Marty Stuart personifies American music, from his modest Mississippi beginnings to his present star-studded life as a successful, award-winning singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His songs echo the remnants of Lester Flatt, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash. Yet, he somehow managed to remain wholly authentic …to himself.
He first picked up a guitar in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Southern sceneries, cultures, and traditions helped mold him as an individual and budding musician. "I cannot remember a time in my life when music wasn't present," Marty said. "The first memory I had on this earth was being in my mama's arms, and she was holding me and crying. I remember what the fabric on her dress felt like." He described how the sun was dipping below the horizon, and the breeze carried the chime of church bells over East Philadelphia. His mama told him it was music, and the sound enfolded him like her embrace. In that treasured moment, he discovered music and what it could do. That connection forever shaped his life.
"Right after that, she took me to a parade where some little backwoods circus troop came through Philadelphia," said Marty. The high school band was first in the long parade line, announcing the circus to the town. "I was standing on the corner, and the band came by with the power of the music again. I just started crying. So, I think that's who I am."
At age nine, Marty started his first band with neighborhood buddies Butch and Ricky Hodgins. "At that time (1968 or 1969), young bands in that part of the country all played pretty much covers of British invasion music, The Beatles, The Stones, and The Who," said Marty. He explained how he could find nobody young playing country songs. "I loved country music more than any other kind, so we played songs by Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and the Carter family. We just considered ourselves correspondents for all those stars in the backwoods of Mississippi, and that got me started.”
Marty went on the road with the Sullivan family only three years later, a road as long and winding as the Pearl River near his Philadelphia hometown, running endless miles through ever-changing landscapes. Imagine this young boy of 12 spending long hours on a bus, nights in unfamiliar towns, and the pressure of performing night after night. The freedom of the road also meant the absence of home comforts, family, and the weight of responsibility far beyond his years. But Marty Stuart eagerly adapted to the rigors of this life and learned how to navigate the daunting realities of the complex adult world around him because of his love for music.
"I didn't see any challenges," he said. "I always saw joy and beauty in it."
His music grew organically from the pulsating sounds of bluegrass and country. Still, he pushed those genre boundaries by infusing rock and rockabilly to create his distinct mark on the music world, and he never approached his songwriting with a genre in mind. More than loving music, Marty lived it …and never looked back.
"When you cross the state line into Mississippi, the sign says, Welcome to Mississippi, the Birthplace of America's Music." That encompasses many genres: gospel, blues, rock'n'roll, and country. "All those things are a part of our home, our musical heritage as Mississippians. It all kind of bubbles up, and I think that's what follows me to the pen, paper, and guitar. I can't quite help it. This is what comes out, and a long time ago, I made peace with that. I stand on it and use it as a license to make any music I want to be authentic."
He's been called a child prodigy and a star, but as a historian who honors and preserves the roots of country music, he's earned the title "keeper of its flame." Reminiscing about when country bands played at the Neshoba County and the Choctaw Fairs, and gospel quartets and bluegrass singers came into Philadelphia to perform, he said, "I'm a fan. They represented a world I wanted to be a part of so badly as a kid." To Marty, it was the Wizard of Oz land, a fairy tale land. "I wanted to have any remnant or any souvenir of that world to take home with me, whether it was a signed record, the guitar player's guitar pick, an autograph, whatever. I took it home after somebody would play in our town, and it was like having Smithsonian treasures in my bedroom. That followed me to Nashville."
PRESERVING THE COUNTRY MUSIC LEGACY:
Marty's mementos varied from crumpled-up set lists to retrieving the makeup-stained tie from the garbage belonging to Lester Flatt, who Marty had joined in 1972. "In the early 1980s, all these older stars were kind of shuffled off to the pasture because times had changed, and Urban Cowboy had come in and kind of replaced all of the great stars." That didn't work for Marty because he felt those old stars had raised him. "They were like family." Still, as a much younger musician, Marty was also part of this new world.
"I was in Nashville one day, and I bought Patsy Kline's train case or makeup case for 75 bucks in the junk shop because nobody cared," he said. "That's what it looked like to me: nobody cared, and nobody was paying attention." And this became his mission, "to take care of and pick up those kinds of things, costumes, guitars, instruments, and manuscripts, personal effects of people that matter to me."
He filled warehouses with around 15,000 artifacts but had no idea what to do with them. In the early 2000s, Marty returned to Mississippi.
"I fell back in love with my state and its musical and creative legacy. I wanted to jump in and start doing my part and help tell the story to the world."
During that time, B.B. King called Marty to ask if he and his band could put on a show in Indianola to help raise money for the B.B. King Museum. While there, B.B. pointed out everything going on in Mississippi, saying, "You know rock'n'roll is over there at Elvis's place, I've got the Blues covered, and there's the Jimmie Rodgers Museum that puddles along down in Meridian." At that time, there was only talk of a Grammy Museum coming to the Delta. On his way out of Indianola, Marty figured out what to do with his massive collection thanks to B.B.'s coaxing.
"Country music needed a home in Mississippi and the land of Jimmie Rodgers, the Old Testament world of country music. When I left Indianola that night, I remember looking up at God and thinking but don't make me do this. It was gonna be like setting a spaceship down in the middle of nowhere and getting people to believe in it."
THE CONGRESS OF COUNTRY MUSIC:
The Congress of Country Music planned for Marty's Philadelphia hometown culminated from his perpetual love for country music, his determination to preserve its legacy, and "spending the day with B.B. King," he said.
Every project starts somewhere. The Ellis Theater was the hometown theater where locals once gathered to watch the latest Elvis movies or classics like The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago.
"It was the silver screen in our town, but it had tired like most little theaters in little hometowns that had fallen into disrepair."
The Arts Council of Philadelphia owned the theater and was trying to do productions there. Marty decided to do one of his out-of-town broadcasts from The Ellis. He took his Marty Stuart Show from Nashville to Philadelphia. He described it as "spit and glue, walking over broken glass and busted commodes in the alley and praying it didn't rain because of holes in the roof."
But there was something about the place," he said, with praise and gratitude. "It sounded great, and one of the things we had not accomplished at the time was finding a permanent location for the Congress of Country Music."
The concept had been floating around in the air, and Marty was searching all over Philadelphia to find the right spot. And it just so happened that his longtime friend Butch, that kid in his first band, was on the Philadelphia Arts Council. He called Marty one day and asked how Marty would feel about the Arts Council donating the Ellis Theater to the project and the Council being a partner. Marty thought it was a great idea because it could be the cornerstone to start the whole campus.
"So, the first phase was to get the Ellis up and running and beautiful, get people to come there, and turn it into a legitimate stop along the way for touring bands. We've done every bit of that."
Marty affirmed that a project starts with the vision, but it also depends on the quality of your partners and how much of your vision can feasibly be accomplished and sustained.
"It was a slow sale from the start, and most people thought this ain't gonna ever happen; we don't need this around here, you know the deal. But one by one, they started coming around." And those people finally coming around were from all around—Boston, Washington, California, Nevada, Florida, Texas—and then fans began pouring from five dollars to one million into the project, "seeing the worth in this thing not just for the cultural significance of what we're doing but also to see the rebirth, the second coming of a town that has had hard times in its past." Marty admits that has been his favorite part—witnessing his Philadelphia hometown return to life.
During the shows at The Ellis, people show up, businesses stay open late, and streets are blocked off because of the crowd. "Those are good problems to have as you move forward. These things help develop the hope we all need, especially when our past has been so dark in many places," said Marty. "It really gives the world a sense of hope because it's somewhere in Philadelphia,
Mississippi, and so this can happen anywhere. Everyone can come together, you know, across all lines, social, racial, ethnic, religious."
Marty hopes Philadelphia will become an inspirational template for other small towns. One of Philadelphia's different dynamics is its triracial communities: Black, White and Native American. “One of the things that has been very important to me at any gathering is that a White prayer, a Native American prayer, and a Black prayer will be lifted into the air."
When The Ellis opened, that's precisely what happened: the beautiful pageantry of the Choctaws and a prayer by Philadelphia Mayor James Young, a Black gentleman and "an amazing and incredible guy. Then there were all of us White kids," said Marty. Everybody in the community felt welcomed and embraced, and that's what this is at the foundational level. This matters more than everything else put together."
Marty elaborated on the project's educational component and why it is critical to the Congress’s mission. "When I was so on fire as a young musician and my heart was just coming into focus and my passions and my dreams were starting to surface inside of my head and my heart, what I had access to in Philadelphia was a magazine rack at Hamill drugstore that carried the Country Song Roundup and a few paperbacks that pertained to music and the record rack at Morgan Lindsey Dime Store." His only musical classrooms growing up were the Lakeside Auditorium with its gospel singings and the Choctaw and the Neshoba County Fairs when musical acts came through.
"If, as a kid, I could have had Dolly Parton or Wynton Marsalis, Dale McCrory, John Anderson, or Connie Smith, all the people we've had at the Ellis in the last year and a half; if Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill had come to my town, it would have blown my head off. It would have been like watching the Old Testament characters of the Bible come to life."
With funding in hand and architectural plans to start by the end of this year, Marty said the continuing challenge will be the location in the middle of a rural state.
"Promoting and sustaining the place becomes the issue after getting beyond opening day and cutting ribbons, and the confetti dies down." Other challenges will be keeping programming current and interesting and keeping great events happening there, "where everybody looks at the place as a beacon of hope and light down in Mississippi."
Marty hopes the Congress of Country Music will be a place where young musicians can develop who they really are before making their decisions in today's homogenized country music industry. "It used to be that if you were coming out of your hometown, you had to bring your culture with you to get a seat at the table. Now, you have to check your culture at the county line, blend in and be like everybody else. That leaves a lot of people's true selves behind."
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