We learned with surprise and sadness today of the passing of John Stewart, singer/songwriter, who first achieved notoriety when he joined The Kingston Trio in 1961. After the Trio broke up in 1967, Stewart went on to become one of the premiere singer/songwriters of the late 20th century, although managing, with one notable exception, to work almost entirely in obscurity, albeit with a core following of loyal fans, myself among them. John Denver may have gotten all the attention, but his catalog of songs in the key of America doesn’t even approach the depth and breadth of Stewart’s.
Tapped to replace Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio, it was Stewart who, according to one critic, “taught the other guys in the Trio the names of the chords they were playing”. Stewart came to the Trio with a truckload of original songs, something of a novelty at the time, and single-handedly changed the tone of the group from a mixture of many styles (from folk, to pop, to even calypso) to a more focused Americana style, with Stewart’s complex melodies, harmonies, and lyrics dominating the group’s output. From the first song on the first album on which Stewart was a member, (Comin’ From the Mountains, from the album Close-up), it was clear that something fundamental had changed in the Trio, and that change was John Stewart.
After the breakup, Stewart continued composing, and started recording and touring as a solo act. One of his songs, Daydream Believer became a hit for the Monkees in the mid-60s. I didn’t realize until years later that Stewart had written it. It was the only song by the Monkees that I really liked, and this bothered me for years, because you certainly didn’t own up to liking anything by the Monkees, at least in my crowd. But there was something about that song that set it apart from the other things they were recording. I was extremely relieved when I finally found out that Stewart had written it, and I understood immediately why I had liked it years before.
Stewart amassed a total of 45 solo albums between 1967 and the present, including such classics as Signals Through the Glass, California Bloodlines, Cannons in the Sun, Fire in the Wind, Punch the Big Guy, Wires from the Bunker, and many, many others. 1974’s double-record, The Phoenix Concerts was a real tour-de-force, showcasing not only his phenomenal songwriting talents up until that time, but also his performance. A John Stewart concert was a unique and wonderful experience, as concerts go, and anyone who I managed to take to one over the years invariably ended up a fan.
His brief flirtation with fame came with 1979’s Bombs Away Dream Babies, with its hit single, “Gold”. Among the backing musicians on both the album and the single were Lyndsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac fame. Buckingham said he learned to play the guitar by listening to old Trio and Stewart solo records, and considered him to be a mentor. They remained friends up until the present.
But Stewart’s music was anything but top-40 material, and he faded back into the shadows shortly thereafter, at least as a performer. But he continued to produce songs for such artists as Joan Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Roseanne Cash, and others.
He went along with Bobby Kennedy during his run for the White House in 1968, which he wrote about in the song, The Last Campaign. Years later he would release an album under the same name that contained songs that he wrote and performed along the campaign trail with Bobby.
Since 2000, he and Nick Reynolds, another Trio alumnus, would hold an annual Kingston Trio Fantasy Camp, outside Scottsdale, Arizona, with concerts, lectures, stories, and the “Fantasy Concert” in which lucky campers could step up on stage and perform with John and Nick, singing Trio songs.
I’d always meant to go to one of those, because I can play and sing a lot of the songs from the Trio catalog, and a fair amount of Stewart’s work, too. But I always thought, “maybe next year …”
Ah, the things I’ve never gotten around to doing …
Since 2004, Bob Shane, the third member of the Trio, has been attending the fantasy camps as well, so we can pinpoint the last performance of the Trio to August of 2007. That makes it 50 years exactly.
No study of American music would be complete without mention of Stewart’s massive contribution to the craft.
John performed and recorded right up until his death. He’d just completed what will be a final album, his 46th, which will be released later this year.
Early in the summer of 2007, just before Fantasy Camp 8, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The symptoms had not yet manifested themselves when he suffered a massive stroke on Thursday night. He and his wife Buffy Ford-Stewart were visiting Nick Reynolds and his wife in San Diego. They had just finished dinner, followed by listening to Stewart’s newest album when he passed out, and never regained consciousness.
He died on Saturday morning in the very hospital in which he was born, in San Diego, surrounded by his wife, his children, and his friends.
He was 68 years old.
