Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives

If you were to give country music an address, you might say it’s at the corner of sacred and profane, two doors up from the blues and folk, and just across the street from gospel, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. And on a deeper emotional and spiritual level, it resides where Saturday night meets Sunday morning. No one understands these coordinates better than Marty Stuart. For over 40 years, the five-time GRAMMY winning multi- instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, photographer and historian has been building a rich legacy at this very crossroads. On his latest release with his band The Fabulous Superlatives, the double-disc Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, Stuart captures all the authentic neon and stained-glass hues of country music – from love and sex to heartache and hardship to family and God – in twenty-three tracks! “I’ve always thought that country music had a really unique relationship with gospel music,” Stuart says. “It is interesting to me that country stars can sing drinking and cheating songs authentically, then at some point during the evening or the broadcast, take their hats off and say, ‘Friends, here’s our gospel song.’ If it’s the right messenger it seamlessly flows. That’s a time-honored tradition, from Jimmie Rodgers to Hank Williams to Johnny Cash. Rogue prophets and rogue preachers. That is my world! Another part of my world, while growing up in Mississippi, was listening to our local radio station, WHOC. In the morning, they signed on with country music and farm reports. At noon they played gospel music for an hour. Then afternoon was rock ‘n’ roll and top 40. Late afternoon was soul. And they signed off with easy listening. It was kind of a reflection of how Mississippi is – the birthplace of America’s music. The church house is the common denominator, and every form of music has a touch of the blues. Traditional country touched me the deepest, but all of these other styles were relevant to me.”