Billy Stewart
Encyclopedia
Billy Stewart was an American
musical artist
, with a highly distinctive scat-singing style, who enjoyed popularity in the 1960s.
show every Sunday for five years at WUST
radio station
in Washington, D.C.
He made the transition to secular music
by filling in occasionally for The Rainbows, a D.C. area vocal group led by the future soul
star
, Don Covay
. It was also through The Rainbows that Stewart met another aspiring singer, Marvin Gaye
. Seminal rock and roll
er Bo Diddley
has been credited with discovering Stewart playing piano
in Washington, D.C. in 1956 and inviting him to be one of his backup musicians
.
This led to a recording contract
with Diddley's label
, Chess Records
and Diddley played guitar
on Stewart's 1956 recording
of "Billy's Blues". A strong seller in Los Angeles
, "Billy's Blues" reached the sales top 25 in Variety
magazine
. Stewart then moved to Okeh Records
and recorded "Billy's Heartache", backed by the Marquees, another D.C. area group which featured Marvin Gaye.
Back at Chess in the early 1960s, Stewart began working with A&R
man Billy Davis. He recorded a song called "Fat Boy" and then had additional success with his recordings of "Reap What You Sow" and "Strange Feeling", both making the Billboard
Hot 100
and the Top 30 in the R&B
charts
. Major chart success was not far away and in 1965, Stewart recorded two self-written songs, "I Do Love You" (#6 R&B, #26 Pop), which featured his brother Johnny Stewart as one of the backing vocalists with his partner James English, and "Sitting in the Park" (#4 R&B, #24 Pop). His idiosyncratic improvisational technique of doubling-up, scatting his words and trilling his lips made his style unique in the 1960s.
In 1966, Stewart recorded the LP
Unbelievable. The first single
released from that album
was Stewart's radical interpretation of the George Gershwin
song, "Summertime
", a Top 10 hit
on both the pop and R&B charts. The follow-up single was Stewart's cover version
of the Doris Day
hit "Secret Love", which reached the Pop Top 30 and just missed the Top 10 on the R&B chart.
Stewart continued to record throughout the remainder of the 1960s on Chess without major success. A weight problem worsened, and he developed diabetes. Stewart suffered minor injuries in a motorcycle accident in 1969.
Stewart died in a car accident the following January, just two months prior to his 33rd birthday. The accident happened when the Ford Thunderbird Williams was driving approached a bridge across the Neuse River. Stewart's car left the highway, ran along the median strip at a slight angle to the highway, struck the bridge curbing, and plunged into the river, killing all four men instantly. The car had been purchased only 12 days before and had been driven only 1,400 miles before the accident occurred. The first trial was won by Ford Motor Company, but on appeal the court ruled that the trial court's refusal to give the requested jury instructions was in error and ordered the case
reversed and remanded. The case was then settled out of court.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, his music was popular among Latino, specifically Chicano, youth on the West Coast. Stewart was inducted into the Washington Area Music Association Hall of Fame in 2002.
His version of "Summertime" was one of the songs featured on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour show and was one of the few artists Bob actually responded about during his mainly fictitious email responses to listener questions.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
musical artist
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, with a highly distinctive scat-singing style, who enjoyed popularity in the 1960s.
Biography
Stewart was 12 years old when he began singing with his brothers Johnny 11, James 9 and Frank 4 as the 4 Stewart Brothers, and later went on to get their own radioRadio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
show every Sunday for five years at WUST
WUST
WUST is a radio station broadcasting on 1120 kHz in the medium-wave AM band licensed to Washington, DC. Its tower is located in nearby Fairfax, Virginia. It broadcasts brokered foreign language programming, including an English language news program from China Radio International Mondays through...
radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
in Washington, D.C.
He made the transition to secular music
Secular music
Secular music is non-religious music. "Secular" means being separate from religion.In the West, secular music developed in the Medieval period and was used in the Renaissance. Swaying authority from the Church that focused more on Common Law influenced all aspects of Medieval life, including music...
by filling in occasionally for The Rainbows, a D.C. area vocal group led by the future soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
star
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
, Don Covay
Don Covay
Don Covay is an American R&B/rock and roll/soul music singer and songwriter most active in the 1950s and 1960s, who received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1994...
. It was also through The Rainbows that Stewart met another aspiring singer, Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....
. Seminal rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
er Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
has been credited with discovering Stewart playing piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
in Washington, D.C. in 1956 and inviting him to be one of his backup musicians
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
.
This led to a recording contract
Recording contract
A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...
with Diddley's label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, Chess Records
Chess Records
Chess Records was an American record label based in Chicago, Illinois. It specialized in blues, R&B, soul, gospel music, early rock and roll, and occasional jazz releases....
and Diddley played guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
on Stewart's 1956 recording
Sound recording and reproduction
Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...
of "Billy's Blues". A strong seller in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, "Billy's Blues" reached the sales top 25 in Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
. Stewart then moved to Okeh Records
Okeh Records
Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918. From 1926 on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...
and recorded "Billy's Heartache", backed by the Marquees, another D.C. area group which featured Marvin Gaye.
Back at Chess in the early 1960s, Stewart began working with A&R
A&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
man Billy Davis. He recorded a song called "Fat Boy" and then had additional success with his recordings of "Reap What You Sow" and "Strange Feeling", both making the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
and the Top 30 in the R&B
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...
charts
Record chart
A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....
. Major chart success was not far away and in 1965, Stewart recorded two self-written songs, "I Do Love You" (#6 R&B, #26 Pop), which featured his brother Johnny Stewart as one of the backing vocalists with his partner James English, and "Sitting in the Park" (#4 R&B, #24 Pop). His idiosyncratic improvisational technique of doubling-up, scatting his words and trilling his lips made his style unique in the 1960s.
In 1966, Stewart recorded the LP
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
Unbelievable. The first single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
released from that album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
was Stewart's radical interpretation of the George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
song, "Summertime
Summertime (song)
"Summertime" is an aria composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy on which the opera was based, although the song is also co-credited to Ira Gershwin by ASCAP....
", a Top 10 hit
Hit record
A hit record is a sound recording, usually in the form of a single or album, that sells a large number of copies or otherwise becomes broadly popular or well-known, through airplay, club play, inclusion in a film or stage play soundtrack, causing it to have "hit" one of the popular chart listings...
on both the pop and R&B charts. The follow-up single was Stewart's cover version
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
of the Doris Day
Doris Day
Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...
hit "Secret Love", which reached the Pop Top 30 and just missed the Top 10 on the R&B chart.
Stewart continued to record throughout the remainder of the 1960s on Chess without major success. A weight problem worsened, and he developed diabetes. Stewart suffered minor injuries in a motorcycle accident in 1969.
Stewart died in a car accident the following January, just two months prior to his 33rd birthday. The accident happened when the Ford Thunderbird Williams was driving approached a bridge across the Neuse River. Stewart's car left the highway, ran along the median strip at a slight angle to the highway, struck the bridge curbing, and plunged into the river, killing all four men instantly. The car had been purchased only 12 days before and had been driven only 1,400 miles before the accident occurred. The first trial was won by Ford Motor Company, but on appeal the court ruled that the trial court's refusal to give the requested jury instructions was in error and ordered the case
reversed and remanded. The case was then settled out of court.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, his music was popular among Latino, specifically Chicano, youth on the West Coast. Stewart was inducted into the Washington Area Music Association Hall of Fame in 2002.
His version of "Summertime" was one of the songs featured on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour show and was one of the few artists Bob actually responded about during his mainly fictitious email responses to listener questions.
Singles
- Chess 1625: "Billy's Blues" / "Billy's Blues" (3/1956, with Bo Diddley & His Band)
- Okeh 4-7095: "Baby, You're My Only Love" / "Billy's Heartache" (1957 with Bo Diddley, backed by The "Marquees")
- Chess 1820: "Reap What You Sow" / "Fat Boy" (1962) - Billboard #18 R&B, #79 pop
- Chess 1835: "True Fine Lovin'" / "Wedding Bells" (1962)
- Chess 1852: "Scramble" / "Oh My, What Can The Matter Be" (1963)
- Chess 1868: "Strange Feeling" / "Sugar And Spice" (1963) - #25 R&B, #70 pop
- Chess 1888: "A Fat Boy Can Cry" / "Count Me Out" (1964)
- Chess 1905: "Tell It Like It Is" / "My Sweet Senorita" (1964)
- Chess 1922: "I Do Love You" / "Keep Loving" (1965) - #6 R&B, #26 pop
- Chess 1932: "Sitting In The Park" / "Once Again" (1965) - #4 R&B, #24 pop
- Chess 1941: "How Nice It Is" / "No Girl" (1965)
- Chess 1948: "Because I Love You" / "Mountain Of Love" (1965)
- Chess 1960: "Love Me" / "Why Am I Lonely" (1966) - #38 R&B
- Chess 1966: "Summertime" / "To Love, To Love" (1966) - #7 R&B, #10 pop
- Chess 1978: "Secret Love" / "Look Back And Smile" (1967) - #11 R&B, #29 pop
- Chess 1991: "Every Day I Have The Blues" / "Ol' Man River" (1967) - #41 R&B, #79 pop
- Chess 2002: "Cross My Heart" / "Why (Do I Love You So)?" (1968) - #34 R&B, #86 pop / #49 R&B
- Chess 2053: "Tell Me The Truth" / "What Have I Done?" (1968) - #48 R&B
- Chess 2063: "I'm In Love" / "Crazy 'Bout You, Baby" (1969)
- Chess 2080: "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" / "We'll Always Be Together" (1969)
Albums
- Chess 1496: I Do Love You (1965) (Billboard #97)
- Chess 1499: Unbelievable (1965) (Billboard #138)
- Chess 1513: Billy Stewart Teaches Old Standards New Tricks (1967)
- Chess 1547: Remembered (1969)
- Sugar Hill/Chess CH-8401: The Greatest Sides (1982)
External links
- WAMA Hall of Fame
- Billy Stewart at Find A GraveFind A GraveFind a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.-History:...