Music appreciation: Buddy Stewart Memorial Music Foundation & Rhythm Museum

In Mid City north, Philliper Stewart keeps a legacy alive. She spent 17 years working with her father, musician Buddy Stewart, in his popular record store on North Acadian Thruway. After he died, she had to figure out what to do with a long-standing business that was now selling an outdated product.

“With my dad’s passing, I was going through his [record] collections and talking to the people impacted by his passing,” she says. “I knew this was something we needed to hold onto, because it’s dying. I didn’t want to see our business and its impact in the community pass as well.”

In the early 2000s, the store was converted to the Buddy Stewart Memorial Music Foundation & Rhythm Museum. Besides preserving Baton Rouge music history through photos and memorabilia—and occasionally still selling records—it hosts the annual Rocktober Fest community event and has recently begun working to improve music education in local schools.

Stewart says the foundation has partnered with Capitol High School to bring back its music program, which was dropped several years ago because of budget cuts. She finds any opportunity she can to help young people gain an appreciation for music, including helping a walk-in acquire a trombone and music lessons, which happened during our conversation.

“They walk into here every day, and you never know the lives you can touch,” she says. “That solidifies our purpose for being here.”

Find out more about the foundation at stewartmusicfoundation.org.