A country music icon whose career paralleled that of Bob Dylan died last week after battling a mysterious illness.
Mary Martin was 85 years old and was an important, but unsung heroine of folk and rock music.
She was something of a connector and catalyst for the genres and died Thursday while receiving palliative care at Alive Hospice in Nashville.
She collaborated with Dylan in the early 1960s, before winning a Grammy for an album he featured on.
The manager and director helped launch the budding careers of Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen and Keith Urban, and worked with big names like Janis Joplin. A cause of death was not immediately released, but news of her passing was confirmed on social media.
Mary Martin, a country music manager who brought Keith Urban to the US, died last week after battling a mysterious illness. She was 85
A sort of connector and catalyst for the genres, she died Thursday while receiving palliative care. A cause of death was not given
“Mary Martin has consistently discovered great talent and helped to elevate their careers,” Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, said in a statement posted to Instagram Saturday, 17 years after the director was named.
“Early on she introduced Bob Dylan to her friends the Hawks, who would later form The Band,” Young recalls.
‘She accompanied Leonard Cohen on his early musical forays and guided the budding solo careers of Van Morrison, Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill.
At Warner Bros. she signed future Country Music Hall of Famer Emmylou Harris, at RCA she helped sign and develop Clint Black and Lorrie Morgan, and she encouraged the young Keith Urban to move from Australia to Nashville.
“Mary’s unerring sense of song and artistry was legendary and she was a staunch ally of the artists she represented,” the historian concluded.
As mentioned, Martin spent her entire life in country music, a career that spanned more than 60 years.
Decades before she encouraged Urban to move from his native Australia, she worked as an assistant to famed manager Albert Grossman, whose own stable would eventually include Dylan, Joplin, Peter, Paul & Mary, Gordon Lightfoot and more.
She worked for him in New York for four years in the 1960s before starting her own firm, often taking advantage of the business contacts she had made at Grossman.
No cause of death was given, but news of her death circulated on social media
Martin is seen talking to singer and songwriter Emmylou Harris before a show in LA in ’75, when she was working for Warner Bros. as a representative and personal advisor
The couple is pictured together again in Nashville in 2018 for Emmylou’s debut exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Her most famous act in the music world was introducing Bob Dylan to the Hawks, who would later become The Band. The folk icon is seen here with Martin’s old boss Albert Grossman in 1965 during construction work for Highway 61 Revisited
Martin’s stable in the 60s and 70s included big names like Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison
At that time she became fascinated by Cohen, then an established poet and novelist in Canada, without a significant musical career.
She represented him and the rising Morrison and would eventually make her big breakthrough, joining Warner Bros Records as an executive in 1972.
She was Cohen’s manager until 1969; that same year she became Van Morrison’s manager.
Martin would go on to sign a string of other stars, including Emmylou Harris, Leon Redbone and The Marshall Tucker Band, before moving to LA to continue her success.
She then returned to artist management, working with country artists such as Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill.
In 1985 she moved to Nashville, where she worked in executive positions at several labels.
As vice president of RCA, she worked with stars such as Gill, Clint Black, Paul Overstreet, Aaron Tippin and Lorrie Morgan.
In 1999, she became a vice president at Mercury Records and won her first and only Grammy for her work as a producer on the Hank Williams tribute album Timeless, which featured a song by Dylan.
She was also the manager of Vince Gil, seen here performing in Nashville last December
Martin is seen here giving an interview to Country Music Hall of Famer Jay Orr at the Ford Theater, Country Music Hall of Fame on November 17, 2009, following her own induction
In 2009, she gave an interview to Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Jay Orr at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Ford Theater on November 17, 2009.
In it she told how she had tried to convince Dylan to sign with Warner Bros. in 1973, but that this had ultimately been unsuccessful.
“The first thing I do on Warner Bros. stationery is write a letter to Bob Dylan,” she recalls.
‘And the letter continues for a while… I suggested to Bob that he could work with me at Warner Bros.
“He was ready to make a trip from Columbia. This would be a great time for him to come and work for Warner Bros.
She then went on to criticize the “damn gatekeepers” who allegedly kept the letter away from the folk icon, saying it would become commonplace in the industry.
“That made me angry,” she joked.
She also talked about her time at the Grossmans’ home in Woodstock, swimming competitions with Dylan that she said she won, and the cat on the cover of “Bringing It All Back Home.”
She passed away in Nashville’s Alive Hospice after living in the city for nearly 40 years. Before that, she worked in both New York and LA. She was an inspiration to countless people
The iconic photo, taken at her old boss Grossman’s estate, was difficult to capture, she said, because the cat wouldn’t look directly into the camera lens.
She died in Nashville, where she had lived for the past 40 years.
She was an inspiration to countless people in the music industry, especially women.
