Typically the purpose of this feature is to draw attention to an emerging artist. However, candidates also deserving of greater recognition are artists from long ago or who are no longer with us. Bob Martin is both. Two years ago our editor allocated me an album released shortly after Martin’s death, “Seabrook”, a collection of previously unreleased material. Not for the first time on unearthing something new, my reaction was a straightforward, why haven’t I come across this before? As is so often the case, “singer/songwriter” does not begin to do Martin any justice. He tells stories, often of hard times in his New England home, illustrating vividly the characters and their relationships with each other. John Prine comes to mind and it is not a stretch to say Dylan does too.
Bob Martin was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1942. His birthplace on the confluence of two rivers was a centre for textile manufacturing. His father was a house painter who loved music. An avid reader, Martin started writing at a young age while working in those mills; Lowell, MA and its people would become a significant influence. One in particular was Jack Kerouac, whose ‘On the Road’ prompted Martin to begin his own travels across the US after leaving high school. The people he met would return in his songs. In the early 1960s Martin had returned to New England to study at Suffolk University in Boston. With a guitar given to him by his wife, Martin hit the folk scene in Boston and Cambridge, performing at venues such as Club Passim and The Nameless Coffee House. By day he taught maths and economics at a local high school.
By the early 1970s record companies were on the hunt for the next James Taylor. Martin took a chance and answered an ad placed by a couple of record producers looking for a songwriter. They liked what they heard and offered Martin a gig at Gerde’s Folk City in Manhattan’s West Village. That led to a two record contract from RCA. Recorded in Nashville, his first album,”Midwest Farm Disaster” came out in 1972 to critical acclaim. Here is an album that swings the emotions all over the place, at times full of joy and others deeply sad. His voice is similarly varied, an angry rasp or sorrowful whisper, but always with a hint of his unmistakable New England accent. Of particular note is the range of characters that populate Martin’s songs. He is accompanied by two Nashville session musicians, Norman Putnam and Kenny Buttrey, who had played on ‘Blonde On Blonde’. Chet Atkins dropped in on the recording session and liked what he heard. Titles such as ‘Captain Jesus’, ‘Sister Rose & The First Salvation Band’, ‘Blind Marie’ and ‘Charlie Zink’ lie behind this quote from Charlie Hunter, writing in the magazine ‘Fast Folk’, “His characters possess a vitality, a hope, a humanness that is extraordinary, given the rather desultory surroundings in which they find themselves”. The title track was inspired by farming friends in the Midwest struggling under the yoke of a food supply then controlled by four corporations.
However, Martin’s champion at RCA left not long after so despite months spent touring the album in the US and Europe the record company lost interest in the second release. That feeling was mutual, Martin quit the music business and with the proceeds from his debut bought a farm in Virginia. Later he moved back to Lowell, MA where his jobs included teaching, carpentry, house painting, and taxi driving. But he never gave up writing.
A decade later Martin released a second album on June Appal Recordings, “Last Chance Rider”, that the National Association of Independent Record Distributors named as one of the top three folk albums of 1982, although Martin himself thought he’d veered in too commercial a direction. After another long gap, Martin felt better about his third record, “The River Turns The Wheel” released in 1997, not least because he had set up his own label. Whether helped by the nascent americana genre this album proved more successful than its predecessor. The title track is a bleak account of the hard lives of those whose livelihoods depend on the textile mills. Martin’s edgy guitar line adds to that uncertain existence. A further album, “Next to Nothing”, followed in 2000 and an excellent live record “Live at the Bull Run” in 2010. As well as a fine sweep of his previous albums his chat between songs adds another dimension to this lucid songwriter whose humour seems never far from the surface. Introducing ‘Jack Kerouac’, Martin’s account of bumping into Jack Kerouac outside a bar in Boston, is so honest and warm hearted.
In 2008 a tenuous idea by Jerry David DeCicca of 1965 Records to reissue “Midwest Farming Disaster” was superseded by Martin’s daughter Tami who suggested he record some of those songs her dad had written since. With engineer Jake Housh they got down to work but a good idea got tangled up in all sorts of hassles, Martin lost interest and the plan was shelved. In 2021 with Martin’s health deteriorating Tami gave DeCicca and Housh the go-ahead to complete the album. DeCicca brought in his band The Black Swans to help and the result was “Seabrook”. Named after the town in New Hampshire where he spent his summer holidays, tragically Martin never heard the record. The record includes songs he had written relatively recently and others are from long ago, Martin wrote hundreds of songs. Two on “Seabrook” had not made it on to “Midwest Farm Disaster”. ’Give Me Light’ where every blast of harmonica and its brisk pace evoke the sense of freedom driven by the “wheels that sing a song to me”.
After listening to these outstanding albums I still wonder why Bob Martin was not better known. Lowell historian Richard Howe offers this insight. Apparently next up after Martin’s RCA audition was a thin Englishman called David Bowie. In the early 1970s the label put its money on glam rock and Martin knew he couldn’t compete. In contrast, WBCN Boston disc jockey Charles Laquidar claimed, “If he had been given the right opportunities, and received the right breaks, he could have been bigger than Dylan”.
As Bob Martin said, “The most important thing in my music are the words”.
Thank you for a really interesting article – I hadn’t come across Bob Martin but will certainly investigate further.
Unfortunately, there are a hundred or more lesser-known great songwriters, like Bob. I own several of Bob’s superb albums and can verify that it’s indeed a shame that his name and his music are not better known. Thanks for bringing him and his songs out for people to know about and hear his music.