“Some artists are forgotten for their achievements as time passes. Today, we’d like to acknowledge one of these artists on her birthday. Linda Martell, once called “Country’s Lost Pioneer” by Rolling Stone, was the first commercially successful Black female artist.
Linda was born Thelma Bynem on June 4, 1941, in Leesville, South Carolina. Her father was a sharecropper and a pastor. Her love for music started with singing in the choir. She was discovered while performing on a Charleston Air Force base in 1969, where they begged her to sing country songs. She quickly signed an agreement with Shelby Singleton Jr., and within a single 12-hour session, they recorded her only album, “Color Me Country.” Her cover of “Color Him Father” was also released as a single and quickly reached #22 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, the highest a song by a Black female country artist had reached at the time.
She was also the first female Black artist to play the Grand Ole Opry, where she performed twelve times. However, her success was short-lived. Due to abundant racism during performances and discrimination and favoritism within Plantation Records, she soon left the label. She was blackballed after leaving, which ruined her reputation and prevented her from making another country record. She lived a quiet life after that though music always remained a part of it.
Recently, she has re-entered the public radar after being mentioned in Beyonce’s album Cowboy Carter, specifically on two songs, “Spaghetti” and “The Linda Martell Show.” Beyonce’s shout-out had many magazines publishing articles asking, “Who is she?” In 2021, her granddaughter, Marquia Thompson, started working on a documentary about Martell’s life story. It is titled “Bad Case of the Country Blues: The Linda Martell Story” and is scheduled to be released this year. “- Birthplace of Country Music
Image is from Ebony Magazine, March 1970, and is in the public domain.
