Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins

[4] Music and Marizona

[4] Music and Marizona During the job-hopping months after his discharge, Martin told people he was looking for a better position in life. “What I was really looking for was a way to get out of work and still make a living,” he admitted later. “I knew I was lazy, but I didn’t want people to know it.” When not at work, he drankheavily. “Ihadalittleproblem with policemen at times, and with anybody, really,” he said about his behavior while drinking. “I was a happy-type person, but it could change in a second if somebody said the wrong thing.” One night Martin was sitting alone in a bar, feeling sorry for himself after beingturneddownforadate.Thenasongonthejukeboxcaughthisattention— 26 Eddy Arnold’s “Many Tears Ago.” Martin memorized the lyrics, replaying the song while he drank. “I had never heard anybody sing with that much feeling, and sing so pretty,” said the man who had been raised on big band music. “That was the first real country song I liked, and that started me on country music.” He added, “Eddy Arnold made me like country music.”1 He also loved western music, which he considered “American folk music from the western part of the United States,” as opposed to country music. Ever since those Saturdays spent watching Gene Autryon the movie screen, Martin wantedtobeacowboysinger.Buthisunclesandbrothersbelievedsingingwas no job for a man. “They thought you’ve got to do a hard day’s work in order to be worth yoursalt,”he explained. “Ihaddifferent ideas. If Ihadsalt in mybody, I was keeping it; I wasn’t gonna sweat it out.”2 Working his brick truck route, Martin stopped for lunch at a little open air market along the highway between Glendale and Phoenix. “I heard this guy singing two days in a row,” he recalled, “and I made a point to stop there a thirdday, andhe was singing again, andIaskedthese people does he sing every day, and they said yeah.”3 The radio was tuned to KOY in Phoenix, and Martin thought the singer “was pretty bad. One time, he got right in the middle of his song and he forgot the words and didn’t know what to do. And I thought, man, this guy has got to be making a living doing this.” On Monday he told his boss he had a dentist appointment in Phoenix, and with his two major possessions—a guitar and a motorcycle—he headed for the radio station. Not knowing whom he was supposed to see, he asked for the owner. The receptionist sent him to the program director. When he said he wanted to be a cowboy singer at the radio station, Sheldon Gibbs answered, “We have a cowboy singer.” Martin countered, “Yeah, and he’s not very good either.” “Can you do better?” “Yes, sir, I think I can,” and Martin sang “Strawberry Roan.” Gibbs fired the other singer and hired Martin. The first song he sang on the air was “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons,” a recent hit by Nat King Cole.4 Martin initially called himself Jack Robinson because, he said, “I didn’t want my mother or my brothers or sisters to know. They knew I didn’t like to work, y’know, but I didn’t want them to think I was lazy, because my brothers worked pretty hard.” He felt ashamed he had chosen a lazy man’s job—only someone who couldn’t do a full day’s work would play music. “To get paid for doing something you liked . . . I didn’t see how it could be right.”5 Why he used 27 [ CH 4 ] Music and Marizona his father’s name is unknown. After his parents divorced, he had no contact with Jack and wanted none. Sometimein1947,singerFrankieStarrhiredMartintofillinasguitarplayer at Vern and Don’s, a club on East Van Buren Street in Phoenix.6 “He asked me one night when I was listening to him sing at the radio station, if I wanted to work that night,” Marty recalled. “I couldn’t play very well at all, but I could play better than Frankie, so he thought I was pretty good. He gave me $10 for three hours work. And that was a lot of money to me. I had only been making a dollar an hour driving that brick truck. So I went back over to him and said, ‘Frankie, this is too much; you...