People from Letcher County, Kentucky - Gary Stewart (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Gary Stewart (May 28, 1944 December 16, 2003) was a country musician and songwriter known for his distinctive vibrato voice and his southern rock influenced, outlaw country sound. During the peak of his popularity in the mid-1970s Time magazine described him as the "king of honkytonk." He is remembered for a series of country chart hits from the mid- to late- 1970s, his biggest hit being "She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)," which topped the U.S. country singles charts in 1975. Named after actor Gary Cooper, Gary R. Stewart was born in the Letcher County, Kentucky, town of Jenkins, the son of George and Georgia Stewart. In 1959 his father, a coal miner, sustained an injury while working in the mines, and shortly after the family moved to Fort Pierce, a city on Florida's Atlantic coast. Learning guitar and piano, Stewart began touring with local bands and writing songs in his teens. He married Mary Lou Taylor, more than three years his senior, at age seventeen and began working during the daytime in an airplane factory. He still played in rock and country bands at night. While playing in an Okeechobee, Florida, honky-tonk known as the Wagon Wheel he met country singer Mel Tillis, who advised Stewart to travel to Nashville to pitch his songs. He recorded a few sides for the small Cory label in 1964 and began co-writing songs with local policeman Bill Eldridge. Stewart and Eldridge wrote Stonewall Jackson's 1965 country hit, "Poor Red Georgia Dirt." Signed to the Kapp label in 1968, Stewart made several unsuccessful recordings. But several songwriting successes followed for artists like Billy Walker ("She Goes Walking Through My Mind," "Traces of a Woman," "It's Time to Love Her"), Cal Smith ("You Can't Housebreak a Tomcat", "It Takes Me... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=424533