Linda Martell’s career is made up of a lot of firsts. Among them, she was the first commercially successful Black female country artist and the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry.
Martell, a South Carolina native, started singing R&B songs in a family band, Linda Martell and the Anglos, in the early 1960s. She discovered country music at a local Air Force base and stepped out on her own as a singer a few years later. She was signed to Plantation Records in 1969, and her first single, “Color Him Father,” made it on to the Billboard charts.
She saw moderate success over the following few years — she released three albums, made appearances on variety shows like “Hee Haw” and played the Grand Ole Opry several times. However, her fame was short-lived. After conflicts with her business manager, her recording contract ended, and she left Nashville around 1974.
She continued performing in small clubs around the country and supported herself with day jobs before moving back to South Carolina to be near her family. She was honored with CMT’s Equal Play Award in 2021, and there is a documentary about her life in the works.
