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Busy Bee Cafe |
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Busy Bee Cafe |
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Billboard | |
Stereo Review |
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New Country |
Billboard |
July 17, 1982 |
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| Stuart is a virtuoso musician on anything with strings as well as a 10-year veteran of country performing at the ripe age of 22. A graduate of Lester Flatt's band and now with Johnny Cash, Stuart's assembled a blue ribbon panel of players for this debut. Though he romps through the cuts in the company of Cash, Doc and Merle Watson, Earl Scruggs and Jerry Douglas, among others, he's far from intimidated. He even sings well and could continue what Ricky Skaggs has so admirably begun on the charts. | ||
New Country |
April 1994 |
| Like fellow bluegrasser Ricky Skaggs, Stuart opted for a pickin' intensive debut on the Durham, North Carolina-based Sugar Hill label before going to the big leagues. Here, Stuart's virtuosity on mandolin shines, even as he attracts a group of country's finest pickers to spark and race with him. Though no clear style emerges, this project lends credence to Stuart's prodigy status. [Five Stars] | |
Stereo Review |
December 1982 |
| All-star albums that give Doc Watson a large role usually succeed and Marty Stuart, a young sideman in the Johnny Cash band, did that and more for his debut album. He got his boss, Big John, to sing a couple of numbers, Merle Watson to play some slide guitar, Earl Scruggs on banjo on a couple of tunes--a good supporting cast. and a good mixture of old and new songs--and he got himself a success, aesthetically, with some heft to it. Busy Bee Cafe, on Sugar Hill, is an all-acoustic but modern-sounding, traditional, but fresh new album that has, as one of its asides, a major flat-picking explosion.
Doc Watson, who plays or shares the lead on all of Side One, and Stuart sets off that explosion, trading leads on I Don't Love Nobody. Watson continues to amaze me, but Stuart is no slouch in comparison. He doesn't seem to control the volume of as many strings at a time as Doc does, and stylistically he is more of a note-bender than a rippler, but he's impressive, particularly in the speedy Boogie For Clarence. He wrote that one, an instrumental, apparently referring to the late Clarence White, another great flat-picker. Stuart is also a fine mandolin player, beyond bluegrass and toward David Grisman country, and he does a good job as lead singer on five of the songs on the album. He has a soft-edged voice that sounds a little like that of Mickey Newbury. And his songwriting, what little there is of it here, is better than respectable. This is a performers' album, though, and the performers seem excited about it. Earl Scruggs is in fine form and Doc Watson plays hotter runs than he generally does on his own albums. Jerry Douglas doesn't get much tone of the dobro, or it isn't recorded well--the bass also seems a bit squeezed--but the engineering generally is pretty good, especially around the singers and lead instruments. That's where the action is and plenty of it, but it's complementary rather than competitive and, for all the razzle-dazzle, there are no fills that don't fit. Busy Bee Cafe is quite something; an example of how good musicians, whether they are stars or not, can inspire one another when the conditions are right. And Marty Stuart, for a mere kid, is providing some pretty good conditions. By Noel Coppage |
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