Artist:Marty Robbins
Song:El Paso
Album:Super Hits
Though Marty Robbins is mostly known as a singer of cowboy ballads, there's a lot more to his career. But his interest in western ballads was authentic. He was born Martin Robinson Sept. 25, 1925 in Glendale, AZ. His former medicine show man grandfather Bob Heckle told him cowboy stories when Marty was a child. So he went to work at his older brother's ranch as a teenager. He came out of the Navy in 1947 and started performing locally and eventually settled on the stage name Marty Robbins. Country music legend Little Jimmy Dickens got Robbins a contract with Columbia in 1951. For the first few years of his career, Robbins performed standard country songs and even tried rock & roll. Bet he started acting in western movies and his theme for the 1958 Gary Cooper western The Hanging Tree convinced Robbins to do more of the same. El Paso was a monster hit on the country and pop charts in 1959 and the album Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs was huge. This budget Super Hits comp is OK but the All Time Greatest Hits comp is even better. Robbins would continue to have chart success until he left Columbia in 1972. He also appeared in several films and drove stock cars in NASCAR. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1982 and died from heart problems Dec. 8, 1982 at age 57. You don't have to be a country music fan to appreciate the powerful cowboy ballads of Marty Robbins. Here he is performing El Paso in 1960.
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