When I cited Wanda Jackson as being the first woman rocker I may have spoke a little out of turn but it's true that I had to do a lot of searching and didn't find anyone else until recently and that was on a tip in an e-mail from Tom Simon who has an excellent web site on Rockabilly. (You must remember that this era was before my time and I got into the rockabilly scene at the time when it was considered retro- i.e. the 80s.)
That being said, let me introduce you to the only woman referred to as "The Female Elvis Presley". Like Elvis and Wanda Jackson, Janis Martin started at a very, very early age in music, playing guitar and singing in a style with influences like Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams. She was born in Sutherlin, Virginia to a musical family on March 27, 1940 and received complete encouragement from them. At thirteen she was singing songs like Ruth Brown's Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean. She won many talent shows and by the time she reached her teens she'd made appearances alongside Ernest Tubb, the Carter Family, Sonny James, Martha Carson and Jean Shepard. By 1953, she was invited to become a regular at the Old Dominion Barndance in Richmond, VA which was only outranked by Grand Old Opry in Nashville and the Wheeling Barndance in West Va. When you compare the dates and their careers you can see that Janis was Wanda's peer in every respect in the beginning.
By her mid-teens she had shed the country roots and was going strong into R & B and her big break was with the song "Will You, Willyum" which she recorded at the Barndance. This recording was sent to New York, by the songwriters, to RCA who contacted her personally and invited her to record the song with Chet Atkins, Grady Martin, Buddy Harman and Floyd Cramer in Nashville in the same place that Elvis recorded "Heartbreak Hotel.". This was to be her biggest hit along with a "B" side that she penned herself titled, "Drugstore Rock and Roll". The record sold 750,000 copies which was absolutely phenomenal for the time and demand for her live appearances from all over the U.S. proliferated. She became an industry favorite. She played on the Tonight Show and American Bandstand then toured with Hank Snow. The list of other artists she toured with is like the who's who of Rock which included Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and was chosen by RCA to be a regular of the Jim Reeves show. In 1956 she was voted "Most Promising Female Artist" at a disc jockey convention and received a Billboard Magazine award.
Eventually, she formed her own band, called them the "Marteens" and toured with them throughout the U.S. and Canada mostly playing clubs and fairs. After she did a screen test with MGM, in 1957, she went overseas to do shows for the Jim Reeves show entertaining U.S. troops. When she returned to the States she talked about her experiences on the Today Show hosted by Dave Garroway and performed her latest recording, "My Boy Elvis". She made an appearance on Grand Old Opry immediately following, being the youngest performer to ever appear there, but was sidelined by becoming pregnant by her husband ( she had been secretly married since 1956 to him) when she visited him in Fall of 1957 during her Jim Reeves tour. She was summarily dropped by the recording label at the tender age of 17 !
She gave birth to a son and then made another try at her career less than two years later and several U.S. recording companies showed interest but ended up signing with a company in Belgium, Palette, for which she cut four sides to singles in 1960. She had remarried and found her husband was less than supportive of her career ambitions. After this she returned to the States and kept her career local in Virginia. Later in the 70s she attempted to revive her career with a new band Variations in which her son was the drummer and toured Europe quite successfully, adding big band numbers in her repertoire. On her 42nd birthday she played her first date in England and had kept performing in some capacity up until her recent death of cancer on September 3, 2007 at age 67. She was preceded in death by her son who had died the first month of that year.
Because of the resurgence in popularity of rockabilly music which really took off in the 80s, Janis' records had become collector's items. Her RCA recordings were reissued by Bear Family at that time onto two LPs, which are now available, along with the Palette recordings on a single CD. In 1996 she made an album with Rosie Flores, a retro rockabilly performer, and they made Rockabilly Filly together, reissuing among others, a cover of her own "Blues Keep Calling". In conclusion, I would add that on her own turf in Virginia, the way she delivered her rock-n-roll style kept her at arms length to the local country music audiences and even some of the performers. Janis did not make the distinction between her basic roots and the brand of rock she actually preferred early in her career and with which she became a success. Apparently, she wasn't called "The Female Elvis" for no reason but her contribution to rock and roll is undeniable and she was a powerful performer clear up to the end.
All rights reserved
February 18, 2009
Evelyn M. Wallace
Discography
1956 Will you, Willyum B/W Drugstore Rock and Roll (a single)
1956 Bang, Bang
1956 Ooby Dooby (a single)
1956 Let's Elope Baby ( a single)
1956 Love Me to Pieces (a single)
1957 My Boy Elvis ( a single)
1956-60 The Female Elvis, a compilation LP by Bear Family Records, circa 1980
1995 Rockabilly Filly w/Rosie Flores, High Tone Records
Rockin' you outta this world,
The Castle Lady ! !
