Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Carl Martin of Wise, Virginia
At the Harry W. Meador Jr. Coal Museum in Big Stone Gap, a Virginia historical marker remembers Carl Martin as an early music pioneer. The marker stands in the town where his story began, but Martin’s life carried him far beyond Wise County. He played in coal camps and on city streets, performed at dances and medicine shows, entered recording studios in Knoxville and Chicago, served during World War II, and later returned to the stage during the folk and blues revival.
Martin is often described as a blues musician, but that description captures only part of him. He was a guitarist, mandolinist, violinist, string bassist, singer, entertainer, and traveling songster. He played old time breakdowns, blues, popular songs, dance music, jazz influenced pieces, and whatever else an audience requested. His career linked the Black musical life of Appalachian coal country with Knoxville’s Vine Street, Chicago’s recording industry, and the national folk festival circuit.
His story also reveals how the music business divided Southern music by race. A set of Knoxville recordings associated with Martin and his companions was sold under the name Tennessee Chocolate Drops for Black record buyers and under the name Tennessee Trio for the white old time market. The musicians had not changed. The recordings had not changed. Only the commercial category had changed. Martin’s career therefore belongs not only to blues history, but also to the history of Appalachian string bands, early country recording, American popular music, and the artificial racial boundaries created by the record industry.
Born Into Music in Big Stone Gap
Virginia’s official marker places Martin’s birth in Big Stone Gap in April 1906. Published accounts differ over the exact day, so April 1906 is the safest date supported by the official state account. In a lengthy interview conducted by blues historian Pete Welding in 1966 and published in 78 Quarterly, Martin identified Big Stone Gap as his birthplace and described a large, musical family.
Martin remembered his father as a stone mason who also played violin and guitar. Locally, his father was known as Fiddlin’ Martin. Carl’s older brother Roland was also a gifted musician. Roland had lost his sight, but he played several instruments and became one of the most important early influences on Carl’s development. The Martin household was therefore not simply a place where music was heard. It was a place where music was practiced, studied, and treated as a usable skill.
Carl also learned from musicians connected to the coalfields. He recalled coal miners stopping at the family home, bringing guitars and showing him how to play. One man gained his father’s permission to teach him. The first available guitar was a twelve string instrument that was too large for the boy’s hands, but Martin kept practicing. That memory places the beginning of his musical education inside the social world of Big Stone Gap, where family life, coal work, migration, and music met in the same rooms.
Music Across the Coalfields
Martin’s early musical world did not fit neatly into the categories later imposed by record companies and historians. Black and white musicians in Southwest Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and southern West Virginia often heard one another at dances, on streets, near railroad and mining communities, and through traveling entertainment. Segregation and racial danger remained real, but music still moved across those boundaries.
The Blue Ridge Institute’s study of Southwest Virginia blues describes Martin performing at house parties, dances, street corners, coal camps, and medicine shows. Martin and the musicians around him traveled where work and audiences could be found. Mining paydays mattered because a camp with wages in hand could support a night of music. The route of a working string band was therefore shaped not only by roads and towns, but also by mine schedules, local businesses, and the rhythms of labor.
One recollection preserved by the Blue Ridge Institute tells of Martin and Howard Armstrong entering a white community and facing a hostile reception. The encounter changed when local men noticed their instruments and asked them to play. The episode should not be mistaken for proof that music erased racism. It shows something more limited and historically revealing. Musical ability could sometimes create a temporary opening in a region where Black travelers otherwise faced serious restrictions and danger.
Martin later said that Roland could play nearly any kind of old music and that the musicians traveled through Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and farther south. They performed for both Black and white audiences, sometimes in different settings and under different expectations. Carl learned to survive by listening closely, adapting quickly, and becoming useful on nearly any stringed instrument a band required.
Knoxville and the Tennessee Chocolate Drops
Around 1918, when Martin was about twelve years old, he left Big Stone Gap for Knoxville. There he became part of the Black musical life centered around East Knoxville and Vine Street. Knoxville had railroad traffic, hotels, barbershops, pawnshops, cafes, nightclubs, radio stations, and street audiences. For an adaptable young musician, it offered opportunities that a smaller coal town could not.
Martin worked with Howard Armstrong, another exceptionally versatile Black string musician, and with his brother Roland. The musicians played wherever people gathered and money could be earned. Knoxville public history sources remember Martin and Armstrong performing around town, living in the same East Knoxville house for a time, appearing on radio station WROL, and playing in Prohibition era nightclubs.
Their group became associated with the name Tennessee Chocolate Drops. The personnel and exact circumstances surrounding the earliest recording session are not perfectly clear. In his interview with Pete Welding, Martin remembered himself, Armstrong, and several others entering a Knoxville session arranged through Brunswick interests at the St. James Hotel. Discographical research later connected Martin, Roland Martin, and Howard Armstrong to the sides commonly identified as “Knox County Stomp” and “Vine Street Rag,” also cataloged as “Vine Street Drag.”
Martin remembered the session with mixed feelings. He believed his name was supposed to appear on the record, but it did not. He also recalled receiving no meaningful payment after the discs were issued. His account captures a common reality for early working musicians. Recording created evidence that their music existed, but it did not necessarily create financial security, accurate credit, or control over how the performance was marketed.
One Recording, Two Racial Markets
The 1930 Knoxville sides became especially important because the same performances were reportedly issued under two group names. For Black consumers, the records were associated with the Tennessee Chocolate Drops. For the white old time market, they appeared as the Tennessee Trio. Virginia’s historical marker specifically remembers this split marketing strategy.
That decision reveals more about the record business than it does about the musicians. Martin, Armstrong, and Roland Martin were not changing their identities between pressings. They were playing a string band style shaped by Appalachian travel, Black dance music, popular entertainment, and the practical demands of live performance. The company separated the music into racial markets because its catalogs assumed that Black and white buyers belonged to different musical worlds.
The records challenge that assumption. “Knox County Stomp” and “Vine Street Rag” belong simultaneously to African American string band history, Knoxville music history, Appalachian history, blues history, and the early commercial history of country music. Carl Martin’s presence helps show that Black musicians were not outsiders to Appalachian string music. They were among its creators, carriers, and professional interpreters.
Chicago and the Recording Years
Martin moved to Chicago in the early 1930s. The city offered a larger music economy, but it also demanded even greater versatility. In his interview with Welding, Martin remembered entering Polish, Irish, German, and Italian neighborhoods to learn the music people wanted to hear. He visited a music store, studied sheet music, and expanded a repertoire that was already unusually broad.
This was the working method of a songster. A songster was not confined to a single genre. He learned ballads, blues, dance pieces, popular standards, novelty numbers, fiddle tunes, and regional favorites. Martin played weddings, church occasions, dances, and neighborhood gatherings. He treated music as both an art and a trade, and he prepared himself to satisfy the audience in front of him.
During the middle 1930s, Martin recorded for several labels and appeared in sessions connected to some of Chicago’s best known blues musicians. Virginia’s marker states that he performed with Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red. Martin also remembered working around Bumble Bee Slim and other recording artists connected to Chicago producer and publisher Lester Melrose.
The surviving records establish Martin as a distinctive performer in his own right. Victor documentation identifies him with “Kid Man Blues.” Bluebird B 6139 paired “Crow Jane” with “Old Time Blues,” recorded in Chicago on July 27, 1935. Decca documentation identifies Martin as the vocalist on “Let’s Have a New Deal,” with Willie B. James on guitar, recorded in September 1935. Titles such as “Good Morning Judge,” “You Can Go Your Way,” and “Drunken Woman Blues” further show the range of themes he carried into the studio.
The Sound of “Old Time Blues”
“Old Time Blues” offers one of the clearest surviving examples of Martin’s individual style. The Blue Ridge Institute identified Martin as both singer and guitarist on the recording and described the performance as an eight bar blues built around an AB lyric pattern. His guitar work was precise and rhythmically controlled, with fingerpicking that gave the piece motion without crowding the vocal.
The title itself is revealing. Martin did not separate old time music and blues as sharply as later commercial categories often did. To a musician who had grown up hearing family fiddling, coal camp guitarists, street bands, popular songs, and dance tunes, these styles could belong to the same working repertoire. His music came from accumulation. Every road, neighborhood, musician, and audience added something.
That breadth helps explain why Martin sometimes resisted being treated only as an old blues performer during the 1960s revival. When Welding first visited him, Martin and Ted Bogan reportedly spent considerable time playing standards and popular material before turning to the blues songs the collector wanted to hear. They were not denying the blues. They were demonstrating that their musical lives had always been larger than the category being used to rediscover them.
War and Years Outside the Spotlight
Martin’s commercial recording activity slowed after the 1930s. Virginia’s marker states that he served during World War II. In his interview, Martin remembered continuing to play while in the Army, helping maintain morale and participating in musical contests. Even military service did not separate him completely from the instruments that had carried him out of Big Stone Gap.
Afterward, Martin spent years outside the national spotlight. He continued to play in Chicago, but not always as a full time professional. He believed that changing entertainment systems had reduced opportunities for musicians who once worked streets, local businesses, dances, and small venues. Jukeboxes and more controlled booking arrangements replaced some of the settings where independent performers had earned money.
This quieter period can make his career appear divided into two lives, an early recording career and a later festival revival. In reality, the connecting thread was continued musicianship. When Pete Welding located Martin in Chicago in 1966, he found a performer who had not worked professionally for several years but still possessed strong vocal and instrumental ability.
Pete Welding and the Chicago String Band
Welding interviewed Martin at his home on May 31, 1966. Before leaving Chicago that summer, he recorded him in two sessions. One included guitarist and mandolinist Johnny Young. Another assembled Martin, Young, guitarist John Lee Granderson, and harmonica player John Wrencher as the Chicago String Band. Martin played mandolin, violin, and guitar and contributed vocals.
The recordings introduced Martin to listeners who had not known his 1930s discs. They also documented the full musician rather than only the name printed on an old record label. Photographs showed him moving between instruments. The interview preserved his memories of Big Stone Gap, Knoxville, coalfield travel, Chicago, recording sessions, and military service.
Welding’s papers later entered the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The Pete Welding Collection, identified as AFC 2011/053, contains hundreds of tapes, interviews, photographs, manuscripts, and other materials documenting blues and jazz history. It provides an important archival path for future research into Martin’s rediscovery and the Chicago String Band.
Martin, Bogan and Armstrong
By the beginning of the 1970s, Martin had reunited with Ted Bogan and Howard Armstrong. Performing as Martin, Bogan and Armstrong, the trio became a favorite on the folk and traditional music circuit. Their appeal rested partly on instrumental skill and partly on the ease of musicians who had spent decades learning how to entertain almost any room.
The trio did not present a frozen reconstruction of the 1930s. They carried an old working repertoire into a new setting. Blues numbers could sit beside ragtime pieces, fiddle tunes, popular songs, comedy, and dance music. Festival audiences encountered the same flexibility that had once allowed the musicians to work coal camps, city streets, neighborhood dances, and clubs.
The Smithsonian’s records for the 1972 Festival of American Folklife list numerous original sound reels involving Carl Martin and Martin, Bogan and Armstrong. Martin appeared in performances with Armstrong, Walter Vinson, Sam Chatmon, Frank Hovington, Hacksaw Harney, and other musicians. In addition to the performances themselves, the live festival recordings may preserve introductions, conversation, and interaction among musicians who carried several related traditions onto the same stage.
A Direct Influence on John Cephas
Martin’s later festival work also allowed him to pass music directly to another generation. Virginia guitarist John Cephas, who became one of the leading interpreters of Piedmont blues, remembered learning “Crow Jane” from Martin at a festival where Martin, Bogan and Armstrong performed.
That connection is important because it shows tradition moving person to person rather than only through commercial records. Martin had learned from family members, coal miners, street musicians, and traveling performers. Decades later, a younger Virginia musician learned from him. Through Cephas, the song continued into new performances, recordings, classrooms, and festival stages.
Martin’s influence was therefore not limited to how many records carried his name. It also survived in the habits of musicians who watched his hands, heard his timing, asked about a song, and carried part of his approach into their own work.
Why Carl Martin Matters to Appalachian History
Carl Martin’s life corrects a narrow picture of Appalachian music. The region’s history cannot be reduced to a single racial community or a single musical genre. Black musicians lived in the coalfields, played stringed instruments, worked dances, exchanged songs with white musicians, appeared on radio, entered the earliest Southern recording sessions, and traveled the same mountain roads as other professional entertainers.
Martin also shows why labels such as blues, old time, jazz, and country must be used carefully. Those words can help describe sound, but they can also repeat divisions created by record companies. Martin’s repertoire crossed the boundaries because the musical life that formed him had already crossed them.
His path from Wise County to Knoxville and Chicago also belongs to the larger history of Appalachian migration. He left the mountains as a young musician, followed opportunity to a regional city, and later joined the movement of Southern Black workers and performers toward Chicago. Yet Big Stone Gap remained the beginning of his story. The coalfield gave him his first teachers, his first musical family, and the regional culture that made versatility necessary.
Remembering Carl Martin in Big Stone Gap
Carl Martin died in Michigan on May 10, 1979. Virginia’s historical marker gives Detroit as the place of death, while some later accounts identify Pontiac. Until a death certificate or contemporary obituary resolves the difference, Michigan is the most cautious description.
Today, the marker at the Harry W. Meador Jr. Coal Museum returns Martin’s name to the community where he was born. It recognizes that a Black child from Big Stone Gap became an important American musician, even though the record business did not always credit him fairly and later histories did not always place Black string band musicians at the center of Appalachian music.
Martin’s career lasted from coal camp and street performance to commercial recording and national folk festivals. He played for miners, dancers, pedestrians, soldiers, nightclub audiences, record buyers, and festival crowds. He carried Wise County music into Knoxville and Chicago, then helped carry it forward through the musicians who learned from him.
Carl Martin was not simply a bluesman who happened to come from Appalachia. He was an Appalachian musician whose blues, string band music, popular songs, and lifelong adaptability grew from the region that first taught him to listen.
Sources & Further Reading
American Folklife Center. “Pete Welding Collection, 1958-1995.” AFC 2011/053. Library of Congress, Washington, DC. https://findingaids.loc.gov/repositories/3/resources/309
Blue Ridge Institute of Ferrum College. Southwest Virginia Blues. Virginia Traditions, BRI Records 008. Ferrum, VA: BRI Records, 1988. https://folkways-media.si.edu/docs/folkways/artwork/BRI00008.pdf
Blue Ridge Institute of Ferrum College. Western Piedmont Blues in Virginia. Virginia Traditions, BRI Records 003. Ferrum, VA: BRI Records, 1980. https://folkways-media.si.edu/docs/folkways/artwork/BRI00003.pdf
Discography of American Historical Recordings. “Bluebird B-6139: ‘Crow Jane’ and ‘Old Time Blues’ by Carl Martin.” University of California, Santa Barbara Library. https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/objects/detail/62258/Bluebird_B-6139
Discography of American Historical Recordings. “Decca Matrix 90294: ‘Let’s Have a New Deal’ by Carl Martin.” University of California, Santa Barbara Library. https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/refer/2000281645
Discography of American Historical Recordings. “Decca 7114.” University of California, Santa Barbara Library. https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/objects/refer/314639
Discography of American Historical Recordings. “Victor Matrix BS-80934: ‘Kid Man Blues’ by Carl Martin.” University of California, Santa Barbara Library. https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/200015606/BS-80934-Kid_man_blues
The HistoryMakers. “Howard Armstrong’s Biography.” Interview conducted April 12, 2003. https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/howard-armstrong-39
Historical Marker Database. “Carl Martin: Early Music Pioneer.” Marker KA-17, Big Stone Gap, Virginia. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=90912
Knoxville History Project. “Carl Martin.” In “Music Figures K-W.” https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/music-figures-k-w/
Knoxville History Project. “Louie Bluie Festival Celebrates the Legacy of Eclectic Musician Howard Armstrong.” September 24, 2015. https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/2015/09/24/louie-bluie-festival-celebrates-the-legacy-of-eclectic-musician-howard-armstrong/
Knoxville History Project. “The Twenties Revisited.” https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/the-twenties/
Knoxville History Project. Knoxville Music Guide. https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/knoxville-music-guide/
Knoxville Old Time Music Project. “Tennessee Chocolate Drops.” https://www.knoxvilleoldtime.org/music-7/tennessee-chocolate-drops
Martin, Bogan, and Armstrong. Martin, Bogan & Armstrong. Flying Fish FF 003, 1974. Discographical information available in Stefan Wirz’s illustrated Carl Martin discography. https://www.wirz.de/music/martin.htm
Martin, Bogan, and the Armstrongs. That Old Gang of Mine. Flying Fish FF 056, 1978. Discographical information available in Stefan Wirz’s illustrated Carl Martin discography. https://www.wirz.de/music/martin.htm
Moore, J. Roderick, and Kip Lornell. “On Tour with a Black String Band in the 1930s: Howard Armstrong and Carl Martin Reminisce.” Goldenseal 2, no. 4 (October 1976): 9-21, 46-52. https://archive.wvculture.org/goldenseal/gsauthor.html
National Council for the Traditional Arts. “Martin, Bogan & Armstrong at the 36th National Folk Festival, 1974.” Sights & Sounds. https://ncta-usa.org/sights-sounds/
Olson, Ted, and Tony Russell. The Knoxville Sessions, 1929-1930: Knox County Stomp. Hambergen, Germany: Bear Family Records, 2016. https://www.bear-family.com/various-the-knoxville-sessions-1929-1930-4-cd-deluxe-box-set.html
Pearson, Barry Lee. Liner notes to Cephas and Wiggins, Richmond Blues. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW 40179. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2008. https://folkways-media.si.edu/docs/folkways/artwork/SFW40179.pdf
Pearson, Barry Lee. “Appalachian Blues.” Smithsonian Folkways Magazine, Summer 2010. https://folkways.si.edu/magazine-summer-2010-appalachian-blues/african-american-folk/music/article/smithsonian
Pearson, Barry Lee, and Jeff Place. Classic African American Songsters from Smithsonian Folkways. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW 40211. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2014. https://folkways-media.si.edu/docs/folkways/artwork/SFW40211.pdf
Pearson, Barry Lee, and Jeff Place. Classic Appalachian Blues from Smithsonian Folkways. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2010. https://folkways.si.edu/classic-appalachian-blues-from-folkways/african-american-music-folk/music/album/smithsonian
Smithsonian Institution. “Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records: 1972 Festival of American Folklife.” Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. https://sova.si.edu/record/cfch.sff.1972
Smithsonian Institution. “Martin, Bogan, Armstrong, Vinson, Chatmon and Harney; Joe Glazer; Earl Robinson; Utah Phillips, July 1, 1972.” Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records. https://sova.si.edu/record/cfch.sff.1972/ref980
Town of Big Stone Gap. 2020 Comprehensive Plan. Big Stone Gap, VA, 2020. https://www.bigstonegap.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2020-Comprehensive-Plan-final.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Carl Martin, Early Music Pioneer.” Virginia Historical Highway Marker KA-17. https://www.education.virginia.gov/media/governorvirginiagov/secretary-of-education/pdf/DHR-African-American-Historical-Markers-Spreadsheet-2021.pdf
Welding, Pete. “An Interview with Carl Martin.” 78 Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1968). https://www.cemjazz.org/_media/ressources/petite-doc/78-quarterly-no-1-et-2.pdf
Welding, Pete. “Carl Martin, 1906-1979.” Living Blues, no. 43 (Summer 1979): 28-29, 40. https://bluesoterica.com/living-blues-back-issues
Winick, Stephen, and Jennifer Cutting. “In His Heart, a Researcher: Pete Welding Builds His Collection.” Folklife Today, Library of Congress, May 13, 2026. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2026/05/in-his-heart-a-researcher-pete-welding-builds-his-collection/
Wirz, Stefan. “Illustrated Carl Martin Discography.” https://www.wirz.de/music/martin.htm
Zwigoff, Terry. “Louie Bluie: The Life and Music of William Howard Armstrong.” 78 Quarterly 1, no. 5 (1990): 41-55.
Author Note: Carl Martin’s story reveals how deeply Black musicians contributed to Appalachian string-band, blues, and old-time traditions despite frequently being separated from those histories by commercial labels. I hope this article helps return one of Big Stone Gap’s most versatile musicians to the center of Appalachia’s musical story.