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He didn't even grow up as Marty Robbins. He was born Martin David Robinson on September 26, 1925, in Glendale, Arizona. Young Martin heard a variety of musics growing up -- Jimmie Rogers, pop crooners, big bands, and the songs of his Saturday matinee idol Gene Autry. He never graduated from high school, but spent three years in the Navy during World War II (May 1943 - February 1946). Two years of odd jobs followed, and it was in the summer of 1948 that he auditioned successfully for the job of station KOY-Phoenix's cowboy singer. Other radio work followed (KTYL in Mesa and KPHO in Phoenix), plus nightclub work in the area, during which he changed his real name to "Jack Robinson" and then to the less ordinary-sounding "Marty Robbins."
Management at KPHO insisted that he add daytime work in the new medium of television, which he did, and the key man at KPHO-TV was the new station manager, Harry Stone. A long-time executive at Nashville's WSM and at its Grand Ole Opry, Stone recognized Marty's talent, and put in a good word for him with both Columbia Records producer Art Satherley and his old friends at WSM. Marty at first took little interest, telling journalist Bob Allen thirty years later, "I was making $750 a month in Phoenix between the radio and television shows and club dates,a dn I seriously thought, 'How in the world can it get better than this?'" He was just about to find out, for he signed with Columbia Records May 25. 1951, and first guested on the Grand Ole Opry about a month later with the two performances which open this package. The script for the NBC network Grand Ole Opry broadcast of June 30, 1951 (the half-hour sponsored by Prince Albert Smoking Tobacco) has host Red Foley telling announcer Grant Turner, "We've got a first-time visitor with us tonight, too, Grand. He's a young man our good friend Mr. Harry Stone sent us up from Phoenix, Arizona, and he's one of the fastest-risin' young folk artists we ever seen... He's Marty Robbins! He'll be out here directly..." Later in the show, after Rod Brasfield did his comedic best, Foley introduced the young singer to the Opry audience. "He's a native of Glendale, Arizona, and does all of his fine radio and television work out of Phoenix," said Foley. "He's written a lot of fine tunes, and just recently he signed a brand-new recordin' contract and his records'll be out before you know it. Anyhow, here he is. And I want you folks to really give a Prince Albert welcome to -- Marty Robbins!" Foley then let Marty nervously dedicate his song to friends back in Arizona. The nerves werre less apparent as Robbins sang his self-composed "Ain't You Ashamed," a song he never recorded for commercial release. He sold an interest in this song in 1950 to singer Ricky Riddle, who recorded it for the Tennessee label. For his second performance that June night in 1951, Marty sings "Good Night Cincinnati, Good Mornin' Tennessee," written by Foley sideman Louis Innis. Marty never recorded this song either, though a diverse bunch including Tex Williams, Art Mooney, Ernie Lee, and Rusty York did. Marty's first hit came over a year later -- "I'll Go on Alone," which peaked at #1 as he made his second guest appearance on the network Grand Ole Opry in January 1953, the date he moved to Nashville and joined the Opry's permanent cast. Robbins' early performances left him typecast by fans and industry alike. Steel guitarist Jim Farmer's dominant crying style, so reminiscent of Bashful Brother Oswald with Roy Acuff or Little Roy Wiggins with Eddy Arnold, plus Marty's own penchant for writing songs about the sad side of love (like the featured "At the End of a Long Lonely Day") led WSM's all-night disc jockey Eddie Hill to nickname Marty "Mr. Teardrop," or "The boy with the tear in his voice." His Hawaiian favorites fit that mold as well, including the only one he performed on the Prince Albert Opry, "My Isle of Golden Dreams" (April 17, 1954). A livelier tempo and the fun side of love sparkle on Marty's "Call Me Up (And I'll Come Calling on You)," which he introduced to the network show hosted by Ernest Tubb on August 14, 1954. For some years this remained Marty's standard up-tempo number to add variety to his broadcasts. Soon it had company in Marty's repertory from an unlikely source, as his 1955 performance show a marked turn to countrified versions of brand-new rock & roll numbers, such as the Big Boy Crudup/Elvis Presley hit, "That's All Right" (heard here), and Chuck Berry's immortal "Maybellene." As 1956 opened, Marty Robbins' career was at a major crossroads. He still performed in his old "crying country" style, though almost nostalgically, as from the March 1956 performance included here of his first big hit, "I'll Go on Alone." There wer also more flings at rock & roll, such as his Columbia recording of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally." Perhaps at his publisher Acuff-Rose's behest, he sometimes used his Opry appearance to showcase Hank Williams songs such as "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)," included here. AS host of the "Prince Albert Show" portion of the Opry, which was broadcast nationally on the NBC radio network, he was expected to feature a gospel song in each show, and we have examples here with the old favorites "Who at My Door Is Standing?" and "Whispering Hope." Oddly enough, the unlikely song that finally made him a household name languished some nine months in Columbia's vaults unreleased. It was "Singing the Blues," pitched to him backstage at WSM's Friday Night Frolics by a crippled Arkansas songwriter named Melvin Endsley. The November 1955 recording was highlighted by a recurring falsetto yodel break, in the Hank Williams "Lovesick Blues" style: that and the dominant steel made it an unlikely hit indeed for the country record market of 1956, which had been so unsettled by the coming of rock & roll. Given the huge and growing success of "Singing the Blues" as 1956 ended (and the failure of the subsequent "Long Tall Sally" and "You Don't Owe Me a Thing" to generate much excitement), Robbins returned to Melvin Endsley material for a follow-up, another "blues" novelty hit, "Knee Deep in the Blues." As big as these hits were for Marty, they were even bigger sellers for his Columbia labelmate Guy Mitchell in the pop field. Realizing this was action he could have had (weren't Sonny James at Capitol and Elvis Presley at RCA selling pop?), Marty insisted that Columbia Records give him that crack at pop sales in 1957, and they did. Produced generally in New York by pop A&R chief Mitch Miller with the help of Ray Conniff's singers, Marty turned in 1957 and 1958 to the "teen idol" or "teen ballad" phase of his career, a style well-represented in his Opry performances here: Marty's self-written teen classic "A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation);" "The Story of My Life" (from Hal David and Burt Bacharach); "Stairway of Love," "Just Married," and one more from Melvin Endsley, "Ain't I the Lucky One?" The fine vocal groups, whistlers, and instrumentalists the Opry gathered around Marty give these live performances an amazing closeness or fidelity to their well-known recorded versions, no mean feat under the best of circumstances and that much harder with the Opry crowd whistling, clapping, and stomping its own loud approval. If vocal groups behind him in tight harmony became the norm during his pop phase, they stayed with him to add a Sons of the Pioneers touch as Marty moved with unbroken step to his next stylistic triumph, the Western or cowboy years (1959 - 1960). Title song to a Gary Cooper western, "The Hanging Tree" was actually Marty's first hit with cowboy material, and it sounds like the movie theme that it is, its harmonies rising and falling in odd minor swells. It first hit the charts on its way to the Top Twenty in March 1959. The very next month, Marty recorded the first songs for an all-western album that would be titled Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. "Running Gun" comes from that album, as does Robbins' self-penned story about a cowboy who kills and finally is killed for the love of a cantina dancer. "El Paso" became the biggest-selling record of Marty Robbins' great career, a Grammy winner which topped country and pop charts and sold over a million copies. Marty Robbins in his mid-thirties and at the very top of his profession, a star in the country and pop music fields. As a recording artist, he stayed on top for the rest of his life -- twenty-two more years -- with a success of great hits like "Don't Worry," "Ruby Ann," "Devil Woman," "Begging to You," "El Paso City," and many more. But 1960 brought the end, after twenty-one years, of NBC's Prince Albert network radio show, and these wonderful recordings by the sponsor's ad agency (William Esty Company) and by the Armed Forces Network. Despite his problems with Nashville's climate and terrain and the Opry's long transition into a rather low-paying but prime tourist attraction, Marty remained loyal to the show right up to his all-too-early death at age fifty-seven in 1982. The ever-youthful, always-ebullient Robbins never became what you'd call an Opry institution -- in fact he often clashed good-naturedly with Opry icons like Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb for his use of trumpets onstage or for his penchant to run overtime. But from the 1960s to the end of his career, Marty Robbins unquestionably held "Most Favored Artist" status on the show. To accomodate his hobby of Saturday night professional stock car racing (with no more mid-evening network radio to consider), Robbins was consistently given the Opry's final half-hour when he was in town, and he used it to full effect, stretching it into a hour-long Marty Robbins set while the crowd roared its approval. All the greats in country music have played the Grand Ole Opry, and no Opry artist before or since had the sort of consistent fan appeal Marty Robbins enjoyed. His was an appeal which has outlasted his death by almost two decades. It is good to be reminded by these long-unheard live recordings how much of that appeal rested on stage performance.
Ronnie Pugh Taken from press kit for "Live Classics" by Marty Robbins.
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