Marty Stuart Quotes

Every time I hear a Garth Brooks record I tend to want to hear James Taylor.

I’ve always been a collector at heart.

I love playing music with Duane Eddy.

I wish I could have been in the control room at Capitol Studio A listening to the playback of ‘Wichita Lineman’ the first time it came into the atmosphere. It must have been a perfect moment in time.

I’ve always been a sucker for a truck driving song.

To me, all music that is made under the umbrella of the United States of America is Americana music.

Well, being from Mississippi, the church house is kind of the common denominator. It was for me growing up. Like so many public performers, that was the first place I was ever invited to sing.

Anybody that looks at my photography, it blows my mind because it’s my last hobby.

I’m really taken by the fact that my photographs live on somebody’s wall.

Nobody in my school knew who Bill Monroe was, or Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and barely Johnny Cash. Nobody spoke that language. I proceeded to get myself kicked out.

I believe in the future of country music, but a future without roots is like a kite with no string.

It’s the hillbilly rock, beat it with a drum. Playin’ them guitars like shootin from a gun. Keepin’ up the rhythm, steady as a clock. Doin’ a little thing called the hillbilly rock.

It is great to know that the lives and careers of country music’s artists are being documented through the Hall of Fame’s expert archival and curatorial resources.

Hillbilly Rock’ was the song that opened the door and gave me a reason to get a bus and a band and cowboy clothes to go out there and figure it out in front of everybody. And the hits started coming.

My local radio station, WHOC, Philadelphia, Mississippi – ‘1490 on your radio dial, a thousand watts of pure pleasure’ – it was a beautiful station. And I loved everything I heard. But it was country music that touched my heart.

I have a low-tech camera with one lens that I’ve shot everything in my life on. My subjects and my subject matter sometimes really are powerful, and so my job is to get it into focus.

In the middle of Mississippi, so many kinds of music came, but it was Nashville and country music that pulled my heart.

It’s hard for a country performer to make a living in a Beatles society.

The first picture of me that I know of was me in the crib wearing a pair of cowboy boots.

I can’t remember when I didn’t have an instrument around.

Doing a thing call the Hillbilly Rock, some say it came from Elvis down in Tennessee.

Well, I’ve always said that country music has always shared a very unique relationship with gospel music – the hooting and hollering, you know, always in abundance.

I went out on the road when I was 12 years old, playing with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers. That was the summer of 1972. We played Pentecostal churches, camp meetings, George Wallace campaign rallies and bluegrass festivals. As a kid, I had grown up watching quartets that were very entertaining.

One thing that I love about country music, probably more so than any other culture – maybe the blues rivals it – there are so many American folk heroes. There’s the Coal Miner’s Daughter, the Man in Black, the Red-Headed Stranger, and on and on.

One of the people I heard early on in his career was Eric Church. I liked him and his music.

Being sober and clear-eyed changes everything.

Going back to the Byrds and ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo,’ when country was kind of getting away from the fiddle and steel aspect, it took some rock & rollers to introduce a new generation to it, and it kinda put some things straight.

Shaft’ is a great country song.

Like so many other people I was raised right, went crazy but I always knew God had His hand on me.

Addiction is a crazy disease. It’s a progressive disease when it’s not dealt with; it don’t care who it takes, and it takes it all. You wind up losing your house, your home, your reputation.

I saw footage of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley just hanging out together in Memphis when they were young guys getting started at Sun, listening to records together. That was beautiful to me.

There’s every other guitar player and then there’s Chet. He transcended musical boundaries for more than fifty years. God only lays Chet Atkins on you once in a lifetime.

The truth of country music, the real stuff, will prevail ….. generation after generation.

When country music is doing its job, it reports on the good, bad and indifferent of our human condition.

Where better than the church for people like me, George Jones and Johnny Cash to go to get ourselves in shape enough to sing a gospel song?

Some things you can never get back.

From the first time I played with Lester Flatt, I sensed an extreme amount of history around me.

Crazy Arms’ is one of those songs that can get crushed beneath its own weight. It’s kind of like ‘Orange Blossom Special’ or ‘Rocky Top’ or ‘Crazy.’ But when you go back to the original interpretation, you hear it in a new way.

As big as the industry is now and as gargantuan and stretched out with as many buses and trucks as there are now, it is still a big old dysfunctional family in my mind.

If you look back into the Superlatives’ body of work, we’ve always included instrumentals.

I figure I’m a mandolin player first and foremost, and everything else I’ve accomplished is just a scam.

There are two kinds of people, there’s those who like Johnny Cash, and those that will.

I started out in gospel music. A lot of people don’t know that I started out in gospel music, and I’ve never lost sight of it.

I don’t know how it got around that I play a lot of instruments. I really don’t. I play the guitar and the mandolin.

I got to Nashville on Labor Day weekend in 1972. And the Grand Ole Opry is still there, the Country Music Hall of Fame is still there. And the roots of country music are still there. It’s where the authenticity and the empowering force lies.

There was a junk store in Nashville on 8th Avenue, where I bought Patsy Cline’s train case for $75.

I never claimed to be a great photographer.

I hate labels.

I’ve always loved gospel music. Being raised in Mississippi, it was kind of part of the atmosphere down there.

There’s the chart — and there’s the heart. And it’s great when they both line up. But you better follow your heart, ’cause that’s where it’s at.

The black church in the South is the home of rock & roll.

When I was 12 years old I discovered Bill Monroe and my dad got me a mandolin.

Nothing will prepare you for singing the truth like about 35 years in the music business, financial troubles and a couple trips to jail, … It will get you really humble and really truthful, and gets you ready to sing out about who and what saved you.

Country music as a genre, as an art form, is just as valid out there in the pantheon of the arts as classical, jazz, ballet, whatever.

Walking into the Ryman with Lester Flatt was the equivalent of walking into the Vatican with the pope.

I think the way country music is set up, we all came from a family background.

After something has run its course, you either become a parody and keep doing it, or tear it down and know the truth about it, warts and all.

There’s something cool about playing ‘Tempted’ and then picking up the mandolin and playing ‘Dark as a Dungeon’ and standing on the classics. It’s nice to just let soul rule.

People shouldn’t be punished for their wisdom.

When times are good, we have tunes to dance to; when times are tough, we’re supposed to talk about it. That’s country music.

Pop Staples was one of my true mentors.

When I started making some paychecks, I didn’t invest in stocks and bonds – I invested in American culture.

I loved the Rolling Stones. I heard a little bit of country music creeping around the edges of some of their songs. Being a Mississippi kid, I could feel they had done their homework, even when I was a little boy. I could feel the Delta blues influence in a lot of their work.

I swear, there is Capitol Studios and then there’s every other studio on the planet Earth. It is the ultimate, paramount of sound in the United States of America. It is a magical place.

My mother named me for Marty Robbins.

When I pick up Hank Williams’ guitar or that first suit that Johnny Cash wore on stage, it empowers me.

He is irreplaceable. Even in death I have no doubt that Johnny Cash will continue to live on as an inspiration to musicians and songwriters and all of America.

The four things a hillbilly singer needs are a Cadillac, a Nudie suit, the right hairdo, and a pair of pointy-toed boots.

After people work hard and cope with the pressures of life throughout the week, going out to a show or tuning in to watch some characters in cowboy clothes, singing and playing songs about real life is something I relate to.

Growing up in the Sixties, whether it was the Batmobile or the costumes Porter Wagoner wore or the music that came from there, California was the home of what a friend of mine calls ‘custom culture.’ It seemed like the promised land.

Merle Haggard once said, ‘I’m really mad at Glen Campbell because he’s the most talented human being in the world.’ That kind of summed it up. Merle didn’t miss!

Well, it’s hard not to love Hank Williams!

The history of country music is as important as any other art form.

I don’t have many regrets in my life. But I have one. I would have stayed sober all along.

I’ve been promoting the idea of a Jimmie Rodgers documentary for years.

My main electric guitar belonged to Clarence White, the great guitarist for the Byrds.

I learned things by being in Lester Flatts’ band, and I learned things by playing with Johnny Cash, and I learned from Pop Staples. I’m a sponge.

Coming from bluegrass background, I totally understand family harmonies.