Gary Stewart – Best Of The HighTone Years
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Posted On March 1, 2002
Best known for such 1970s hits as “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)”, Gary Stewart exemplified honky-tonk style. He brought a willingness to fight for artistic independence and a vibrato-laden intensity to his vocals that set him apart from other performers.
After a fallow period in the early and mid-1980s marked by creative and personal problems, Stewart left RCA and signed with HighTone, releasing three albums of new material for the California-based label between 1988 and 1993. While he never achieved the commercial success he enjoyed in the ’70s, Stewart showed that his vocal and songwriting abilities remained intact.
On “Rainin’ Rainin’ Rainin'”, this anthology’s opening track, he casts a gloomy spell and sings with such conviction that he’ll have you looking for an umbrella before the song ends.
For Stewart, songs about drinking and its consequences go together like a shot and a beer. “Brand New Whiskey” finds him in search of something stronger in an attempt to get over a lost love; it’s a lyrical cousin to John Prine’s “Yes, I Guess, They Oughta Name A Drink After You”. Three other selections — “Make It A Double”, “I Get Drunk” and “An Empty Glass” — could serve as a barroom trilogy. His songs of romantic upheaval are straightforward and emotionally direct. “Nothin’ Cheap About A Cheap Affair” shows his adeptness with ballads.
Stewart also has shown a willingness to branch out. He does a credible version of “Nothin’ But A Woman” co-written by bluesman Robert Cray, and injects a touch of Southern rock to “Let’s Go Jukin'”, a song he co-wrote with Dickey Betts that sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis sitting in with the Allman Brothers Band.
For much of the past decade, Stewart, who turns 57 in May, has largely been inactive in the recording studio. Best Of The HighTone Years and The Essential Gary Stewart, a 1997 anthology of his work with RCA, provide a good introduction to a sometimes overlooked singer.
