Don't Give Your Heart to a Rambler

My Life with Jimmy Martin, the King of Bluegrass

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Pub Date 07 Aug 2017 | Archive Date 10 Jul 2017

Description

    As charismatic and gifted as he was volatile, Jimmy Martin recorded dozens of bluegrass classics and co-invented the high lonesome sound. Barbara Martin Stephens became involved with the King of Bluegrass at age seventeen. Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler tells the story of their often tumultuous life together.

    Barbara bore his children and took on a crucial job as his booking agent when the agent he was using failed to obtain show dates for the group. Female booking agents were non-existent at that time but she persevered and went on to become the first female booking agent on Music Row. She also endured years of physical and emotional abuse at Martin's hands.

    With courage and candor, Barbara tells of the suffering and traces the hard-won personal growth she found inside marriage, motherhood, and her work. Her vivid account of Martin's explosive personality and torment over his exclusion from the Grand Ole Opry fill in the missing details on a career renowned for being stormy. Yet, Barbara also shares her own journey, one of good humor and proud achievements, and filled with fond and funny recollections of the music legends and ordinary people she met, befriended, and represented along the way.

    Straightforward and honest, Don't Give your Heart to a Rambler is a woman's story of the world of bluegrass and one of its most colorful, conflicted artists.


Barbara Martin Stephens worked for many years as a booking agent and promoter, first for Jimmy Martin and then for numerous other bluegrass and country music performers.

As charismatic and gifted as he was volatile, Jimmy Martin recorded dozens of bluegrass classics and co-invented the high lonesome sound. Barbara Martin Stephens became involved with the King...


Advance Praise

"Jimmy Martin was a sparkling stylist, both as a singer and a guitarist, a brilliant showman whom few could follow onstage, and a tortured soul who once, when I simply said hello to him at the Grand Ole Opry, threatened to whip my ass right there on the side of the stage. I met Jimmy early in my career and thought I knew him fairly well. After reading Barbara's painfully honest portrayal, however, I realize I hardly knew him at all."—Bill Anderson

"Jimmy Martin was a sparkling stylist, both as a singer and a guitarist, a brilliant showman whom few could follow onstage, and a tortured soul who once, when I simply said hello to him at the...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9780252082764
PRICE $19.95 (USD)

Average rating from 8 members


Featured Reviews

Excellently done, great memoir. I enjoyed reading it even though it is not about a personality I was familiar with. It will make a great Christmas gift for my father in law though who is a big fan of bluegrass music!

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Great book for General American social history. A lot of detail, sometimes a bit too much. Some gentle humour helped speed the factual side along.

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