Peter Guralnick’s latest book, Looking To Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing, covers more than 40 years of writing about music and musicians that captured his heart and mind. From his hometown in Boston, Guralnick got on the phone with country legend Marty Stuart in Nashville to reminisce about common friends, unforgettable music moments, and to even dream a little about the future.
This conversation has been edited. | Header photo by Russ Barnard
Peter Guralnick: Listen, I’ve got to thank you for that wonderful picture of Johnny and Merle Haggard in the book.
Marty Stuart: Oh, my pleasure. Well, Peter, there aren't very many, upstanding, Walter Cronkite-level musical journalists in the world, and you are amongst the finest. I’ve loved and respected you and your work for so long, and that's the truth.
PG: Well, you are in the book, of course, when we first met, it was at the start of John [Cash’s] Great Eighties Eight band, with you and Earle Poole Ball on piano and a host of others.
MS: What was strange about that time, in a sense it seems like two lifetimes ago. Then in another sense, I'll look at photographs from those days, it seems like it was 15 minutes ago. It seems like it has all gone by in a blur, which I suppose means we've been doing something good because it usually happens that way.
PG: Well, yeah. The next to the last chapter of the book is about my father and his father. My father continued to go to work three, four days a week at the Mass General, up till the day he died, till he was almost 101, but it was because it was what he loved. And that's what passed the time. Anybody who tells you to retire is out of their mind.
MS: Well, I have to tell you, I dug into your book and some of those pieces I was familiar with, of course, but the one that absolutely spoke to me so loud and clear was the Dick Curless piece. I could feel your enthusiasm and your insights into his life. And, man, I join you in flying the flag for Dick Curless. Back in those days, when he was heating up, I always felt like country music was still a bit of a mom and pop industry. And they had correspondents staked down across the nation, that if you needed a band or somebody to work on your bus, or you needed a steel player or a backup singer, whatever, there was a guy in some area that could take care of you. And Dick was, in my opinion, one of the kings of the great Northeast. And as I dig into his life beyond “[A] Tombstone Every Mile” and see that that voice of his was deeper than Miller's Cave. He was profound, was he not?
PG: He really was, and it was a difficult story to tell because I admired him so much. And when I met him, he was so in command of every aspect of his talent, and it wasn't truck driving songs anymore. It was everything that he had grown up with. It was Jimmie Rodgers, it was Josh White, it was just everything. But he had gone through such a tough life.
MS: Yeah.
PG: It was terrible at his funeral, the preacher preached a sermon about how it was good that Dick had given up his music because, you know, that was the path where sin lay, there was “a tombstone every mile,” and that kind of thing. Where that was the opposite of every song he sang. Every song that he sang was intended to show the pitfalls of life, as well as the pinnacles … and when I talked to him, and I talked to him at considerable length, he was so insistent that it had to be the whole. He was like Charlie Rich on that. It has to be the truth, no matter how painful it was. And it was painful to write. Here was a guy who came home from Korea at the age of, I think, 22, he's got a son at home, and he never fully adjusted to civilian life until the very end. But I've never written a story like that. And it sort of tore me up as I wrote it.
MS: It did, it took you way beyond academia, and it got into your heart and soul. I think that's what I felt in that as well.
PG: Wow, I'm thrilled about that because — I mean, Dick would be thrilled, because he was about so much more. It was never just a recitation of lyrics. Very early on, he wanted to record Tom T. Hall, before Tom T. Hall was a household word. I forget what song it was, but he recorded an [unknown] Kris Kristofferson song that John [Cash] recorded later, because it meant so much to him.
MS: Well, it's amazing … up in the Northeast, when we play up in that part of the world, I've never failed to do his song [“A Tombstone Every Mile”], and it never fails to become like an anthem that everybody sings. And I can tell you I’ve felt three, maybe four times the power of just what it is really all about. I saw it one time when I took Jimmy C. Newman's photograph, out at his farm, and he was dressed up in his Nudie suit with alligators all over it and rhinestones. When we were through with the photo session, he kind of leaned up against the steps of his house and the sun was going down, and I started calling off songs — I think I started with “Seasons of my Heart,” and he started singing that stuff that he was singing before he came to Nashville. And man, it was as crystal-clear of a vision as I have ever had of what the original intent of country music was to be. It happened to me one night coming home from Mississippi, when I heard a Jimmie Rodgers song on the radio — it melted me, it was on that Sara and Maybelle Carter historic reunion record. And after I read your piece on Dick Curless, I went down the YouTube hole. I found a clip of him in Europe, just him and his Ovation guitar. And man, he started singing those songs, and it felt like I was in the best hands that I could be in when it came to their vision of country music. He was so good. And he was so powerful. He was profound.
PG: It just kills you. I described in the book the last session that he had. And these were great musicians, and they were just so compelled by the sound of his voice and the meaning he put into the words that they would just stop dead sometimes. And I thought I was exaggerating, so I called some of them up. And they said they would lose their place in the song because they would be so drawn in. You mentioned Jimmie Rodgers, it's like both Dick and Lonnie Mack describe going down to those hobo jungles when they were little kids and how talking to the hobos, talking about all of the places that they had been, the places they were going, watching the way they would shave and use a piece of steel as a mirror or something. And that was when Dick was like 8 years old. He says that's when he understood what Jimmie Rodgers was singing about, “a thousand miles away from home, just waiting for a train.”
Dick Curless (second from left), with Peter, Jake, and Nina Guralnick. Courtesy of Peter Guralnick Archives.
MS: When we were doing the second Johnny Cash American Recording sessions, I was playing guitar and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were the band on that, and we recorded a song called “The One Rose,” it was a Jimmie Rodgers song, real simple, real stripped down. And I had my eyes closed playing the guitar, and I felt like I was going to fall off the stool. I felt like my equilibrium was like goofing on me. It seemed like the whole place went off axis. And when the take was finished, I headed straight to the vocal booth where John was. I said, “JR, did you feel that?”
He said, “I absolutely felt that, I thought I was going to fall over.” It wasn't a California earthquake. It was just one of those moments in time where it felt like the whole clock had been reset. It was, it was crazy. It was unexplainable, but he felt it. I felt it. Yeah, those things happen, but it’s hard to transcribe sometimes.
PG: Yeah, the title of the book is Looking to Get Lost, and this whole idea of getting lost to me is something that we're all looking for all the time, in every aspect of our lives, leaving our pitiful selves behind in a sense. Ever since I was 15 years old, I've been writing every day. I read that Hemingway did, and I thought, OK, I may not be as good as Hemingway, but I can sit down. And I did it. I started when I was 15, and I'm still going. But, you know, there’s no virtue in just being there, I’m just there in hopes that something's going to show up, but what you're really there for is just those moments. It might last five minutes, might last 10 minutes, where you're totally unaware of your surroundings and you’re lost in what you're doing, and that's the payoff for showing up. But if you're not there, it's not going to happen.
MS: Yeah. Must be present to win. Vassar Clements used to say, “Let's just get up there and get vapor-locked.”
PG: But you know, you talk about those moments, I think two of the greatest moments I’ve ever experienced — seeing Merle Haggard do his soundcheck in Reno and then doing it down in Meridian. And those sound checks went on for two, three hours. I wouldn't call Merle Haggard a happy man. He was a pretty broody man when I knew him. But at these sound checks, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier man – and he had a lot of Bob Wills’ Playboys in the band, and he just would call out the song. And it was just, it was like watching Duke Ellington run his orchestra through its paces. It was so different from any performance I ever saw him do on stage.
MS: Well, you know, when he put on his Bob Wills suit or his Lefty Frizzell suit, and put the Merle Haggard suit off to the side — I mean, Merle Haggard was an obligation, I felt — then the joy just returned. You got it. Yeah, that’s right.
I think two of the greatest moments I’ve ever experienced — seeing Merle Haggard do his soundcheck in Reno and then doing it down in Meridian … those sound checks went on for two, three hours … it was like watching Duke Ellington run his orchestra through its paces. —Peter Guralnick
PG: You know, I think you've played with half the people that I wrote about.
MS: Mainly, they helped raise me. And one of the things that you pointed out in this book that I wholeheartedly concur with you, that among the top three greatest of all things is to be in Jerry Lee [Lewis'] presence. And the beauty of it, to me, is that he don't know what he's going to do five seconds before it happens. It just happens. And you're right, man, as time ticks on, Jerry Lee stands in my mind as one of the absolute greatest of all time.
PG: Without any doubt in your mind, in my mind, and in his mind too —
MS: Absolutely. After Little Richard died, somebody said, “Are you surprised you're the last one standing?” He said, “Absolutely not.”
PG: I mean, why would he be? I've been with him when he's been fooling around with a piano in a room, not recording, the performances are unbelievable. It's like, in the studio when he sang, “Who Will The Next Fool Be” on the Elektra album. And then, at the end, at the outro, as they're fading, and [Jerry Lee Lewis] says, “Can you imagine a cat in khaki pants just walking down the street, whistling?” He went out on a whistle. And to me, it just takes it to another level.
MS: They put me in the Country Music Hall of Fame last year, and I was campaigning for [Lewis]. But, man, I hope that before he's outta here, that he knows how great his body of country music stuff is as well as the rock and roll stuff. … We got him a trail marker on the Mississippi Historical Country Music Trail, which is beautiful. And we went down to the Lewis ranch, friends and loved ones gathered around in the house. And I told Connie [Smith, Marty Stuart’s wife] on the way home, I said, “He settled up. He is at peace. He is finally at peace and it’s all over him.” And, I'll stand by that. A beautiful feeling was coming out of him that day.
PG: I saw a clip of that on TV, and it really was beautiful.
At the Lone Star Cafe: Doc Pomus in front, unknown, Ben E. King, Peter Guralnick, Solomon Burke, and Don Covay. Courtesy of Peter Guralnick Archives.
MS: Well, is your book stirring up a lot of good attention?
PG: I don't know. It's a hard thing to measure. What's been really gratifying is the extent to which I think it's reached people's hearts. I've heard from people directly. Sometimes people ask me, “Well, which one do you like, which one of your books do you like the best?” Which is a terrible question, like which of your children do you like the best? How could I ever set aside either Sam? Either our mutual friend and mentor Sam Phillips [Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll] or Sam Cooke [Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke]?
But writing this book was a trip for me because I sort of found a different path for it. I think writing Sam Phillips set me free to some extent because I wrote it in a more conversational, Sam kind of style. As he says, “If you don't tell the goddamn truth, you ain't the motherfucker I thought you were.”
MS: The language of Sam! I love it. Well, I'm telling you, man, there were so many people in this book that are already monuments, but for my money, again, that Dick Curless part was profound to me. I loved that one very much.
PG: Well, I really appreciate that. I think you know, I started writing about music for no reason other than to tell people about this music I loved so much. I started when I was about 18, 19 years old when just writing these names down: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Dick Curless, Jerry Lee Lewis — writing the names down, seeing them on paper, seeing them in print was such a thrill. But I was just trying to send people to the music. And so that's why it's so great to hear you say that about Dick Curless and to think of other people who may not have heard of him, may not have listened to him closely enough … But one of the things that struck me, and this was somebody you knew really well, was in meeting Bill Monroe. It was such a thrill and such a trip because he definitely maintained his dignity and his distance. … But it was just the way he talked about work, about hard work, whether it was music or working on the farm, as a kid, tossing oil drums around, working in Indiana.
MS: Oh, yeah, and what did he call his youth? The ancient tones? And he was such an ancient soul. He was so deep, as you know. He was a quirky bird, man. He was a quirky professor, but, at his zenith, those songs, the way he played them and his vision of it, when you get into his land, when you get into his world, to me, it's like negotiating boulders and Redwood trees, man, because that's what his stuff stands as to me. It’s just the stuff, it is the stuff.
PG: Talk about quirky professors! Aren't all of our professors, all of our mentors are quirky professors in a way? I mean, think of Sam Phillips.
MS: But see there, there you go. I've said it so many times. They were evangelists, and they held the keys. And that gift of unlocking what you said about how you started writing. Sam had that gift of turning the lights on inside of you and getting down into that untapped treasure within, and he wouldn't stop till he got there. And once he did, you couldn't put it back, and life was never the same. You couldn't go back, could you?
PG: No — but, you know, one time he said to me, I mean, this was probably 15 years after I first met him, he looked at me, gave me that look. And he says, “You know, my son, Knox, he fell in love with you the moment he met you,” but then he pauses and he says, “but I didn't.” And I'd say a year or two after that, he finally accepted me. And I believe we were friends at that point. There were a couple of openly emotional things that he said that he never would have said the first 15 or 20 years that I knew him. At one point, he says he was describing what he was trying to do in the studio, and he says, “Well, it’s like it is with your writing.” And I thought that is the highest compliment anybody's ever gonna pay me for him to see some parallel there.
MS: A treasured afternoon was after all the commercial success with those ’90s things we did, and it came to a point where “I got to do something different,” and I did “The Pilgrim” and it bombed. And I was trying to figure my way up out of the weeds from that. And I thought I need to go hang out with Sam for an afternoon. So I called, drove to Memphis, laid out my plan to him that I'd carefully curated. And at the end of it all, he said, “It'll never work. And if it does, it won't be worth a shit.” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “Because you, you haven't said the right word to me yet, which is the most important thing.” And I said, “What?” He said, “Fun. You haven't mentioned the word fun one time.” I went, “Point taken.”
PG: Today, I was writing a letter to somebody and I said, “It’s going to be big fun, as Sam would say, as Jack would say.” And it had to be fun. The point was … and Sam was a tormented soul at times; he wasn't having fun 100% of the time, and he talked about it. He was a moody fellow, even though [John Prine’s song] “How Lucky Can One Man Get?” — you probably saw this in the last few years, he would be going around humming and singing to himself “How lucky can one man get?” But, yeah, if it wasn't fun, it wasn't worth doing. And I think that's the truth.
MS: And I think one of the things that set Sam and Cowboy [Jack Clement] apart, they get talked about for being great producers, and on and on and on. But the two things that come to my mind is they were star makers. They were like Louis Mayer and those old Hollywood guys. Cowboy said one time he was talking about Waylon [Jennings], and he said, “Waylon, was supposed to have been the King of the Cowboys, but he blew it.” And he said about Faron Young, he said, “That guy could have been one of the greatest pop singers in the world, but his country connotations gave him away.” I went, “God, those are incredible observations!”
PG: Both Sam and Jack, were brilliant observers. I remember Jack would say, more than once, “Now, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, they were all stars. But Sam was the superstar who made them all.”
MS: And they called him Mr. Phillips. Each one of them in the proper setting called him Mr. Phillips to the day they died. He was Sam backstage, but in his presence, he was Mr. Phillips to people. So they all, I think a piece of those guys, some of them never left Sam — even though they did, they didn’t.
PG: The last time I saw Jerry Lee at the Sun [Records] studio, we went there with Mick Jagger, and Jerry sat down at the piano and it was like what you said, he had reached a point of, I don't know, peace in a sense. He was sitting there, and Mick was sort of interviewing, asking him questions, and somebody said, “Well, do you remember ‘Crazy Arms,’ [his fist Sun single]?” And he says, “Nah, I can't play that, I don't know that.” And then of course immediately went into “Crazy Arms,” on the piano.
Guralnick (far left), with Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker (center), and Sam Phillips. Photograph by Sally Wilbourn.
PG: So, how have you been spending your time?
MS: We've taken this time to stack up about four projects. Connie's 54th record got done, working on her 55th, and working on books and our cultural center down in Mississippi. The only thing that didn't happen is we didn't go on the road except for about three months last year. But other than that, I've enjoyed the rest. I haven’t had this much time at home since I was 12 years old. But I do pray we all find the back door to all this stuff soon.
PG: Well, I really hope so. We're scheduled for a vaccine next month if the supply holds up. But, so when’s the cultural center you have …
MS: Well, I think phase one, which is the theater — we're renovating the Ellis Theatre which is the old city theater — that starts the 1st of April. And I anticipate we just roll on through the next two phases. I think I'm 62 now. I've always said, I bet we'll cut the ribbon when I'm about 65 years old, and that feels about right.
PG: I don't know if you remember, but not long after we met, you came out with the “Busy Bee Cafe,” and you and I wanted to do a story about that. And we were going to go down to Philadelphia, [Mississippi], and it never worked out. I don't have a lot of regrets in my life — I regret that I didn't get to do a story on Satchel Paige when he was coaching out in Oklahoma, but I'm really sorry that you and I didn't get to go to Philadelphia.
MS: Oh, we can fix that at any time because I'm in and out of there all the time. You need to experience Philadelphia sooner than later. All of my archives are down there, all the collection is down there. And people are buying buildings around town and turning them into beautiful little loft apartments and landscaping and painting. So there’s a thing happening down there.
PG: Yeah, the last few times I went to Florence, Alabama, Sam's hometown, that was the kind of thing that was happening in Florence, it was like, I don't know if it was a renaissance or it was a new birth, it was really something. You know, one of the things that occurred to me as I looked at your photograph of John and Merle in the book, there's something so open and so plain and profound in their expressions. And it just struck me that here were two artists, who were trying to embrace — I mean, like so many of the people I’ve written about, from Ray Charles to Chuck Berry and Aretha Franklin or the Staple Singers, whom you were so inspired by — they were seeking to embrace not just the breadth of American musical history but the whole breadth of the American experience. And, you know, it struck me that in a lot of ways that's been your mission, too, starting with going out on the road with Lester Flatt [when you were 12 years old] and making music, recording the history, taking the photographs. I mean, it's a way of incorporating so many elements of the American experience. And it seems like, what a life, what a great thing to do.
MS: Well, it is a great life. And that was my training. And that was what inspired me. And, you know, I've said this a lot of times, at one point I went, “The chart does not matter to me whatsoever. My heart is my chart and I will follow it. If both line up, great. Otherwise I will follow my heart.” And that put me dead center in the middle of what you're speaking about. And I've tried to live that way ever since.
PG: This is why when people try to measure success, and they speak about success as if it were something that could be [quantified] — that has nothing to do with anything. I mean, to me, the entire challenge is being able to do what I set out to do. And that is a challenge. You have to be able to figure out how you can do it. All of these things are not easy to do — but they’re essential to do. And they’re the measurement of success.
MS: It's a good way to live. It takes us where we’re actually supposed to go. Well, man, congratulations on yet another wonderful book, and thank you for what you do.
PG: All right. And I just want to see you like we used to see each other sometimes on the streets of Nashville. There's a whole world left to explore. We have to get out and see it and get down to Philadelphia.
MS: Let's start with Philadelphia. It's a good plan.
Peter Guralnick’s books include a prize-winning, two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, of which Bob Dylan wrote, “Elvis steps from the pages. You can feel him breathe. This book cancels out all others.” Other books include Sweet Soul Music as well as acclaimed biographies of Sam Cooke and Sam Phillips. His new book, Looking to Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing, was described by No Depression as “not a summation so much as a culmination of his remarkable work.”
Marty Stuart is the latest to be inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in the Modern Era category. He is a five-time Grammy-winner, platinum recording artist, Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the Americana Music Association, Grand Ole Opry star, country music archivist, photographer, musician, and songwriter. Since starting out singing gospel as a child, Stuart has spent over four decades celebrating American roots music. His teenage years on tour with bluegrass legend Lester Flatt in the ’70s were followed by six years in Johnny Cash’s band in the ’80s, and a chart-topping tenure as a solo artist in the ’90s.
Header Photo: Peter Guralnick and Bill Monroe, 1980. Photograph by Russ Barnard.
