On Linda Martell and Country Music

The following is a guest post by Morgan Davis, Music Reference Specialist.

As music lovers finally exhale after the highly anticipated release of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter,” we are once again reminded of the music mogul’s ability to remind us of cultural histories long overlooked and buried. Like many American pastimes, country music found itself dominated by men. Women hoping to gain a footing in the industry needed to play along with the longstanding feminine gender stereotypes attached to the country western cultural heritage. To that end, cultural anthropologist Sherry Ortner observes that:

“Women represent middle class ideology, a fatalistic acceptance of capitalist work discipline, and religious piety. They embrace respectability against the heroically disreputable male values of the labor process, shop-floor culture, military experience, and the utopian working-class space of the tavern.” (Heidemann, 2016)

In short, country western gender expectations suggest that women must be a bit of everything: tough enough to survive the patriarchal conundrum previously outlined, but soft enough to be willing to subscribe to this worldview without question. Having boldly and successfully navigated the country music industry, music legends Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn provide examples of how to make it in the industry as women. Despite the gender-based discrimination that Parton and Lynn experienced, one factor that they did not have to account for was race. The same cannot be said for Black country music star and pioneer Linda Martell.

Born in 1941, Linda Martell (birthname Thelma Bynem) got her start singing in the Baptist church, but thanks to her father’s interest in country music, she was no stranger to the genre. At the age of 12, she formed a band and by the early 1960s was touring with girl group The Anglos. Martell lived as an unsigned, freelance singer until her paths crossed with aspiring music executive Duke Rayner. Upon Rayner’s encouragement, Martell recorded a demo of Richard Lewis Spencer’s (1942-2020) 1969 R&B hit “Color Him Father” for Shelby Singleton’s Plantation Records. She had just the sound that Singleton sought. Not only did Spencer win the Grammy Award for R&B Songwriter of the year for his composition, but the B-side, “Amen, Brother,” contains one of the most widely sampled drum breaks (“Amen Break”) in hip hop and drum & bass history.

“Color Him Father” tells the story of a child whose father was killed in Vietnam and the man who married his widowed mother and becomes a model father figure for the child and his six siblings. Martell’s version of the song is a distinct departure from the version recorded by the funk and soul group, The Winstons, who originally premiered the song. Martell’s version opens with a rambling guitar line and a bouncy snare marking time on the upbeat. “Color Him Father” was released during the Vietnam War which marked a time of paternal loss for many American families. While this song was not originally written as a country song, the opening lyrics paint a picture of the global worldview depicted earlier.

“There’s a man at my house, he’s so big and strong. He goes to work each day and stays all day long. He comes home each night lookin’ tired and beat. He sits down at the dinner table and has a bite to eat.”

The Music Division holds the copyright deposit of “Color Him Father” along with other copyright deposits from Martell’s album “Color Me Country.” When placed in the context of country music, the rich soul inflections of Martell’s voice added a depth to the message of this song. Alice Randall, author of forthcoming book, “My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future” remarks that “Linda Martell effectively directs, not pleads, not suggests, directs us to understand that [the] stepfather’s fundamental identity is as father, not his skin color” (Randall, 2010).

Rayner and Singleton were part of a community of music executives in the country music industry who were seeking Black musicians to perform country music. In an interview for Ebony magazine, Rayner shared that he, “figured if he could find a colored girl that could sing country and western, [he’d] really have [himself] something” (Ebony, 1970). While Martell was a pioneer in what she would come to represent for blackness and country music, she joined the ranks of other Black musicians who had covered country music, such as Aretha Franklin, Esther Phillips, and even The Supremes, to “establish the authenticity of their artistic personae and to reference not only their own southern roots, but also the larger, shared experience of the Great Migration and the cultural and social changes that attended it” (Pecknold, 2016). Whether conscious or not, this move to authenticate their careers was also a move of reclamation and establishment in a genre whose American indigeneity is rooted in the African American music that came from the enslaved Africans who carried their musical heritage with them through the Middle Passage.

Martell became the first female Black solo country music artist to appear at the Grand Ole Opry in 1969. Her country cover of Spencer’s “Color Him Father” reached no. 22 on the Billboard country singles chart, making her the highest-charting Black female artist in country music until 2023 when Tracy Chapman topped the charts as songwriter for Luke Combs’ cover of her hit single “Fast Car.” Chapman’s “Fast Car” was also named song of the year in 2023 by the Country Music Awards, making her the first Black artist to earn this award.

Despite achieving relative success after releasing what would be her only album, “Color Me Country,” Martell stepped away from her career as a country music artist—officially, to raise a family. According to subsequent interviews with Martell, however, the label redirected their financial resources to white female artist Jeannie C. Riley. Martell similarly grew tired of the racist reception she often received at performances (think Beyoncé’s 2016 performance at the 50^th Country Music Awards), as well as having to hide her blackness to appeal to a fan base that had historically rejected Black singers interpreting “white” music on a purely skin-deep basis (Royster, 2022). Despite having the burden of being the singular representation for Black feminine identity in country music for decades, Martell’s artistry set a precedent for those who have come after her.

Additional Resources

Ebony. (1970, March). “Country Music Gets Soul.” Ebony, p. 68.

Heidemann, K. (2016). Remarkable Women and Ordinary Gals: Performance of Identity in Songs by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. In D. Pecknold, & K. M. McCusker, “Country Boys and Redneck Women: New Essays in Gender and Country Music” (p. 169). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Pecknold, D. (2016). Negotiating Gender, Race, and Class in Post-Civil Rights Country Music: How Linda Martell and Jeannie C. Riley Stormed the Plantation. In D. Pecknold, & K. McCusker, “Country Boys and Redneck Women: New Essays in Gender and Country Music” (pp. 147-149). Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.

Randall, A. (2010, April 4). Linda Martell’s “Color Him Father.” Oxford American.

Royster, F. T. (2022). “Black Country Music” (pp. 21-22). Austin: University of Texas Press.