Martin, Sara 1884–1955

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Sara Martin 1884–1955

Blues singer

Performed “Classic” Blues on TOBA Circuit

Made Hundreds of Recordings Before Retirement

Although overshadowed in the annals of blues history by her contemporaries Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith, Sara Martin was a true pioneer in her own right as a performer and recording artist. Martin was a popular vaudeville act on the Theater Owners’ Booking Association circuit that showcased African-American artists, and she also enjoyed a prolific career as a recording artist on the OKeh and Columbia labels. In the 1920s she made well over 100 records on those labels, often recording songs she co-wrote, such as “Mean Tight Mama” and “Mama’s Got the Blues.” Martin also worked with some of the other early blues giants of the day, such as W.C. Handy, “Georgia Tom” Dorsey, and Fats Waller, before leaving the blues scene in the early 1930s. Retiring to her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, Martin managed a nursing home until her death in 1955 at the age of seventy.

Although Louisville did not match the vitality of such jazz and blues centers as St. Louis, New Orleans, or Chicago, it had developed its own vibrant music scene by the late nineteenth century, when the blues singer later known as Sara Martin grew up. Born on June 18, 1884, to William and Katie (Pope) Dunn, Martin grew up in a city ruled by harsh racial segregation. However, Louisville’s African-American residents enjoyed a distinct culture of their own that helped them survive in a separate but unequal environment. By 1900 Louisville had become known for its string bands (with guitar, banjo, and violin) and jug bands (with musicians using various combinations of gallon jugs, kazoos, mandolins, guitars, and harmonicas). Martin later brought one Louisville string-band guitarist, Sylvester Weaver, with her to New York City for one of her recording sessions in 1923; the tracks became the first-ever blues recordings that featured a guitar accompaniment.

Performed “Classic” Blues on TOBA Circuit

At some point after the turn of the century, Martin moved to Chicago, where she began singing with local jug, string, and blues bands. In doing so, she was part of the first wave of female blues performers who became important in popularizing the genre in subsequent years. After rural blues music started to appear in urban areas such as New Orleans and Chicago, female African-American singers came into their own as theatrical performers. In contrast to male blues singers, who retained much of the raw and sometimes improvisational nature of the rural blues, female blues singers developed into highly stylized, but still evocative, blues performers. As one such performer, Martin exemplified this period of “classic” blues, which extended through the years of the Great Depression. Like other women who sang the classic blues, Martin had a dignified, yet forceful and passionate, stage presence. One contemporary reviewer (later quoted in Paul Oliver’s The Story of the Blues) wrote that Martin “had a flair for the dramatic. In a darkened theater, with only candles on the stage, she would begin to wail in a low moan, ‘Man done gone—got nowhere to go.’ She literally surged across the stage, clutched the curtains in the wings, rolled on the floor, and when she had finished the audience was as wilted as she.”

At a Glance…

Born on June 18, 1884, in Louisville, KY; died on May 24, 1955, in Louisville, KY; daughter of William and Katie (Pope) Dunn.

Career: Vaudeville singer, 1915-31; recording artist, 1922-28; nursing home caretaker, 1931-55.

Martin was 30 years old before she started to tour the country as a blues singer. Her period as a vaudeville attraction began in 1915 and extended to 1931, when the effects of the Great Depression curtailed most theatrical endeavors. In order to expand the opportunities available to African-American performers during a time of legal and de facto racial segregation, a group of businessmen formed the Theater Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA) in 1921. TOBA extended across the South and Midwest, and although its ownership was interracial it specialized exclusively in bringing African-American acts to African-American audiences. Far from being philanthropic, however, TOBA put its performers through a grueling schedule under sometimes primitive conditions. Many of those performers were said to have declared that the initials “TOBA” actually stood for “Tough on Black Asses.”

Martin’s friend and collaborator “Georgia Tom” Dorsey recalled this period in Martin’s life in an interview in Living Blues magazine (later reprinted in the volume The Voice of the Blues:) “She used to be on this TOBA circuit. All of ’em had to get on that. Wasn’t no other circuit for them to get on.” In 1930 TOBA suddenly went bankrupt, which stranded many of its top performers without warning. With paying audiences for the blues hard to attract in the early days of the Great Depression, Martin had stopped touring by 1931. In addition to her work on the TOBA circuit, Martin had also performed with W.C. Handy—who later claimed the title of “Father of the Blues”—as well as with Fats Waller and “Georgia Tom” Dorsey.

Made Hundreds of Recordings Before Retirement

Although Martin’s reputation as a live act outshone her recorded output, the singer made more than 100 recordings during the 1920s. Between 1923 and 1928 Martin recorded for the OKeh label, the premier record label for African-American artists of the day. Although OKeh also recorded white artists, its phenomenal success with Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” in 1920 made it into the best-known jazz and blues label of the 1920s and 1930s. Martin’s stylized, theatrical renderings of the blues paled in comparison to those of her contemporaries Bessie Smith and “Ma” Rainey, yet some of her self-penned lyrics demonstrated a wry humor that was Martin’s own. In the song “Mama’s Got the Blues,” which she wrote with Clarence Williams, Martin sang, “I got a man in Atlanta, two in Alabama, three in Chattanooga/Four in Cincinnati, five in Mississippi, six in Memphis, Tennessee/If you don’t like my peaches, please let my orchard be!” Martin also demonstrated an even more ribald side in some of her other compositions such as “Mean Tight Mama.” As her record company said about Martin in one of its press releases (later quoted in The Story of the Blues,) “We’re tellin ‘you there’s none finer or grander when it comes to warblin’ mean and hot low-down ravagin’ Blues until you don’t know whether your sensations is your wigglin’ spine or if you spine has got the wigglin’ blues.”

Although she had lived up to her early billing as “The Blues Sensation from the West” and “The Moanin’ Mama,” Martin’s career, along with those of many other performers, suffered with the onset of the Great Depression. Based in Chicago during her touring and recording career, Martin left the music business in the early 1930s and returned to live in Louisville. She remained in Kentucky as the owner and operator of a nursing home and died at the age of 70 in Louisville on May 24, 1955, from a stroke. Her performances live on in Martin’s Complete Recorded Works, a four-volume set released in 1996 by Document Records. In addition to her recordings, some of Martin’s live performances were captured on film.