Who'll Sing for Me?

Jimmy Martin

Don't Cry to Me: Songs From the FilmKing of Bluegrass (Thrill Jockey)

The title of this supplementary soundtrack to King of Bluegrass, the documentary film about the great Jimmy Martin, is Don't Cry to Me. But here's a better title: 16 More Reasons Why Jimmy Martin Should Have Been Inducted Into the Country Music Hall of Fame Yesterday.

Despite the fact that many find the irascible Martin hard to take, it's ridiculous that any further argument about his candidacy for the Country Music Hall of Fame would be needed at this late date. Since the night in 1949 when, as a 22-year-old, he glad-handed his way backstage to audition for Bill Monroe, this native of "good ol' Sneedville, Tennessee" has played a leading role in the development of bluegrass. Indeed, any fair accounting of the creation of bluegrass must reserve a place at Monroe's right hand for Martin alongside Flatt and Scruggs.

When he joined the Blue Grass Boys, Martin replaced lead singer and guitarist Mac Wiseman. Like Lester Flatt, the man he'd replaced in Monroe's band, Wiseman was an outstanding singer and picker, but Martin was better, and he quickly began contributing changes to his new boss' sound.

Martin had an energetic and bluesy singing style, influenced as much by honky-tonkers as bluegrassers—he liked to throw a sharp break into his voice on key words; he'd slide from one note to the next on others—and he sang higher leads than earlier Blue Grass Boys had. Impressed, Monroe began to break and slide his vocals, too—and to push his already sky-high harmonies up into the stratosphere. Additionally, Martin's hard-driving rhythm-guitar style inspired Monroe to develop his trademark "chop" rhythm on the mandolin. Today, when bluegrass fans talk about "high lonesome," they're referring to the sound Monroe refined with Jimmy Martin on haunting early '50s sides like "I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome," "In the Pines" and "Sitting Alone in the Moonlight."

Don't Cry to Me includes a couple of Martin's very best solo recordings (the title track and "On and On") and necessarily omits many more (all of his early 1950s sides cut while in partnership with the Osborne Brothers, as well as later classics like "You Don't Know My Mind" and "20/20 Vision"). What's truly revelatory here, however, are the set's live performances, collected from throughout Martin's career and nearly all of them previously unreleased. Don't Cry to Me lets us hear him telling corny jokes on the Louisiana Hayride in 1960 and wowing a crowd in Bean Blossom, Ind., with a spirited version of "Free Born Man" in 2000.

But even if this disc included only the four cuts recorded by Mike Seeger at Pennsylvania's Sunset Park in 1960, it would still make an essential contribution to the Martin legacy. Playing with a lineup of his Sunny Mountain Boys featuring Paul Williams on mandolin and J. D. Crowe on banjo, Martin delivers versions of "Sophronie," "Foggy Old London," "Hit Parade of Love" and "Who'll Sing for Me" that are just perfect, as gorgeous as any bluegrass ever. Martin and his band don't race or bounce through these numbers—they glide, deftly but with power, like Fred and Ginger dancing across a ballroom floor or like a flat stone skipping across the surface of a glassy lake.

"When I am gone, who'll sing for me," Martin asks here, his bruised twang born upon heavenly harmony. Let's not wait to sing Martin's praises. Right now, while he is still with us, invite him to join the cast of the Opry and induct him into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Jimmy Martin is the King of Bluegrass, and his kind will not pass this way again.