There is good reason to assume Marty Stuart had more chart success than he actually has.
For starters, he is an icon. He is the greatest ambassador for country music this side of Vince Gill. His musical pedigree is almost without peer between his bluegrass, rockabilly, country rock, and classic country credentials. He joined bluegrass legend Lester Flatt’s band at age thirteen. He then played and toured with Johnny Cash. He is an instrumental virtuoso, an expert mandolin player and guitarist. He is a journalist and a photographer of note. He is married to Grand Ole Opry member, and Country Music Hall of Fame member, Connie Smith. He has produced late-career albums by Smith, Kathy Mattea, and Porter Wagoner. Marty Stuart is a preservationist and a significant collector of country music artifacts and history. As cool and edgy as he was when he was young, he and his Fabulous Superlatives are the hippest quartet going today.
Yet, despite all the impeccable company he keeps. his prodigious talent and brilliant tendencies, and his placing thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country charts, Stuart has never run a single to the top as a solo artist.
As Bob Allen said in the January/February 1990 issue of Country Music, “…there are always a select few who seem to be held back not by their lack of talent but by their abundance of it – artists who are capable of growing in so many directions at once that the question of focus can become a difficult one.”
Enter Tony Brown to provide that focal point.
Brown co-produced Stuart’s classic 1990 MCA album Hillbilly Rock along with Richard Bennett. He was once again busy as a bee inside his MCA hive, cross-pollinating his showiest flowers coming into bloom in the late ’80s and early ’90s in Nashville.
And nobody was flashier than Marty Stuart with his rhinestone Nudie suits and long-haired swagger, a country punk dripping with honeyed passion, gritty purpose and genuine faith in the power of country music.
Even while chasing hit records and fully playing the Nashville game at the time.
Stuart co-wrote “When the Sun Goes Down” and the reverb-drenched “Since I Don’t Have You” with fellow young upstart Mark Collie.
He co-wrote “Don’t Leave Her Lonely Too Long” with Kostas.
Paul Kennerley, who wrote two songs for Kelly Willis’ Well Travelled Love, contributes three cuts on Hillbilly Rock- the title track, “Western Girls,” and “Easy to Love (Hard to Hold).”
Stuart includes a killer version of Joe Ely’s story-song “Me and Billy the Kid ” featuring Stuart’s spectacular and sparkling mandolin playing.
He even faithfully covers Johnny Cash’s 1955 debut single “Cry, Cry, Cry.”
Dropping his bucket into all those creative wells should have guaranteed he pull up at least one smash single in Music City in 1990, if not a string of them.
Turns out, “Hillbilly Rock” would peak at number eight on the charts and the second single “Western Girls” would barely break the top twenty.
Maybe Nashville didn’t like that Stuart didn’t even have a hat to cock; he most definitely wore his gun all wrong.
That gun was this entire album and his absolute artistic credibility. It was, as Bob Allen said, “…a powerful confident, and finely tuned musical statement.”
The lead single “Hillbilly Rock” was a historical statement song. It defined Marty Stuart and his brand of music while also documenting the history of the genre, still sounding greasy, fast, and pumpin,’ while dragging it forward for a new, young audience to experience for the first time.
The entire album was all energy and attitude. Stuart had come close to matching this vibe with his largely ignored eponymous 1986 Columbia debut. His 1982 Sugar Hill album Busy Bee Cafe leaned more heavily into acoustic instrumentation and his bluegrass influences.
In the liner notes to his later Richard Bennett and Tony Brown produced 1992 album This One’s Gonna Hurt You, Chicago Tribune journalist Jack Hurst wrote, “This gospel bluegrass country rock & roller has always exhibited profound consciousness of and respect for the history of country music…This ain’t just a young man love with country music history, dudes; it’s a richly diverse artists determined to take that history to the kids and make it turn them on.”
One of those kids who got turned on to Marty Stuart’s music was Gary Allan who included a cover of Stuart’s “ Don’t Leaver Her Lonely Too Long” from Hillbilly Rock on his 1998 sophomore Decca effort It Would Be You.
Hillbilly Rock is a musical compass pointing due country, keepin’ up the rhythm steady as a clock all these years later. It is an essential album from the early 90’s’ country canon that bristles with “gutsy, imaginative, guitar-gramed [sic] arrangements, and stormy sensuality” even as it is too often overshadowed by the bigger commercial successes of its era.
Eight years’ worth of excellent RFD-TV programming (The MARTY STUART SHOW) have convinced me that hit records were very much a secondary consideration for Marty Stuart. Making good music was always his focus and he seems to have stayed true to his vision throughout his career.