LOS ANGELES (www.gritz.net) - Jimmy Martin- an American music legend known as the King Of Bluegrass and Mr. Good N' Country- died on the morning of May 14, 2005.
Martin had been fighting bladder cancer for over a year. He was 77 years old. He had a 56-year long career in the music business, and was inducted into the International Bluegrass
Music Association Hall of Honor in 1995. More information on the funeral and visitation can be found here-www.jimmymartin.org.
Jimmy
Martin has been at the forefront of the bluegrass and country music scene since he showed up at the Grand Ole Opry to audition for Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. After that audition in 1949, not long after Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs left his band, Monroe hired a 22-year old Jimmy
Martin to play guitar and sing harmony. To many music fans and historians, Martin's voice and rhythm guitar blended with Monroe's ‘high lonesome sound' as good as with any other version of the Blue Grass Boys. Together they recorded some of Monroe's biggest hits, including 'Raw Hide,' 'Memories Of Mother And Dad,' and 'Uncle Pen.' But eventually,
Martin would also break free from Monroe and start a solo career of his own.
In the mid-1950's
Martin joined up with
Sonny and
Bobby Osborne for a short-lived band that recorded such notable songs as 'Save It, Save It' and '20.20 Vision.' By 1956 he formed his own band called Jimmy
Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys, and signed on to record for Decca Records. He was known as a character, a fiery and animated performer who was as lively as they come onstage and off. While his outspokenness made him a controversial figure at times, his exuberance stage presence was a favorite among bluegrass and country music fans. From the 1950's through the 1960's his appearances created much fanfare at gigs such at the WJR Barn Dance in Detroit, Michigan, a three-year stand at the legendary Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, and headlining the Wheeling Jamboree radio show that was heard around much of the country from the studios of WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia.
By the 1960's
Martin had moved to Nashville, but a feud with some in the Nashville music business and the folks that ran the Grand Ole Opry cost him his life-long dream of becoming a member of the Opry. It is a subject that followed him for the rest of his life. He did appear on the Opry a few times early on, and by all accounts received numerous standing ovations. But between his outspokenness and a couple of backstage encounters, the offer of Opry membership never came.
Despite the Opry controversy, Jimmy
Martin continued to record important and popular bluegrass music, and his bands over the years have featured such notable alumnus as Paul Williams, JD Crowe, Audie Blaylock, and Doyle Lawson. In the last few years he was a constant headliner at the Bean Blossom Bluegrass festival held in
Indiana every summer. An avid hunter, fishermen, and hunting dog owner,
Martin would take part in the annual squirrel and rabbit fry at Bean Blossom on the Sunday morning of the festival.
Martin was also featured in the much-touted documentary made about him by
George Goehl called 'King Of Bluegrass-The Life And Times Of Jimmy Martin.' In the movie, country music star Marty
Stuart says this about the bluegrass legend, 'Jimmy was always too much of a rebel. He was too strong, he was too pure, he was too real. He didn't have enough sense to tone it down, Thank God! He's a stone-cold musical genius.' The movie follows him around and showcases his eccentric personality, including his large and already carved tombstone that he put up years before he knew he was sick, and his hunting dogs that are named after country music stars such as Tom T. Hall, Patty Loveless, Dolly Parton,
George Jones and Rhonda Vincent.
In 2004 Jimmy
Martin was interviewed in Gritz
Music Magazine. Here are some excerpts;
On meeting Bill Monroe;
'The main job that I always wanted from the time I started until I finished, was I wanted a job with Bill Monroe. It wasn't too long after Lester and Earl left him that I went down there to the Grand Ole Opry and tried out with him. Oh yeah, I was nervous. I was real nervous. He was my idol. He always was my idol. I still call him my idol…. Me and him would sit down a lot of times in busses and rooms and just pick by ourselves and do different licks on the mandolin….The only thing that started Bill Monroe shunning me, and not speaking to me, doing things against me, was when my records got hot. Yeah, he would turn his head and let on like he was trying to ignore you. Thinking somebody was going to jerk him by the coattail and pull him around and say, ‘Here, speak to me.' But I'm telling you, he ignored the best friend he ever had and ever would have. You're talking to the best friend that Bill Monroe ever had. And, I loved him more than anything. Loved to stand and look at him. But he couldn't stand for me being popular. That was it. I loved him. He just didn't speak to his best friends. That's it right there."
On being hired by Monroe;
"He took me off to the side and said to go with him that week and see how hard it was. He said, ‘Do you think you can stand this hard traveling?' The bus broke down two or three times and we had to push it that week. I said, ‘It's a lot better than digging ditches, and shoveling mud out of them, and plowing corn with one horse, and sawing wood with a crosscut saw. I think I can do the job. I think I like it better than hauling hay to the barn, and hauling manure from it.''
On growing up in Hancock County, Tennessee;
"Growing up, we never had a truck, never had a car, we had two horses and a sled when I was home. I plowed corn one row at a time. Plowed two to turn the whole ground up with a turning plow. And, I plowed the whole farm up many a time just by myself. My Dad died when I was four years old. My mother married my stepfather and he liked to work the heck out of me."
On telling Bill Monroe that he played rock and roll mandolin;
"I told him one time, I said, ‘Bill, you play rock and roll mandolin and you don't know it.' He said, ‘I don't play that damn rock and roll.' I said, ‘You don't know that you play rock and roll mandolin? Listen to rock and roll blues and then listen to ‘Brakemen's Blues.' Why, you're rocking on down the line, Bill. And when you kick off that ‘Muleskinner Blues,' that's a kick off of a rock and roll as I've ever heard.' And he said, ‘I don't play that damn rock and roll.' I said, laughing, ‘OK Bill.''
On being shunned by the Grand Ole Opry;
'Every time I was down there at the Opry I encored on my own songs. The last time I was down there I encored on ‘Tennessee' and ‘Sunny Side Of The Mountain.' Stringbean and Ira Louvin came up to me and told me how good I sounded. Stringbean said, ‘Boy, you went over big. You tore ‘em up. You probably went over just a little too big. It might be a while before you're ever back down here again.'….I think that I've done much better on account of not being a member of the Opry because the public aggravates me to death asking me ‘Why can't I ever get to hear you on the Grand Ole Opry.' All I say is, ‘I guess I never have got good enough.' So, I feel like now, the Opry has helped me money wise. But, they've hurt my feelings for doing that. I think why they've done it, it is because of all kinds of jealousy of other musicians. So, I just feel proud that I bother them that much…..But, I love everybody. I want to be good to everybody that will let me be good. But I don't like for somebody to run over me. I speak my mind and I'm going to still speak it ‘till I die.'
On the letters from his fans since he's been sick;
'We get as high as a hundred or two hundred a day. There ain't been nobody that ever loved their fans better than Jimmy Martin. I love my fans. I'm taking cancer treatment right now. Radiation and chemo. I take chemo once a week, and radiation five days a week. It makes me feel awful bad, but they say I'll get over it. They say they can let me sing a little bit more at the bluegrass festivals. I told them I hope to. I told them I hope to sing a few good old gospel songs a few more times, anyway. But if the Lord wants me to go I got my tombstone built over here, and they can put me under the ground right next to Roy Acuff, a guy who loves good country music. My tombstone has been up for five or six years, I don't know exactly. They say there are a lot of pictures taken of it, and a lot of talk of it. I wanted to be right in there beside old Roy Acuff, the King Of Country Music.'
Derek Halsey
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