Customer Reviews

One More Time (Chess Years)

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Appreciation for Billy Stewart has grown in leaps and bounds in the 30+ years since his death (when the car he was riding in careened off of a bridge and into the water below). Although he was not the prototypical standup singer, with matinee idol looks, Billy brought the goods every time he stepped on stage. His legacy of great songs and performances ("I Do Love You" "Sitting In The Park" "Cross My Heart" "Reap What You Sow" "Strange Feeling" "Fat Boy") speaks for itself. Billy remains a legend of the Beach Music scene on the East Coast, Underground Oldies on the West Coast, and the Northern Soul movement in the UK. Billy's performance of "Summertime" was probably his greatest. He had been using this arrangement of the song to win talent shows early in his career. By the time he got around to recording it in 1965, he had it nailed flat. It took a lot of moxie to turn this tender ballad from "Porgy And Bess" into a passionate, relentless, guaranteed-to-blow-the-roof-off show-stopper. But that is what Billy Stewart did: trilling his "r's," stuttering, double-talking, screaming, wailing, adding his inimitable "don'tcha-know-I-said-a-right-now" anywhere he pleased. A stunning live performer, Billy was also a writer of simple but powerful songs. He had a gift, in that the common man (or woman) could relate to him easily. Billy was also a great SINGER. The harmony he sings for himself on "I Do Love You" just blows away the male vocal group (probably The Dells) that is also backing him. He could take any song and make it truly his own, as he did on "Secret Love." Of his amazingly high-quality output, some great performances had to be left off of this CD. The one song I wish they could have included, is the touching-but-still-swinging (and autobiographical) Beach Music hit, "A Fat Boy Can Cry." Although he is long gone, Billy Stewart had a voice whose sound could never be stilled. Despite being always ready to poke fun at himself for being a "Fat Boy," Billy had a love of life and a belief in himself that was apparent to any who heard him sing, or saw him on stage. I think of Billy Stewart as a living legend, because his talent was even bigger that HE was. His sound lives on. Billy Stewart will live forever!

Like Little Willie John and Jesse Belvin before him, Billy Stewart remains a largely unknown and vastly underrated figure in the history of R&B. Billy Stewart was discovered by the legendary Bo Diddley who was so impressed by his ability to play the piano that he asked Billy to join his band back in 1956. Diddley even got Stewart a recording contract with his record label Chess and Billy recorded "Billy's Blues". That one went virtually unnoticed and Billy Stewart would not venture back into the studio for another seven years. In my opinion, "One More Time" is and always has been the best Billy Stewart collection available. For when Billy resumed recording at Chess in 1962 he made several outstanding and really unique records. Most oldies fans will probably recall a couple of Billy's earliest hits including "I Do Love You" and the magnificent "Sitting In The Park" from the golden year 1964.

But Billy wanted to appeal to a wider audience and was willing to take chances to achieve that goal. In 1966 he recorded the LP "Billy Stewart Teaches Old Standards New Tricks". The first single released from that album was Billy's rollicking interpretation of the George Gershwin classic "Summertime". I think Ol' George would have approved. That tune would go on to become one of the surprise hits of 1966. It was dynamite! "One More Time" offers the album version of that song which is nearly five minutes long. The follow-up single to "Summertime" was Billy's remake of the great Doris Day hit "Secret Love". I have always enjoyed that one as well. Billy Stewart had about a dozen songs appear on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1962 and 1969. Of the songs you are probably not familiar with I would recommend the uptempo "Because I Love You" as well as "Sugar and Spice", a tune that would remind you quite a bit of Marvin Gaye's "Pride and Joy". This should not be surprising as Marvin and Billy worked together frequently in the Washington D.C. area in the late 50's and early 60's.

"One More Time" offers the listener a nice retrospective on the tragically short career of this talented artist. In January 1970, Stewart's car ran off a road in North Carolina and plunged into a river killing him and three members of his band. Billy Stewart was not a particularly prolific recording artist. He much preferred performing "live" and devoted most of his energy to that. Although we can never know, Billy Stewart most likely would have wound up pursuing a career in jazz. He possessed all the attributes of a great jazz artist. If you have never heard him sing anything but his signature song "Summertime" you owe it to yourself to give this disc a listen. You will not be disappointed. Highly recommended.

If you havent heard Billy Stewart sing "Summerime", thats reason enough to get the CD... an absolute blow the roof off the house super jam... The raw power and high energy of the song itself, combined with a quality recording for the time (they knew it was gonna be a hit, and spent the money for horns, etc, and did it right.) It reminds me of the Jackie Wilson's classic "Baby Workout".., but a little more structured, a rollercoaster ride of a song, built perfectly, is starts out with a bizarre intro that makes you wonder if you missed the whole song..its almost like they wanted you to put your seat belt on and take a deep breath before the full blown juice of the song causes speakers everywhere to stretch their poly-coats to the max.. This is not a song for a low-power amp..and any attempt to sing it in the shower could cause one to miss work for days, not to mention the waste of 4 soap-microphones..This song has brought people back from the dead..

Billy Stewart is the one soul/pop singer we always neglect to include when we talk about the greats of the 60's. So I will try to correct that now- Sam Cooke,Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett,Otis Redding,James Brown,Solomon Burke,Chuck Jackson,Billy Stewart,Ben E.King,Bobby Bland,and Jackie Wilson-there-now I think I will have no problems entering the pearly gates when that time comes.An absolutely marvelous singer and performer and a must for any collection.

Billy Stewart's One More Time is an ear pleasing testimonial to one of the greatest soul singers of all time. No one could scat and stutter like Billy. His great interpretations of the standards "Summertime" & "Secret Love" are present. The former is an extended version of the single hit. The jazz interlude makes the song that much more exciting. Check out his original self-written versions of "I Do Love You" & "Sitting In The Park." Go ahead. Get your soul stirred.

God, do I love everything this talented man has ever done.

It isn't possible to convey in words the premier beauty of Billy Stewart's voice, the loss of which is, in my mind, tantamount to that of Sam Cooke, Otis Redding or Marvin Gaye. We are reminded even now, with a roaring and heartbreaking silence, of the car wreck in 1970 that took Stewart just as he was about to make his mark. It is a silence that reduces the perpetual lionization of tragically lost but frankly lesser talents to a mere cough in the Lincoln Tunnel at four in the morning.

There is no question that, as another reviewer on this page stated, Billy Stewart would have been inducted to the Hall of Fame had he lived. A soulful voice of near operatic sweep, Stewart--like Cooke, Redding, Gladys Knight and Aretha Franklin--learned the basics of his craft in gospel choirs. He eventually had all the chops of a Jackie Wilson or a Roy Orbison: sweet, soaring, vulnerable, wounded, hungry, yearning.

By the time he recorded his only hit, the heavily orchestrated Summertime, he had a quirky, scatish, gymnastic delivery that beats the monstrous brass arrangements of that song to a bloodly, whimpering pulp. It is a titanic performance that, along with I Do Love You, makes this collection worth the money.

I have loved Billy Stewart's music since I was ll years old!!!! Although I have never seen him in concert, from what I have read he was fablous!

I have all the CD's I could get my hands on, had he lived, I truly believe that he would have kept up with the times and gave us great music. I have the CD called Hits and Rareities, it is GREAT!!!!!! I am sorry that he died so trgically. WHAT A GREAT TALENT!!!!! I LOVE HIS VOICE, ESPECIALLY WHEN HE SINGS THE STANDARDS.

Billy Stewart brought a unique vocal style to the Chess soul roster. Chess is often overlooked when great 60s soul is considered, but in fact they had a great team of writers, producers, musicians and singers, and put out side after side of great soul masterpieces. Billy Stewart was one of their most consistant artists, and covered a wide range of styles. Anyone who has a deep appreciation of 60s soul will treasure this collection. This collection, mastered early in the digital era, lacks some punch, but the sound is consistant, and the selection of songs superb. I would like to see MCA/Chess do an expanded and upgraded collection, but until that happens, this is the choice. The Millenium Collection sounds much better, but only contains 11 songs. Believe me, that is not enough.

I saw Billy play the Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, SC in August of 1969. He sang "Secret Love" as the packed house danced the Shag. Never have I seen a more captivating, compelling showman. He danced, strutted, spun and sweated in the syncopated rhythm and time of each number. Had he avoided the health issues that likely contributed to his premature death in a car crash in 1970, he surely would have risen to international stardom; in fact, he was already a star in London. Artistically he was probably ten years before his time. Yet his influence is seen in the great R&B acts of the 70s and beyond.

At the time of his death, he was most famous in North and South Carolina (and MAYBE London; I heard back then Mick and the Stones were big fans). His fame extended as far north as his hometown of Washington DC and as far south as Orlando and Tampa, FL. For those in the know, he was the ultimate "Beach Music" performer, and that regional cult-following generated most of his live performances until his death. In the rest of the US he was an amazing performer playing in small R&B oriented clubs. But in the southeast, he was the undisputed King of Beach Music, packing major venues with sold-out performances.

For the uninitiated, Beach Music has nothing to do with Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys or California (except for a song by that name performed by a band named the Georgia Prophets, and a female vocalist (Janice Barrett) who is a native of the Golden State). Brian Wilson has acknowledged the music of surfers was always R&B, and that his surfing oriented music never caught on with "real surfers." That was also true of "beach people" on both coasts; most actually preferred classic (50's and 60's) rhythm and blues, as opposed to the pop and rock music of that time.

Beach Music was so-named beginning in the early and mid 50's after the Great Depression and the two World Wars which sandwiched that greatest of economic meltdowns (so far). After half of a century of death, destruction and poverty, and the advent of the affordable family car for the middle class, families began taking regular vacations. The beautiful coastal areas in the southeast were only accessible by two lane roads, and travel times were long compared to today. For small-town southeastern middle-class families, the beach was an exotic and exciting destination; a place where dreams found reality, with hope for fun, sun and romance away from the farm, the mill and the shop.

In my small mill hometown in the Piedmont of North Carolina, family vacation in the `50s and `60s meant Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. When my parents were newlyweds in the late '40s and early '50s, they would take summer vacations there. Many of their peers traveled there for their honeymoons. And once the children (the Baby Boomers) were born, they took us to the beach too.

On the Strip (later marketing dubbed it the Grand Strand), and on Ocean Boulevard from Cherry Grove to Ocean Drive, then down to Windy Hill, continuing south to Myrtle Beach proper, and finally all the way down to Pawley's Island, the old pavilions were uniformly bi-racially attended in the days when segregation was the southern standard (although I do remember segregation being enforced until the late-60s at the huge, upscale Myrtle Beach Pavilion, which was a much bigger business venture). But especially in the '50s, these relatively remote, rural beach towns were still partially in the depression, and segregation gave way to the entrepreneurship of the small-town pavilion operators.

The jukeboxes in those clubs (whose patrons included white vacationers in the summertime, and both African-American and white locals year round) contained not only the early popular music of the 40's and 50's, but also the R&B (later, in the 60's, "soul music") hits demanded by the year-round patronage. When the vacationers would hear the locals playing their R&B, they instantly fell for that exotic, soul-inspiring passion that is classic R&B. They would return to their hometown, call their local AM radio station and ask them to play something like "Sixty-minute Man" by Billy Ward and His Dominoes, or "Work with Me Annie" by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. Some of this music was far too risqué (not to mention racially incorrect) for the buttoned down, segregated AM radio of the 50s. The disk jockeys would ask the kids making such requests where they heard this wild music, and the response was "at the beach." So Beach Music became one of the early "underground" popular music genres of the modern age, and is surely the best in quality and endurance. And Billy Stewart, in 1969, was the King of that rather small, but fervent Kingdom.

If you are interested in getting a feel for the Beach Music culture, Hollywood made a good but under-appreciated effort at popularizing the Beach Music subculture (which was still fervent in the late '80s) with the major motion-picture "Shag." It was filmed on location in Myrtle Beach by "Dirty Dancing" producer Kenny Ortega, and featured big-name teen stars Phoebe Cates, Annabeth Gish, Bridget Fonda, Paige Hannah and others that don't come to mind right now. The film did not do well at the box office. Today America still does not understand or even know about Beach Music, but "Shag" garnered excellent reviews from major league critics, and today is a cult-classic readily available on DVD. BTW: in the Shag contest in the movie, one of the contestant couples danced to Billy's "Secret Love."

Beach Music was in the process of "going commercial" around the time of the movie, and "new Beach Music" has been made since the late '70s by many Beach Music bands (the "original" Beach Music was made by R&B artists who didn't know they were making "Beach Music," it was just great R&B that was perfect for dancing the Shag, which is the official "State Dance" of South Carolina). Among the best of those Beach Bands are still popular today: the Catalinas, the Band of Oz, the Men of Distinction, the Fantastic Shakers, and many others. Interesting is the fact that most of these bands are made up of white performers in a genre of music almost exclusively dominated by black performers. However, a number of the old original Beach Music superstars have continued in relevance due to the Beach Music phenomenon. Among these legends are: The Chairmen of the Board (with the Chairman himself, General Norman Johnson), The (Atlanta) Tams with the great Joe Pope, a number of iterations of The Drifters and The Platters "reunions," as well as great solo stars such as Jerry Butler (the Ice Man) and Lou Rawls. Beach Music is indeed a rich pantheon of the greatest popular musicians and music of the modern era. Had racism and segregation not been so institutionally entrenched in the 50's when it all this glorious music began, it is a certainty that R&B would have been even more impactful on American and world culture; we would likely have had a "Beach Music" world instead of "Beatlemania" and "the British Invasion."

In my opinion, the R&B music of the '50s-'70s is and will be the most enduring, the most "classic" of all other popular music since 1950s, including the great sea-change affected by the Beatles. 200 years from now, I'm sure people will enjoy "Meet the Beatles", "Revolver," "Sgt. Pepper," and "Abbey Road." But even now, that music rings less like gold, and sometimes a little like tin when contrasted to Billy Stewart's "Summertime", The Tymes' "Ms Grace", The Chairmen of the Board's "Everything is Tuesday" or the Clover's amazing "Drive It Home." Not only is the music immortal, but you can DANCE to it (well, except maybe for "Summertime"; only Billy could dance to that one!).

The tunes on Billy Stewart's "One More Time: The Chess Years" anthology cover most of Billy's recordings of note. "Sitting in the Park" remains my favorite of many favorites, with a soul stirring staccato and falsetto that brings chills and almost tears, as does his lover's prayer "Cross My Heart." "I Do Love You," "Fat Boy" and his definitive interpretation of "Summertime" are all "Beach Music" standards, as is rocking "Secret Love." Once you have heard Billy sing "Summertime," you will realize no other artist can ever do that song justice; his performance is totally unique. Indeed, Billy's interpretation transcends the immortal Gershwin's idyllic song of the south; Billy owns it forevermore.

Billy was and forever will reign as the King of Beach Music. The first time I ever saw little Michael Jackson on TV with the Jackson 5, my first thought was the Jackson family had been watching Billy Stewart dance and sing. Daddy Joe surely had taught little Michael to emulate Billy. Michael did a good imitation, but even the King of Pop would surely acknowledge the preeminence of Billy Stewart.

If you enjoy rhythm and blues, then you must own this album; all Billy's contemporaries and those who followed him learned from his passion, power and verve, even though they they couldn't BE him (not even the great Michael Jackson). Along with Al Green and Marvin Gaye, Billy Stewart stands among the icons of the R&B genre, and remains, in my opinion, one of the great musical entertainers and vocalists in the history of popular music.

Hello Music Lovers, or better Good Music Lovers

I know the reason I picked up this CD. My fabulous friend who has a memory like a steel trap kept getting bombarded with one question from me one winter. It was, "what was the name of the guy that sang Summertime". With the patience of a saint he continued to repetitiously state, "Billy Stewart". In fact, I still have problems remembering, why this is, I don't know. However, I know I could never forget how this man sang this song, which was I'd heard for the first time as a mere child but not just a child when it came to music. I studied it,I played instruments,and I was in department stores tugging at my father's coat to please buy me Tom Jones,Johnny Cash, and the guy that sang Summertime.I never could recall his name.Many years passed, and I heard it in a movie, and that was it, my super genius pal got my email and answered back in a flash, and before that flash flickered out, I had it ordered on Amazon. Bottom line,no matter how many versions exist, only Mr. Stewart's is my preferred choice of the absolute best version. Can the man sing- this man, who sadly is no longer with us, was a genius as to how he sang it, and in my mind, everything he sang, he transformed to the category of special.