Frank Gutch Jr: John Stewart— More Than Just “Gold”; Wayne Berry— Welcome Home

I picked up a turntable for my sister a couple of months ago.  She had found what she said was about twenty of her old albums (it was more like a hundred and fifty) and had the urge to once again hear them.  Mostly they were albums I remember her liking— Percy Faith, Rod McKuen, Enoch Light and the like.  She drove me nuts with those albums when we were kids but I secretly liked a lot of them.  (I did truly hate the Sound of Music, Colleen, but the others were okay).

Frank Gutch Jr: A Short Word About John Stewart; When a Label’s a Label, When a Label Is Not a Label, and When Labels Suck the Life Right Out of Music; a Research Turtles/Flamethrowers Update— Plus Notes…..

I remember it like it was yesterday, hearing that John Stewart had left us.  My heart sank and all that was good seemed to disappear.  John and I had been acquaintances, of a sort.  We had met when a salesman working for a distributor handling Stewart’s own label, Neon Dreams, brought him into the dungeon at Peaches Records in Seattle for a visit.  We were introduced and I liked him from the first handshake.  I at first felt intimidated, of course.  How could you not be when you considered his background— the Kingston Trio albums and before that, The Cumberland Three, and after that, the incredibly huge string of solo albums.