Emory Martin

Billed as “The World’s Only One-Armed Banjo Player,” Emory Martin transcended novelty status to emerge as you of Nashville’s most exclusive and inspirational musicians, backing country superstars including Kitty Wells and Uncle Dave Macon furthermore to regularly showing up about radio’s fabled Grand Ole Opry. Created August 26, 1916, in Bon Aqua, TN, Martin was created having a six-inch stump instead of a fully created remaining arm. He discovered to try out banjo by mimicking his dad, improvising one style that used his tooth and feet to replacement for the lacking appendage. No matter his physical restrictions, Martin demonstrated a created virtuoso, and by age seven he could play by hearing. At 16 he gained a talent competition at Nashville’s Princess Movie theater and was employed at that moment by nation pioneer Fiddlin’ Sid Harkreader, immediately after producing his Opry debut. Martin generally insisted that radio announcers present him being a performer with a single arm, understanding his condition would pique the interest of viewers. When Harkreader dissolved his music group to tour behind Macon, he brought Martin with him as well as the banjo prodigy quickly became a highlighted attraction until a crisis appendectomy compelled him off the street in 1937. After recovering, Martin became a member of the personnel of Nashville’s fledging radio place WSIX, where he befriended Johnnie Wright (of Johnnie & Jack port popularity) and Wright’s wife, the near future Kitty Wells. He shortly joined up with Wright’s Tennessee Hillbillies full-time, touring the South and showing up frequently on WNOX’s well-known Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round broadcast. As Globe War II compelled a lot of his bandmates into abroad responsibility, Martin bided his period doing work for his father’s masonry business. In past due 1943, he wedded fellow performer Wanda “Linda Lou” Arnold and resolved in Rockcastle State, KY, working an automotive provider station and learning to be a longtime fixture of WWLW’s famed Sunday evening broadcast Renfro Valley Barn Dance. Martin also documented as an associate from the gospel group the Holden Brothers, and in March of 1950 was summoned to Nashville to back again Wells and Johnnie & Jack port on particular RCA recording periods. He nevertheless documented infrequently and curtailed his musical pursuits in the years to check out, doing work for a carpeting set up firm. In 1991 Martin and his wife released a memoir, One-Armed Banjo Participant: THE FIRST Years of Nation Music with Emory Martin. He passed away Apr 17, 2006, at age 89.