The Essential Gary Stewart  (Audio CD) 
by Gary Stewart

In an age when barroom-'n'-cheatin' songs hit country radio program directors' wastebaskets quicker than you can say "Foolin' Around," it's good to remember Gary Stewart. The Kentucky native kicked around for years before breaking big in 1975 with the likes of "Drinkin' Thing," "Out of Hand," and "She's Actin' Single (I'm Drinkin' Doubles)." If anything, those hard-driving plaints were soon eclipsed by the rocking "Your Place or Mine (I Really Don't Care)" and "Ten Years of This" (a bitter soliloquy delivered by a man to his wife on the occasion of their wedding anniversary)--two cuts on which Stewart gives Jerry Lee Lewis himself a run for his money in terms of unhinged vocal artistry. Essential captures all these and more on a generous CD that matches Gram Parsons, if not Hank Williams, for abandon and dark emotional intensity. --Rickey Wright