By Ken Paulson
As a little boy, I heard more Marty Robbins LPs than Disney records.
My Uncle Don couldn’t get enough of Robbins’ Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album and played it over and over on the family stereo. I still know the words to “Big Iron.”
Grady Martin’s son Joshua at the Country Music Hall of Fame
But the most riveting track was, of course, “El Paso,” propelled by the amazing guitar work of Grady Martin.
A couple of years later, Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” exploded onto AM radios, driven by Martin’s electric guitar.
And on it goes: Martin’s guitar work is on “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Honky Tonk Man,” “Saginaw, Michigan,” “Satin Sheets” and many more hit records. It turns out we’ve all been listening to Martin our entire lives.
Martin is being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this month, along with the Oak Ridge Boys, Jim Ed Brown and the Browns.
”He didn’t use one recognizable sound,” Bob Moore, Martin’s celebrated sessions colleague, told the Tennessean’s Peter Cooper after Martin’s death in 2001”What he did was so varied, but the things he came up with were always outstanding, no matter the style. I think he’s the single greatest guitar player we’ve had here in Nashville.”
Grady Martin’s son Joshua was at the Country Music Hall of Fame earlier this month at an informal event honoring Martin and fellow inductees the Browns. He shared his thoughts on what made his father’s work so special: