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Marty stuart and connie smith wedding6/13/2023 ![]() Included in the exhibition are intimate glimpses of such country legends as Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Porter Wagoner, Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe, Kitty Wells, George Jones and more. You wouldn’t see that if he weren’t a member of the family … I’ve had unparalleled access to people and situations where a lot of people can’t just walk up and walk in the door. “The thing that really got me (about Hilton’s jazz photographs) was this picture of Ella Fitzgerald playing dice with the boys. And like Hilton, Stuart had unparalleled access to what was happening behind the scenes in that world. “I came to Nashville with a full awareness by way of my mother of how important photography was for memories and just collecting the world around us,” he says. ![]() ![]() Inspired by the great jazz bassist and famed photographer Milt Hilton, Stuart began snapping images of everything and everyone around him as his country music career developed and blossomed. Mission accomplished.Īlthough Stuart’s auspicious first photograph of Connie Smith isn’t included in the Booth exhibition, there’s seemingly an equally fantastic story behind every image in the show. In spite of the 17 year age difference between them, the two fell in love and married in 1997. When Connie Smith returned to country music in 1996 after a long absence, she enlisted Stuart’s help in the studio. Stuart broke out on his own hit-making solo career path in a major way after signing to Columbia Records in 1986. After Flatt retired due to failing health in 1979, Stuart began touring and performing with the likes of Bob Dylan, Vassar Clements, and Doc and Merle Watson, eventually joining Johnny Cash’s band in 1980. On the way home from the concert, Stuart point-blankly informed his mother that he was in love with Connie Smith, and he vowed then and there that one day he would marry her.ĭon’t ever let Stuart’s modest, down-home demeanor fool you: He’s nothing if not determined, and he’s a man of his word.Īlready an aspiring young guitar and mandolin prodigy at that time, Stuart was discovered early on, and he famously hit the road at the age of 14 with the legendary Lester Flatt and his band. It’s a fantastic image: a young Connie Smith, looking radiantly glamorous, sits in the front seat of a car moments before being whisked away from the venue, smiling benignly towards the camera (held, of course, by a kid in a gaudy yellow shirt). “I said, ‘Miss Smith, can I take your picture?’ That was the first photograph I ever took.” “Connie had taken a seat in a car behind the stage,” he says. The singer didn’t notice Stuart or his shirt during the show, but immediately after the concert, Stuart spotted an opportunity and asked his mother if he could borrow her camera. “My mother took me to the department store that morning, and I had her buy me a yellow shirt so Connie Smith would see me.” “That was a big day for us because she was my mom’s favorite singer,” Stuart recalls. In 1970, when Stuart was 11, country music star Connie Smith came to sing at Mississippi’s Choctaw Fair. And you know how country musicians always have a great story about the first time they picked up a guitar? Stuart has the best story ever about the first time he picked up a camera. Like his mother, he takes photographers that have close ties to intimate moments, friends and family. Stuart, 59, shares his mother’s eye for an unforgettable image. Hilda Stuart's more than 60 years worth of images were recently organized into a lauded exhibition at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and published in the book "Choctaw Gardens." “She just knew when to pick up the camera and then go back to whatever she was doing and never think a thing about it.”Īnd that's not just a man bragging about his mama either. Watch the interview clip below where Marty Stuart discussed his marriage to Connie Smith below.“Mama could be frying chicken and then take a picture with any kind of camera, and you had an all-time family classic,” he says. Connie Smith is 80 years old (born August 14, 1941). Smith replied with “let’s do that again!’ and the romance officially started there.ĭespite their 17 year age difference and Connie’s reluctance to marry for a fourth time, the couple tied the knot on July 8, 1997! The pair have lived happily ever after since! Marty Stuart is 63 years old (born September 30, 1958). When he found her there he walked up to her car and kissed her. She let me get it all out and she said ‘son, 5 minutes of the right thing is better than 50 years of the wrong thing’ and I said ‘case closed’” Stuart recalls in the video.Īfter the pep talk, Stuart asked Smith to meet him in the parking lot of a grocery store in Nashville. “I said ‘mama I need to come talk to you’, and I laid out everything I was feeling and the impossibilities and how ridiculous it all looked on paper.
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