By Oscar Andrew Hammerstein The Hammersteins: A Musical Theatre Family, by Oscar Andrew Hammerstein, commemorates the author’s grandfather and great-great grandfather, the first two Oscar Hammersteins. Oscar I turned the future Times Square into the theater capital of the world. Oscar II gave us some of our best-known musicals, from Showboat to Oklahoma! to The […]
MARTY ROBBINS HEART ATTACK Marty Robbins wrapped up the year of 1980 with a three-performance New Year’s Eve show in Evansville, Indiana. After returning home to Nashville, he experienced chest pains. “I thought it was just an extra bad case of indigestion,” he said later, “because I’ve had a heart attack, and it was nothing […]
WE LOST MARTY ROBBINS AND FARON YOUNG IN DECEMBER This evening 28 years ago (also a Wednesday) Marty Robbins died, a week after being hospitalized during his final heart attack. I’d known from news reports that he was in serious condition, but his death still came as a complete shock. He’d survived heart attacks and […]
MILITARY VETERANS, MARTY ROBBINS AND FARON YOUNG Seaman Second Class Martin David Robinson stayed on Bougainville after the November 1943 Allied invasion of the Solomon Islands. He advanced to U.S. Navy seaman 1st class, celebrated his 19th birthday, and was still on the island in November 1944. Ten years later, he had become Marty Robbins […]
By Eileen Sisk “This biography paints an unprecedented portrait of not only country’s biggest star of the ’60s, but perhaps its biggest son of a bitch.” So says the jacket cover of Buck Owens: The Biography. Following 19 number one songs on Billboard’s charts, Buck Owens spent 17 years as co-host of syndicated television show […]
REMEMBERING MARTY ROBBINS SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS AGOThis week in 1943, Seaman Second Class Martin David Robinson was on the attack transport USS Crescent City (APA 21), part of the task force preparing to hit Bougainville Island in the Solomon chain. Assigned as ramp operator on the four-man crew of a fifty-foot LCM (landing craft, mechanized), Martin […]
REMEMBERING MARTY ROBBINS ON HIS BIRTHDAY This week we’ll commemorate the birth of Martin David Robinson on September 26. He would have been 85 on Sunday. He’s currently in the news, along with Mel Tillis, for being honored by the Academy of Country Music with its Cliffie Stone Pioneer award. I have received the publishing […]
MARTY ROBBINS 65 YEARS AGO Seaman First Class Martin David Robinson arrived in San Francisco on August 20, 1945, six days after World War II ended, Completing two years in the South Pacific, he had been transferred in late July from a U.S. Navy boat pool in the Admiralty Islands of New Guinea. A ship […]
THE YOUNG SHERIFF & HIS COUNTRY DEPUTIES 50 YEARS AGO In 1960, Faron Young’s Country Deputies band consisted of lead guitarist Odell Martin, steel player Ben Keith, drummer Roger Miller, and new frontman Darrell McCall on electric bass. When Faron had decided to add drums a year earlier, Roger Miller needed a job and agreed […]
“DON’T WORRY” BY MARTY ROBBINS Fifty years ago this week, Marty Robbins recorded “Don’t Worry” and inadvertently created a new sound–the fuzz tone. The song idea popped into Marty’s head when he was sitting at a stoplight on Thompson Lane one night, and he wrote the song by the time he reached his house in […]