Long after the music faded out, she can still hear the hateful words. The year was 1969, and Linda Martell hoped to become one of country music’s breakthrough acts. She had a single on the charts, an album on the way, and the backing of a Nashville industry player. The next step was to play live, and her newly hired booking agent secured a gig in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, to work out her stage show.
Martell had a warm smile, a stylish beehive, and a way with country phrasing, as heard on that hit single, “Color Him Father,” a story-song about a hardworking stepdad who cares for a woman and her seven children after her husband is killed in combat.
There was one other thing that set her apart: Linda Martell was a black woman, singing in a genre dominated by white acts. And that night, before she’d even sung a note, she heard a reaction she’d rarely heard during her years singing soul and R&B. “I remember that well,” she says. “You’d be singing and they’d shout out names and you know the names they would call you.”
It’s more than 50 years later, and Martell, now 79, is sitting in the dining room of her daughter’s home in Irmo, South Carolina. Her long, gray-streaked hair falls to her shoulders, and she sports a Sunday-best white-and-black dress. “You’re gonna run into hecklers, and I did,” she continues, via Zoom. “Calling names. Name-calling. That was something else.” She shakes her head. “You felt pretty awful.” She also remembers what came next, when the promoter joined her onstage and told the crowd to either shut up or leave. Most of them, thankfully, stayed.
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