From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Thu Jan 17, 2002  1:16 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Grady Martin
 
GRADY MARTIN (By Shaun Mather)

Born Thomas Grady Martin, 17 January 1929, Chapel Hill, Tennessee
Died 3 December 2001, Lewisburg, Tennessee

Grady Martin, R.I.P.

Just months after the death of Chet Atkins, the world of country music
suffered another massive loss when legendary session guitarist Grady Martin
passed away aged 72. One of the most important musicians of the pioneering
era of the 50's and 60's, Martin appears to have suffered a heart attack at
his home.
Martin was born on a farm near Chapel Hill in Marshall County, Tennessee,
the youngest of four children. He spent many childhood hours listening to
music on the families battery-operated Zenith radio, and soon developed a
love for country music and the Grand Ole Opry which the family listened to
every weekend. Young Grady began playing the fiddle and guitar and by his
teens was playing in local bands and sitting in with visiting bands. At
fifteen he was heard by Big Jeff Bess who persuaded Grady's parents to let
him move to Nashville to play with his band Big Jeff and the Radio Playboys.
Two years later he joined Paul Howard's Arkansas Cotton Pickers and then
became a founder member of Little Jimmy Dickens' Country Boys. By now he
had retired his fiddle and was becoming known as one of the town's top
guitarists. He worked the Opry and played with the Bailes Brothers, Curley
Fox and Texas Ruby.
He took over the lead of Red Foley's band and as well as the Opry they
played the Ozark Jubilee. It was with Foley that Martin played on his first
big seller, Chattanooga Shoe-Shine Boy. During the session he formed a long
time partnership with Decca's Paul Cohen and their influential Nashville
producer, Owen Bradley. The next two decades were when Martin made his name
and built up an unprecedented reputation. Although he recorded with his
Slewfoot Five for Decca it was his session work where he excelled.
He started working with Johnny Horton and the late 50's saw him at the peak
of his craft on such Horton classics as Honky Tonk Man, I'm A One Woman Man,
I'm Coming Home and The Woman I Need. It was Martin who suggested at one
Horton session that Harold Bradley play a banjo on When It's Springtime In
Alaska (It's Forty Below). It was a master stroke which completely changed
the song's make-up and set a trend for such historic folk songs - Horton
repeated the idea for his million-seller, Battle Of New Orleans. He was
respected as a versatile and inventive guitarist and the full range of
playing he used when working with Brenda Lee summed it up, whether it be his
rockabilly boogie playing on Bigelow 6-200, or his fills on the poppier
material like Let's Jump The Broomstick or My Baby Likes Western Guys.
The first Grammy ever awarded for a country song was Marty Robbins brilliant
western ballad, El Paso, but only a fool would suggest the song would have
been half as good without Grady Martin's fluent Tex-Mex picking. It was a
high point in both men's illustrious careers. When they worked together on
"Don't Worry" a year later (1960), history was again made when Martin's
malfunctioning amplifier caused a distorted sound, known from that day
forward as fuzztone.

He worked thousands of sessions and amongst the artists Martin backed were:
Johnny Burnette, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Flatt & Scruggs,
Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Baez, JJ
Cale, Merle Haggard, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb and Roy Orbison.

In the 70's he worked extensively with Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn and
produced the country-rockers Brush Arbor. After a brief spell with Jerry
Reed he became a member of the Willie Nelson Family troupe, touring the
world from 1980 to 1994 and working on such studio sessions as On The Road
Again and Always On My Mind. He retired and spent his time back in Marshall
County. He became the first recipient of the Nashville Music Association's
Masters Award in 1983 and was awarded a Chetty last year during Chet Atkins'
Musician Days festivities in Nashville. Married three times, Martin left
behind ten children, seven grandchildren, one great-grandchild and an
enormous body of guitar solos that helped change the face of popular music.
As Bob Moore told the Tennessean newspaper, "I think he's the single
greatest guitar player we've had here in Nashville".

Taken from Shaun's piece for the Rockabilly Hall of Fame at
http://www.rockabillyhall.com/PhilShaun.html#gradyrip

Grady's homepage: http://www.nashvillesound.net/gradymartin.htm

.