Janis Martin, a teenage rockabilly sensation of the 1950s who was billed as “the female Elvis,” died Monday of cancer at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. She lived in Danville, Va. She was 67.
After beginning her career on country-music radio shows in Virginia, Martin had a short but bright burst of fame in the 1950s with the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll. By 15, she was recording for RCA, had a top-40 hit and seemed poised for stardom.
She was a ponytailed blond with a strong, clear, country-inflected voice and a series of lively, eye-catching dance moves on stage. A convention of disc jockeys named her “the most promising female vocalist” of 1956.
Martin was also one of the few young women, along with Wanda Jackson and Lorrie Collins, to make a mark in the masculine, raw-edged music that decades later became known as rockabilly.
A 1998 article in the Nashville Scene newspaper described the enduring excitement of the music she made as a teenager: “Forty years later, Martin’s records remain some of the most rockin’, most thrilling hillbilly music ever to emerge from the Music City.”
When Martin secretly married and became pregnant, her record label dropped her, and she returned to southern Virginia. Except for a few local appearances, she was all but forgotten until 1982, when she emerged from retirement with a concert in England.
“I can’t begin to tell you what it was like like stepping back in time,” she told the Nashville Scene. “Those kids dressed like we did in the ’50s. Here I’d been a housewife and a mother. When I hit the stage, it was like I’d come home.”
The song young European admirers clamored for wasn’t her top 40 hit, “Will You, Willyum” but a hard-charging tune called “Drugstore Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which Martin wrote at 15.
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