Gary Ronnie Stewart (May 28, 1944 – December 16, 2003)[1] was an American musician and songwriter, known for his distinctive vibrato voice and his outlaw country sound influenced by southern rock.
He married Mary Lou Taylor, who was more than three years his senior, at age seventeen and began working days in an airplane factory.
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 All Night Long"), and Nat Stuckey ("Sweet Thang And Cisco").
Disappointed with Music Row, however, he soon returned to Florida and resumed playing countrified rock 'n' roll in local clubs and bars.
[7] In case it's not clear why rock and rollers are so excited about a new country singer, it's because he really sings rockabilly, which supposedly flourished for a few years in the mid-'50s and then vanished.
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gave the album an A− saying that it "was the best regular issue country LP I've heard in about five years.
"[11] Thom Jurek of AllMusic later gave the album five of five stars and stated that a "strong case could be made for Out of Hand as one of the Top 100 country records of all time.
In 1980, he released the Chips Moman-produced Cactus and a Rose which featured Southern rockers Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Mike Lawler, and Bonnie Bramlett.
In 1959 his father, a coal miner, sustained an injury while working in the mines, and shortly afterwards the family moved to Fort Pierce, a city on Florida's Atlantic coast.
On December 16, his daughter's boyfriend and Stewart's very close friend, Bill Hardman, visited his Fort Pierce, Florida, home to check on his welfare.
[3][4][5] In 2005, the Australia-based Raven Records released a CD containing Stewart's second and fourth albums: Steppin' Out and Little Junior, augmented with three previously unreleased bonus tracks from the RCA vaults.
[citation needed] Wounded Bird Records released a CD in 2010 which included the albums Cactus and a Rose and Collector's Series, a comprehensive greatest hits collection.
[citation needed] In 2010, UK-based Floating World Records reissued Stewart's albums from the late 1980s and early 1990s: Brand New, Battleground and I'm a Texan.