently in Ken Burns Country documentary, which I highly recommend if you\u2019ve not seen it yet. He\u2019s a great storyteller with a deep understanding of American popular music. It turns out he\u2019s also a phenomenal guitar player, a great singer, and a master showman.<\/p>\n
I love country music but, like jazz and the blues, my interest drops off pretty sharply sometime on the early to mid 60\u2019s. Someone past that time will occasionally catch my ear, like Dwight Yoakam or Lyle Lovett, but even those guys have been around for about 40 years now so I\u2019m not really up to date on country, nor do I care to be. As a result, I\u2019ve never given Marty Stuart, and probably a lot of others, their fair due. Based on the documentary, and after I started poking around on the internet, I\u2019ve come to realize that Marty Stuart is one of those guys who, not unlike Tom Petty, got bit by the bug early, realized that nothing else would do, and single mindedly willed himself into a lifelong career that started when he was 14 years old. I like some of his originals but for me, the appeal of Marty Stuart is that his profound love of music really comes through in the performances by him and his razor-sharp band. Is there still some corny \u201caw shucks\u201d shenanigans on stage? Sure. But even that comes off as genuine. Here\u2019s a random sampling of the things like by Marty Stuart.<\/p>\n
14 years old Marty with Lester Flatt. Fantastic playing, and while this isn\u2019t my favorite of his, I include it because it shows a guy who is talented and self-possessed enough to work his way into Lester Flatt\u2019s band at the ripe old age of 14. Seriously, what were you doing at 14?<\/p>\n