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The debut album by Irish guitarist Louis Stewart, who progressed from playing pop hits in Ireland’s dancehalls to accompanying piano greats Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, has been remastered and reissued.
Recorded in 1975 and long unavailable, the album, Louis the First is the third release from the reactivated Livia Records in Dublin. It captures Stewart at a time when he was gaining international recognition and beginning to attract admirers including fellow guitarists Joe Pass, Jim Hall, Barney Kessel and Pat Martino.
Stewart, who in 2016 passed away at the age of seventy-two, was invited to sit in for Barney Kessel at Kessel’s suggestion for a tour by the Great Guitars, with Charlie Byrd and Martin Taylor, in the 1990s. There’s also a live duo album with Jim Hall that Livia Records’ Dermot Rogers would love to release at some point.
“Louis had recently joined Ronnie Scott’s quartet in London, having already toured with the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, and saxophonist Tubby Hayes, when he recorded Louis the First,” says Rogers, a long-time Stewart fan who began his programme of reissues last year with Stewart’s classic 1977 solo album, Out on His Own.
“He was making trips back to Dublin to see his young family and to play to packed houses at the legendary Baggot Inn between stints at Ronnie Scott’s, where he had the opportunity to play with luminaries including Count Basie, Art Blakey, Stan Getz and Blossom Dearie, as well as Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans.”
Born in 1944, Stewart began playing professionally in Irish showbands at sixteen, although his real goal soon became to play jazz. The Dublin pianist Jim Doherty auditioned Stewart for a showband gig in 1960 and they became lifelong friends, going on to represent Ireland together in Doherty’s quartet at the second Montreux Jazz Festival in 1968. Stewart was awarded the Outstanding European Soloist gong at the festival and later in 1968 he joined Tubby Hayes, revelling in the challenge of playing Hayes’ fast tempos.
He then went on to tour and record with Benny Goodman and toured extensively with pianist George Shearing as well as playing with Dizzy Gillespie and forming partnerships with bassists Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Peter Ind and guitarist Martin Taylor.
“When Louis recorded Louis the First, Jim Doherty says he was ‘on fire’ – and you can hear that on the opening track, All the Things You Are,” says Dermot Rogers.
The album was originally released on Hawk Records, a local showband label in Dublin, and was produced by Gerald Davis, a Dublin painter, arts polymath, creative entrepreneur, and friend of Stewart. Pleased with the results, Davis decided to form his own company, Livia Records, in order to release Stewart’s next album, Out on His Own. He took the company’s name from Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character from Irish author James Joyce’s novel, Finnegans Wake.
In addition to Out on His Own, Livia Records released a number of other Stewart albums, including Super Session with Martin Taylor, and when Dermot Rogers began his reactivation project in 2021 he discovered other, unreleased recordings in the company’s vaults. These included Some Other Blues, a duo album featuring Stewart and pianist Noel Kelehan, which following the reissue of Out on His Own, became the second release in the new era of Livia Records in 2023.
“Louis appeared on over seventy albums, twenty as a leader,” says Rogers, who has a schedule of reissues and previously unreleased recordings planned. “His last studio recording, Tunes, was a 2013 duo session with his old friend Jim Doherty, the pianist who gave Louis his first job and was the driving force behind getting Louis the First recorded.”
Louis the First features Stewart in trios with Dublin musicians, bassist Martin Walshe and drummer John Wadham. There’s also a duet with Walshe on “Body and Soul” and “Send in the Clowns” alongside “Here’s That Rainy Day” and “Autumn Leaves” featuring Stewart on solo guitar. A previously unreleased trio version of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” has been added to the original album’s eight tracks.
Rogers, who attended as many Stewart gigs in Dublin as he could, is determined to keep the guitarist’s legacy alive, although Stewart’s reputation, particularly among those who saw him play, remains strong.
“Louis inspired generations of guitarists, and he enjoyed the regard of many of the great musicians whom he had so carefully studied, including Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall and Pat Martino,” says Rogers. “He continues to be revered by contemporary musicians today. The fire burns bright.”
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