11/11/2025
Marty Robbins’ career began modestly in 1948 after his three-year hitch in the Navy had been completed. He had become interested in music while in the service, learning to play the guitar, and trying his hand at composing a few songs. Following his discharge, he went back home to Glendale, Arizona and looked up an old buddy of his, who owned a country night club. Robbins got a job playing with the house band, and eventually started singing at the club. His confidence began building, and he came to be recognized as an up-and-coming country music performer in the area, enough to be offered a weekly television program called “Western Caravan,” on which Marty was able to expand his audience even further. Using this spotlight as a springboard, he booked himself into a number of venues throughout Arizona and New Mexico, and finally came to the attention of scouts from Columbia Records, who signed Marty in 1951. He also received an invitation to join the legendary Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
The following year, Robbins’ records began showing up on the Billboard charts. A straight country ballad called “I’ll Go On Alone” was his first #1 hit, but about three years later, as the rockabilly movement started making some headway on the national music scene, Marty was one of the few country artists who didn’t see the new music style as a threat to his career. In fact, Robbins welcomed it, and covered Elvis Presley’s “That’s All Right.” Marty’s version of the tune stayed on Billboard’s country singles chart for eleven weeks, peaking at #7, while the future “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” failed to land his record on any national chart.
Marty’s easy, personable style and fabulous sense of humor had quickly made him a favorite of audiences at the Opry. His road shows also drew well but with only six chart songs in almost four years, his record career was far from solid. Sensing that the rockabilly artists were appealing to a new generation of potential country fans – a generation which had never heard of Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff or Ernest Tubb – and realizing that his version of “That’s All Right” had managed to bring some of those teenagers out to his shows, Marty cut another rock ‘n’ roll vehicle – Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline.” Robbins’ version managed to reach #9 on the country chart, but it didn’t win many new fans, and turned off some of the country music hardliners. Many traditionalists felt that Marty was selling out country for that radical new kind of music. Others simply wondered if the singer had any direction at all.
In a sense, Robbins’ main problem was one of identity. Even he himself didn’t know who he wanted to be. All Porter Wagoner craved was to be a straight country singer. Webb Pierce was going to stick to his forte – honky-tonk music. Bill Monroe was just an honest-to-goodness bluegrass man. Yet, Marty wanted to do country, honky-tonk, western swing, straight western, rockabilly, blues and even pop ballads. And with his tremendous voice and boundless energy, he had the ability to do all of those styles and do them well. But his record label and the critics argued that by scatter-shooting his records in all directions and using so many different styles, Marty was failing to put together a solid fan base. The experts felt the singer needed to sharply define his sound and concentrate on making records to fit that one musical area. Robbins was informed that if he didn’t follow this advice, his recording career was probably doomed to failure.
At about the same time that Marty Robbins was moving to Nashville and establishing his career, a young songwriter from Arkansas named Melvin Endsley was putting the finishing touches on a song called “Knee Deep in the Blues.” Just before Endsley could send the composition to Acuff-Rose Publishing, the man he had written the song for suddenly died. With Hank Williams’ death, Endsley’s dream of going to Nashville and taking part in the country music industry was temporarily side-tracked, but by the summer of 1955, Melvin decided to take some of his songs to Nashville in pursuit of a songwriter’s contract.
While there, Endsley attended the “Friday Night Frolics,” held at the WSM Radio studios. He got an opportunity to visit with some of the stars before the show, and Marty Robbins was one of them. Melvin told Robbins that he had written some songs that he thought Marty might like. Marty had some time before his scheduled performance, so he led Endsley back to a corner of the studio, handed him a guitar and said “let’s hear what you got.” After Robbins had listened to four songs, he asked Endsley to accompany him to Acuff-Rose’s studio the next morning and get them on tape. One of the tunes that particularly caught Marty’s ear was called “Singing the Blues.” Robbins expressed an interest in recording the song and asked Melvin to hold it for six months. The writer agreed, and didn’t offer the song to anyone else during that time period.
Soon afterward, Marty made good on his intention and recorded “Singing the Blues” (backed by Grady Martin on guitar, Floyd Cramer on piano and Jimmy Day on steel), but Columbia Records didn’t release it right away. It was September of 1956 before the label finally put the record on the market, a full year after Endsley had played the tune for Robbins at the Friday Night Frolics. But it turned out to be well worth the longer wait than was agreed to, because within two months “Singing the Blues” had knocked Elvis’s double-sided hit “Hound Dog”/”Don’t Be Cruel” out of the #1 position. It stayed in the top spot for 13 weeks on Billboard’s country chart, and even went to #17 on Billboard’s pop chart, but Endsley’s composition was far from done.
Two months after Marty Robbins came aboard the country playlist with “Singing the Blues,” a pop singer from Detroit by the name of Guy Mitchell copied Marty’s arrangement and style, and rode his own version up Billboard’s “Hot 100” pop chart all the way to the summit. Mitchell’s record held the #1 position for ten weeks. Over the years, other country acts have attempted to cover “Singing the Blues.” Because of its deep association with Robbins’ career, the remakes have proven to be mostly unsuccessful. Gail Davies’ 1983 version came closest to becoming a mild hit, reaching #17.
Marty Robbins became a genuine star with “Singing the Blues,” and he used it as a foundation on which to build a career that would see him chart 94 times in three decades. During that span, the singer defied marketing logic and refused to be pigeonholed in any one style. Marty scored huge pop hits with “A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation)” (1957), “The Story of My Life” (1958), “El Paso” (1960) and “Don’t Worry” (1961). Of course all these records, plus a dozen more Robbins hits, easily reached #1 on Billboard’s country chart. Marty had even taken the song Endsley had written specifically for Hank Williams, “Knee Deep in the Blues,” to #3 just a couple of months after “Singing the Blues” finished its run. The chance-meeting with Robbins that night at the Friday Night Frolics proved to be very profitable indeed for Melvin Endsley.
In a 2005 ranking, Marty Robbins was named by Billboard Magazine as the 14th all-time most successful country recording artist. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October of 1982, just two months before his death from lingering heart issues that had plagued him since the late ‘60s. Marty was able to do a great variety of things, and do them all well. As mentioned earlier, performing different song types was just a portion of his talents. He could host a show with the best of ‘em, perform comedy, and was a pretty fair actor as well, making a dozen or so western films. He had an amazing charisma about him that is most rare. The term “American original” gets tossed around a lot these days, but I think that description definitely fits Marty Robbins. We will never see the likes of him again.
