“Country music’s lost pioneer” — the first Black female to play the Opry — has been rediscovered.
In our Divine Diversions feature, we hailed Mickey Guyton as one of a trailblazing group of black women breaking down barriers in country music. Miko Marks, Reyna Roberts, and Brittney Spencer are also on that playlist, and it’s well-worth taking the time to track them down on Spotify and YouTube.
But the trailblazer path goes a lot farther back than the inroads these enormously talented singers have made.
Rolling Stone called her “Country music’s lost pioneer.” But lately, Linda Martell seems to have been found.
The first commercially successfully black female artist in country, and the first to play the Opry, she’s been praised by Guyton and Kane Brown. In a November 2020 interview with NPR, guest Rissi Palmer explained to surprised host Michel Martin that Martell was the inspiration behind Palmer’s Apple Music Country show, Color Me Country.
MARTIN: Tell us about the show’s name, Color Me Country. Where did that come from?
PALMER: Color Me Country is me paying homage to the foundation on which my house is built, and that is Linda Martell. Linda Martell was the first Black woman to ever play the Grand Ole Opry. She released her first album — Color Me Country came out in 1970. And she only released one album and was basically blackballed and left country music, changed her name and lives in ...
MARTIN: Wow.
PALMER: ... South Carolina now. Yeah.
In 1970, Martell released her debut album, Color Me Country, but soon left the unfortunately named Plantation Records — the 1960s – 1970s country music record label known for Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA” — and seemed to retreat from music into obscurity.
That was then. This is now:
In June 2021, Martell, who is now 80, received a special honor — the second annual CMT Equal Play Award — during the 2021 CMT Music Awards.
The award recognized her legacy as one of country’s first prominent Black female artists. That legacy includes three songs that charted on Billboard’s Top 100 Country Songs, most notably her 1969 debut single, “Color Him Father,” which reached No. 22. Martell’s subsequent historic appearance in August of that year on the Grand Ole Opry marked the first time a Black female solo country artist took that hallowed stage.
And there’s a documentary in the works. Martell’s granddaughter, Marquia Thompson, launched a GoFundMe campaign to produce The Story of Linda Martell, to tell her grandmother’s story more fully beyond her pioneering efforts in Nashville. To date, the campaign has raised more than $20,000.
Photography: (All images) Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain