Ireland in 50 Albums, No 23: Out On His Own, by Louis Stewart (1977)
Louis Stewart recorded Out On His Own in Bray, Co Wicklow.
Louis Stewart was the first world-class jazz musician that Ireland ever produced – he was also probably its greatest and certainly most revered. And Out On His Own is almost universally regarded as his masterpiece.
Active for more than half a century, during which he appeared on 70-plus albums, guitarist Stewart, who died in 2016 at the age of 72, was a role model, standard-bearer and vital inspiration – especially for those who played in his many groups or came after him.
He was living proof that an Irish jazz musician could make it on a global stage – and, while Stewart’s renown was always greater abroad, his many fans at home idolised him as a local hero and national treasure. “For young aspirant jazz musicians of my generation, Louis was a god,” Ronan Guilfoyle has written; the bassist and composer began his career with Stewart in 1979.
In London in the swinging ’60s and ’70s Stewart was a key member of groups fronted by leading saxophonists Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott; he also toured and recorded with some of the international stars of the music, including Benny Goodman, George Shearing, Blossom Dearie and Dizzy Gillespie.
In new sleeve notes to Out On His Own, a stunning solo album that has recently been smartly remastered and re-released, critic Cormac Larkin places Stewart in equally elevated company: “[He was] an Irish artist to stand alongside Heaney, Beckett and Le Brocquy as one who transcended his artform and earned the respect and admiration of his peers around the world.”
His long-time friend and musical partner Jim Doherty agrees. “I have only in my life met a few people that qualify under the word ‘genius’,” says the 84-year-old pianist and composer. “And I wouldn’t know how to define one. But anybody who saw Louis live or heard his records knew immediately. He was such an innovator as an improviser; you’d suddenly realise that this guy is playing things straight off that you’d never heard anybody else play – on any instrument.”
Doherty was once asked by a fan if it was true that Louis Stewart was one of the three best guitarists in the world. “Well,” replied Doherty, whose son is the comedian David O’Doherty, “the other two certainly think so.”
It was Jim Doherty who gave Stewart his first break. Louis grew up on the edge of the Liberties in Dublin, was self-taught on guitar from the age of 14, and possessed a preternatural talent. He quickly came under the influence of such American guitar greats as Les Paul, Barney Kessel and Charlie Christian, and at just 16 put himself forward for a position in a showband led by Cork trumpeter Chris Lamb. Doherty was the 21-year-old pianist in that band and he conducted the audition.
“Almost every guitar player at the time was either an Elvis or Buddy Holly imitator,” says Doherty. “But then this scrawny kid with glasses came in and asked, ‘Do you know any Benny Goodman tunes?’ We played ‘Seven Come Eleven’ and straightaway I thought, ‘Jesus, this kid can play!’ After ten minutes, I sent all the other guitar players home.”
Quitting the steady commercial work of the showband three years later to dedicate himself to a growing love of jazz, Stewart appeared at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland twice at the end of the 1960s, winning prizes for best soloist. One, in 1969, included a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He never did take up the offer. Stewart was already married with a baby daughter, had moved to London, and was generating a good amount of work. He also once remarked that “jazz can be learnt, but not taught”.
In the mid-70s, as a highly respected member of Ronnie Scott’s house band at his eponymous Soho club, Stewart met and often played with many visiting jazz greats, including some of his personal heroes – musicians such as Stan Getz and Bill Evans. He would also return to Dublin periodically to be with his family, with whom he had chosen to move back to the city, and to play to packed houses at venues such as the Baggot Inn.
“He was like the conquering hero,” Ronan Guilfoyle has written; the budding bassist was still in his teens at the time. “His technique, which was always powerful and fluid, rose to an even higher plane.”
It was during this fertile period in Louis’s work, when his self-belief and confidence must have been sky-high, that Stewart made Out On His Own. Recorded in sound engineer Pat Hayes’s small basement studio in his house in Bray, Co Wicklow, mostly in first takes on a single day, November 15 1976, the ambitious solo guitar album was the debut release of Livia Records, Ireland’s first jazz label. Livia was founded by noted Dublin painter – and jazz and James Joyce enthusiast – Gerald Davis, a descendant of Lithuanian Jews who arrived in Ireland in the 1880s.
Out On His Own was suitably titled: Stewart first laid down accompanying rhythm guitar tracks to nine of the tunes, then later added melodies and improvised lines and voicings; the remaining eight tracks he played entirely solo.
The tunes may have been drawn mainly from Stewart’s prodigious repertoire of timeless jazz and Great American Songbook standards, yet he also chose to record music by contemporary jazz composers such as Chick Corea and Charles Lloyd, as well as two bossa novas, an improvised blues and even an interpretation of traditional Irish folk song ‘She Moved Through the Fair’.
Throughout the album, which was released in 1977 and has been expanded to 19 tracks, three previously unissued, for the new CD and download (the original vinyl version is also re-released this month), Stewart’s playing is rarely less than astonishing.
On jewel-like tracks of mostly around three minutes or less, he offers a masterclass in modern, mainstream, bebop-rooted jazz guitar. Not only do the remastered editions bring out the many gorgeous and often tender tones of Stewart’s Gibson archtop, but they also further amplify the guitarist’s virtuoso technique, swinging lyricism and harmonic sophistication. It is an exercise in precision, clarity and effortless mastery.
“Louis may have shown a certain humility and shyness in person, but once he put a guitar across his chest all that disappeared and his playing had total authority,” says Jim Doherty. “You can hear that on Out On His Own. Jesus, it might not have sold many copies at the time. But it’s a work of wonder, as everyone knows, I remember it got some good reviews, and its reputation has only grown over the years.” As Stewart’s most personal and intimate recording, Out On His Own has continued to have a strong influence on generations of guitarists and musicians.
“Having listened to the album again recently, I have a new appreciation for it not only as a seminal recording in Irish jazz history, but also for the skill and craftsmanship of Louis’s playing,” says 35-year-old guitarist Chris Guilfoyle, who is Ronan Guilfoyle’s son. “His influence loomed large in the teachers that I studied with and looked up to, guitarists such as Tommy Halferty and Mike Nielsen. So without Louis, there would probably be no Tommy or Mike – and that would have had a great effect on me deciding to become a professional jazz guitarist too.”
A quiet and modest man who liked nothing better than a few pints, cigarettes and the company of fellow musicians, Stewart would no doubt have bridled at such a suggestion – and made light of it, as he often did. A devotee of Flann O’Brien’s satirical and anarchic writing under the name Myles na gCopaleen, Stewart had a dry and acerbic wit and a deadpan sense of humour.
Of the many Stewart stories and anecdotes that survive him, the best known and, perhaps curiously, most loved is one told at Louis’s funeral. Asked by his son Tony whether he wanted to be buried or cremated, Stewart thought for a moment, and then replied, “Surprise me.” As an epitaph for a wonderfully sharp, spontaneous and supremely gifted jazzman, and his most celebrated recording, it cannot be bettered.
- The newly remastered vinyl edition of Out On His Own is released on November 24 via liviarecords.com and Bandcamp
Stewart once admitted that popular jazz pianist and composer George Shearing was so taken with Out On His Own that he resolved to seek out the guitarist. Over the next 20 years Louis – by the late 1970s most in the jazz community, at home and abroad, knew him by his first name alone – toured the world and recorded with Shearing, often as part of an elegant trio with Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.
He also played with many outstanding Irish, European and American musicians, including singer Honor Heffernan, pianist John Taylor and saxophonist Spike Robinson; appeared at the first Cork Jazz Festival in 1978 and annually afterwards – in 1982 he debuted his Ulysses-inspired JoyceNotes suite; and held long-running residencies in many top Dublin venues. In 2001 he received the ultimate New York imprimatur: a week as leader at probably the most famous jazz club in the world, the Village Vanguard.
Later in life Stewart earned further accolades, receiving an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in 1998, serving as chair of the Global Music Foundation and in 2009 being elected a member of Aosdána.
“These awards helped his reputation, of course, and among jazz fraternities he’ll never be forgotten,” says Jim Doherty. “But many around the world are only starting to come to terms with Louis’s playing and legacy. The fire is only starting to light, you know?”
