RETURN OF THE PILGRIM
It may not have been a hit when it was first released in 1999, but Marty Stuart’s tenth album, The Pilgrim, was a watershed moment in the history of country music. Stuart had had tremendous success in the 1990s, especially after his brilliant This One’s Gonna Hurt You album in ’92. But when The Pilgrim went south, MCA Records dropped him, and the multi-instrumentalist/singer-songwriter/historian/photographer/author found himself almost having to start over, this after playing with bluegrass legend Lester Flatt at 13 and Johnny Cash at 22.
Fast-forward 21 years and The Pilgrim: A Wall-To-Wall Odyssey is now a gorgeous 11” x 10.5” coffee-table book which tells the true story of a Mississippi man who fell deeply in love with a woman who didn’t tell him she was already married. When the husband showed up to confront the lovers, he kissed his wife and blew his own head off. The wife disappeared in anguish. The man, whose only sin was falling in love, spent the rest of his days in a haze of alcohol and road-weary excess, searching the country, riding the rails, dedicating his life to finding that woman. He is The Pilgrim, and the journey he took, plus the journey that Marty Stuart took in making this story come alive again, is a fascinating account of the steely resolve of both men.
The book comes complete with a remixed, remastered version of CD with 10 additional new bonus tracks with legends like Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris, Uncle Josh Graves, Earl Scruggs and Connie Smith. Plus, there’s a lifetime of pictures, many of which Stuart took, of him working with people like Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Rick Nelson, Bill Monroe,
