The South/music: A Honky -Tonk Man

The South is to the music of America what late 18th century Vienna was to the classical-music era of Europe—the source. In fact, anyone who ponders the long Southern legacy—from jazz to blues, from gospel to bluegrass, and, more lately, truckers’ songs—might just begin imagining that the Mississippi has been flowing North all this time. Southern music rose from the common man, but there is nothing common about its variety or the range of lives it touches and consoles. These days “country ” is the handiest title to cover a multitude of sounds. At hundreds of festivals across the land, blue-grass picks and twangs its way along pretty much as it has for the past 40 years. The city of Nashville still produces its vanilla-shake love ballads with comforting monotony. Down in Austin, Texas, the country-rock cantatas of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings are as popular as ever. No single style or performance can typify all of country music. But one strain of country is something old and new called honkytonk. It is both a style and a place, and of the place it used to be said that “honky-tonks were where a white man could get killed by his own kind while listening to country music.” To keep track of both style and setting, TIME Correspondent David DeVoss went to Florida to talk with the current king of honkytonk, Gary Stewart. DeVoss’s report:

Anyone else would have left for the gig 20 minutes ago. Not Gary Stewart, who, at 32, has suddenly become a star of the rowdiest brand of country rock —honky-tonk. Were he in a larger town, promoters and agents would be nervously pinching their digitals. But this is a languid evening in Fort Pierce, Fla., Stewart’s home town, and the squeak of a front-porch rocker is music enough for now. Besides, one must rest after a supper of pork chops and okra. Digestion is a ritual, a time for introspective belching. “It stays nice and slow here,” Stewart sighs. “Everybody’s family. It’s the South, and I’ll never leave.”

Stewart could leave any time he wants. He has a contract with RCA Records up in New York. All three of his albums have been gushed over by critics. He has had three No. 1 country hit singles—one of which offers a shot of sheer country angst: My heart is breakin’ like the tiny bubbles./ She’s actin’ single, I’m drinkin’ doubles. The success of songs like that makes Fort Pierce mighty proud, especially the 31 Stewarts listed in the phone book, all of whom are related to Gary some way or other.

Preceded by two headlights, a funnel of dust announces the arrival of Bill Eldridge, a former Fort Pierce cop who helped write Stewart’s first album, You ‘re Not the Woman You Used to Be. Eldridge has come to escort his friend, now somewhat lulled by the grease and beer, to the evening’s performance. It is a Tuesday night, normally a slow evening, but the Flying Bridge Lounge is packed with a country crowd ready to greet the local boy with rebel yells. Men cradle sweating bottles of Pabst against their paunches and admire the sun-streaked blondes who prance about in cloven dittos and T shirts. The Flying Bridge is without pretension, the kind of lowdown joint Stewart loves to play.

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.

For all that, and the $1,000 he now receives for an evening’s performance, his life has changed little. His beloved black 1941 Buick sedan and a ’65 Dodge Dart are the only family automobiles. “I might like to walk on a little bit nicer rug,” he admits. “But if I get caught up in big cars and fancy homes, I’ll lose touch with the people. My music is simple honkytonk. It’s nothing too eloquent ’cause I’m a simple man.”