I wanted to share with you this week one of my favorite (and I mean favorite) female Rockabilly singers, that you may or may not of heard of – Janis Martin-the Female Elvis.

Janis was one of the few women working in the male-dominated rock and roll music field during the 1950s and one of country music’s early female innovators.

Janis Martin-The Female Elvis

Her Story & Music

The Early Days of Janis Martin:

Born March 27th, 1940 in Sutherlin, Virginia into a musical family (her father and uncle were both musicians and her mother a stage mother), Janis quickly became a hard-working performer. Even at the tender age of 4 she was playing the guitar by standing it up like a fiddle as she was too small to hold it on her lap and by age six, had mastered the basic chords and began singing. Although she was small her voice was loud and strong.

At age 8, she entered her first talent contest and placed second. For the next two years, she entered eleven contests over a three-state area, winning first place in each one, and winning over 200 or more contestants in a statewide talent show that took four days of elimination (Source).

Janis Martin age 10 — Source: Lets Keep the 50’s spirit alive

At age 11, she began her career as a member of the WDVA Barndance in Danville, Virginia. The show was on every Saturday night and was broadcast from an actual barn and after the show was done all the chairs would be pushed back and actual dance would take place. Hence how it got its name “WDVA Barndance”.

Janis continued to focus on Country music in her early days, moving from MDVA onto the road with Glen Thompson (mentioned in the image above) and then eventually being invited to be a regular member at the 3rd largest Barndance in the nation – the Old Dominion Barndance in Richmond, Virginia, ranking only behind the Grand Old Opry and the Wheeling, West Virginia Barndance (source).

Eventually though by her mid-teens Janice was growing tired of the slow ballads of country music and wanted to get into Rock n Roll (thanks to hearing artists like Ruth Brown sing). She was about to get lucky….

Further Reading: Ruth Brown -The R&B Singer Who Built Atlantic Records

Janis Martin WRVA Radio — Images from WRVA Radio Collection (1925-2000), Acc. 38210, Library of Virginia

Janis becomes a recording artist at the age of 15

Two staff announcers at WRVA (the station that carried the Barndance over the CBS network) were successful songwriters and wrote the song “Will You, Willyum”. They asked Janis to sing it on the Barndance for audience reaction, where they would cut a demo tape to send to their publisher in New York. When the demo tape arrived at Tannen Music in New York, the publisher not only accepted the song but sent the song to Steve Sholes, producer at RCA Victor and asked whether Sholes had an artist to record “Will You Willyum”. Apparently Sholes replied, “Well, who’s the girl doin’ the demo?”

At age 15, Martin signed with RCA Victor in March 1956, just two months after Elvis Presley joined the label. She recorded “Will You Willyum” on March 8, 1956, backed by her own composition, “Drugstore Rock ‘n Roll“.

Janis Marti Record for Will You Willyum — Source: 45cat

The song became the biggest hit of her career, selling 750,000 records and hitting the country and pop charts. Soon Martin was performing on American Bandstand, The Today Show and Tonight Starring Steve Allen. She also appeared on Jubilee USA, and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, becoming one of the younger performers to ever appear. In 1957 Billboard named her Most Promising Female Vocalist of that year (source).

Elvis Presley and RCA were so impressed with her stage presence, they dubbed her the Female Elvis. A nickname that would come to haunt her.

Ironically, “The Female Elvis” only had two brief encounters with her male counterpart. “I said hello to him backstage at a show in Danville, Va., once,” she recalls, “and later I ran into him in New York at RCA’s studio. He said, ‘How’s it goin’?’ I said, ‘Fine, how about you?’ He said, ‘It’s rough!’ That’s about all the words we ever exchanged. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that impressed with Elvis at first. I’ve always liked Carl Perkins better.”

In fact, Martin says, she was never all that keen on being cast in Presley’s mold. “I think ‘The Female Elvis’ bit was a hindrance–the audience expected a lot of hip gyrations like he did, and I got kind of tired of being called vulgar. It put a lot of pressure on me (source).”

Vintage 1950 Photo of Janis Martin performing in 1950s fashion

Continued Musical Success

Janis was chosen by RCA to tour as a member of the Jim Reeves show and continued recording rock and roll and country material that ended up being successful on both charts, including “My Boy Elvis“, “Let’s Elope Baby“, her cover of Roy Orbison’s song “Ooby Dooby”, and “Love Me to Pieces” (source).

Janis Martin 1950s concert poster — Source: Lets Keep the 50’s spirit alive

Secret Marriage

In 1957 after a USO tour in Europe it was reveled that Janis Martin at the age of 15 (2 years earlier) had secretly married a young US paratrooper who was stationed in Germany. They kept their marriage secret (only their parents knew) until the USO tour where she met up with her husband and ended up conceiving. RCA discovered the pregnancy and dropped their “Teenage Star” from the label in 1958.

Fall from Stardom and a Career Resurgence

For all of her early success, Martin was never able to sustain a rock & roll career, her gender and changing times hindered her success. Her stage moves and lusty delivery appeared unseemly appeared vulgar to a lot of people. Additionally, the country shows on which she was booked usually put her on bills and in front of audiences that weren’t overly enamored of rock & roll to begin with, and Martin found herself caught between conflicting currents. Her record company and management wanted her to keep pushing rockabilly in her stage act, while promoters doing the bookings preferred that she do straight country.

By 1960 she was now on her 2nd marriage to a man who did not approve of her being in the music business, so she faded out of sight until 1970. After divorcing her husband she formed the band ‘The Variation’ and began performing again in the Southern Virginia area where she has always resided.

Janis Martin 1970s vintage photo of her performing

Then, in 1979, European tour offers started coming in, after Bear Family Records had reissued her complete 1956-60 recordings on two LP’s. Martin then would go onto perform in Europe and at major rockabilly shows across the United States for some time after that.

At first Martin could hardly believe it and it took her a few years to gather her nerve and return to the road. But in 1982, on her 42nd birthday, she played her first date in England and was stunned. “I wasn’t prepared for what I found there! I looked down and saw kids with crew cuts and leather jackets and the big ‘poodle’ skirts. It was really weird. Like stepping back twenty-five years in my own life!” After that, she became a regular visitor to Europe (source).

Janis Martin 2004 photo of her perfoming

Sadly Janis died of cancer in 2007, leaving a powerful legacy of recordings and fans worldwide (source).

Janis Martin vintage photo 1940s / 1950s

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, Janis is absolutely one of my all time favorite female singers. Her music is always in my mix of music, I tell anybody who would listen about her (it’s true!) and after I saw Rosie Flores (who actually did a duet with Janis in 1997) and Marti Brom perform her music at VIVA I have been incredibly hooked. If I had any sort of musical ability, Janis would be my inspiration.

I will leave you with a performance by Janis Martin in Long Beach California, 2006.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Please share any thoughts about Janis martin in the comments section below!

Further Reading: Vintage Women’s History (Archived Blog Posts)

Liz 🙂

Women of the Big Band Era that Everyone Should Know

2 were Singers in a Big Band

2 were Big Bands

2 were Sister Acts

And 2 were Stars on the Swing Dance Floors

These are just some (not all) of the women of the Big Band Era that I wanted to highlight for today’s post.

Note: I’m focusing most of my post on the “not always mentioned” women. We all adore and know Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and there is loads written about them so this is why you won’t see them in this post.

For further reading please check out all the posts I have done on this subject on my dedicated page “Women of the Big Band Era Everyone Should Know“. (Jan 2024 update)

The Girl Groups:

The Boswell Sisters

The Boswell Sisters were a close harmony singing group, consisting of sisters Martha Boswell, Connee Boswell, and Helvetia “Vet” Boswell, noted for intricate harmonies and rhythmic experimentation (source).

They had up 20 hits during the 1930s, including the number-one record “The Object of My Affection” (1935). They also completed two successful tours of Europe, appeared on the inaugural television broadcast of CBS, and performed on Hello, Europe, the first internationally broadcast radio program.

The Sisters were also some of the radio’s earliest stars, making them one of the first hit acts of the mass-entertainment age. In 1934, the Sisters appeared 13 times on the Bing Crosby Entertains radio show on CBS. They were featured in fan magazines, and their likenesses were used in advertisements for beauty and household products (source).

For more information please visit the official Boswell website HERE.

Andrew Sisters

The Andrew Sisters started out as a tribute band to the sisters mentioned above “The Boswells” but quickly found their own style and their own hits turning them into America’s most popular female singing group.

The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia, soprano Maxine Angelyn “Maxene”, and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie “Patty”. After 6 years on the road with various dance bands and touring in vaudville, they had their first hit with “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”. They followed this success with a string of best-selling records over the next two years and they became a household name by the 1940s.

The sisters sold well over 75 million records (the last official count released by MCA Records in the mid-1970s), starred in 17 Hollywood movies and were established radio personalities. Their 1941 hit “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” can be considered an early example of rhythm and blues or jump blues (source).

During their musical career they were very active in their patriotic duty of wartime entertainment. They volunteered their free time to entertain enlisted and wounded men by singing, dancing and signing autographs (source).

For more on the Andrew Sisters please visit their official site HERE.

The Big Band Singers:

Helen Forrest

Helen served as the “girl singer” for three of the most popular big bands of the Swing Era (Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Harry James), thereby earning a reputation as “the voice of the name bands” (source) . She is regarded by some as the best female vocalist of the swing era. With James she had three million selling records and countless Top Ten hits, and for two years running was voted the most popular female vocalist in America (source).

FACT: Helen Forrest was one of the first singers in the big band era whose vocals were featured throughout a full band arrangement. Before this time, big band vocalists usually sang in the middle of a song (Source).

For more information on Helen visit HERE.

Martha Tilton

Martha Tilton, who as one of Benny Goodman’s vocalists in the 1930s was billed as the “Sweetheart of Swing” and appeared on 80 of his recordings (source). She also appeared with Jimmy Dorsey and briefly with Artie Shaw later on in her career.

Fun Story:

Early in her career with the Goodman organization, Martha was singing at the SunnyBrook Ballroom in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. When it came time for Benny to introduce her, he gave her a big buildup: “Here is a pretty gal from Hollywood that’s really going places.” But Martha missed her cue. When she didn’t appear on stage, after a moment Benny ad-libbed, “She’s not going places, she’s already gone.” (source).

For more information on Martha visit HERE.

The Big Bands:

International Sweethearts of Rhythm

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was the first integrated all women’s band in the United States.

The Sweethearts began in the rural junction of Piney Woods, Miss., in 1937. Lawrence Jones had founded a vocational school there primarily for young Black children and teens and wanted to raise money by forming a student swing band (Source). The original members of the Sweethearts were all students, who were African American or mixed raced, during the 1930s.

Operating from 1938 to 1946, their boom in popularity came during World War II, when many male jazz artists were serving overseas, leaving an opportunity for women to shine their talents at home. Over time, the group attracted some of the country’s strongest female jazz instrumentalists of the era. One of the group’s standout performers was trumpeter Ernestine Carroll, better known as “Tiny Davis,” who was affectionately referred to as the female Louis Armstrong. Armstrong, in fact, was counted among her fans (Source).

Things were not easy for the band. In 1943, two white women joined the ensemble, making it an interracial band performing in the Deep South during Jim Crow. The law forced the band to sleep and eat on their bus because of the segregation laws that prevented them from using restaurants and hotels (among many other issues brought on by this law). In order to navigate this racial divide, the band added “international” to its name. Labeling themselves as international provided the group a social space that allowed the band to rest somewhat outside the Southern racial structure (Source).

Though known mostly to Black audiences the band quickly rose in popularity playing in theatres like the Apollo in Harlem and the Howard Theatre in Washington when the band set a new box office record of 35,000 patrons in one week of 1941. The Sweethearts also gained an international audience when they spent time entertaining African American troops stationed in Europe for the USO.

In 1944 the band was named “America’s No. 1 All-Girl Orchestra” by Downbeat magazine.

1940s Vintage Photo of The International Sweethearts of Rhythm in the 1940s — The International Sweethearts of Rhythm in the 1940s.

For more information on the Sweethearts please take a look at the INCREDIBLE photos from the Smithsonian Museum.

Ivy Benson and Her All-Girl Band

1940s vintage photo of Big Band leader Ivy Benson and her all girl orchestra

Ivy Benson was an English musician and bandleader, who in 1939 led an all-female swing band to prove to the world that women could be good musicians too. Benson and her band rose to fame in the 1940s, headlining variety theatres and topping the bill at the London Palladium, and became the BBC’s resident house band. Her band (in one form or another) ran from 1939 to 1982. During those years, she gave hundreds of girls and women the chance to become professional musicians.

Fun Fact: Benson’s band had a high turnover of musicians, as they frequently left to marry G.I.s they met while touring. She once commented, “I lost seven in one year to America. Only the other week a girl slipped away from the stage. I thought she was going to the lavatory but she went off with a G.I. Nobody’s seen her since” (source).

For more on Ivy visit HERE.

The Dancers:

Norma Miller-The Queen of Swing

1940s vintage photo of Norma Miller Lindy Hopper

(Update since I wrote this piece in 2016- Norma Passed away in 2019 at 99)

Known to many as the Queen of Swing, and the last living member of Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, the group that took Lindy Hop — the original swing dance — out of Harlem’s ballrooms and across the world

Norma Miller was first discovered as a gifted young Lindy Hopper when she was just 12 years old. She was found dancing on the sidewalk outside of the Savoy Ballroom (because she was too young to go in) where the music could be heard quite well (source).

Later that year, Miller entered the Savoy Lindy Hop Contest, which was held at the Apollo Theater. Miller entered with one of her high school friends. They won the contest and Norma was asked to join Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. The group rose to prominence after winning a contest at the Harvest Moon Ball. Miller and the group performed on Broadway and in several motion pictures.

Miller has written several books, appeared in six films and four television series.

In 2003, Miller was given a “National Heritage Fellowship” from the National Endowment for the Arts for creating and continuing to preserve “the acrobatic style swing dance, known as the Lindy Hop (source).

Today Norma currently tours the world, spreading the joy and history of Lindy Hop to new generations of swing dancers and interested audiences.

On a personal level I have been fortunate enough to meet Norma in person when she was visiting Toronto a couple of years ago for a Lindy Hop weekend. She is an incredible woman with so much sass and humor, you cannot help but be instantly drawn to her.

For more on Norma please visit her website HERE.

Here is her most well-known film appearance is in the swing dancing scene in the film Hellzapoppin, featuring Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers.

Jewel McCowan

1940s vintage photo of Jewel McGowan Lindy Hop

Jewel by the age of 19 was working as a dancer in music clubs, and doing the Southern California partnered street dance known to them as “Swing”. It was during this time in the late 1930s that a New Jersey Lindy Hop dancer going by the name Dean Collins came to town looking for a partner. He found Jewel, and out of their collaboration came what is now widely regarded as the greatest dancing partnership of the original swing dance era. They would go on to appear in dozens of Hollywood films and shorts.

Jewel did not dance a lot of variations, but instead expressed her powerful voice in her movement and attitude. Jewels swivels (you will know them when you see them) are credited as being without equal (source).

Here is a compilation of Jewel’s movies (and moves).

Well friends, I hope you enjoyed learning about SOME of the women of the Big Band Era. Please share in the comment section below who you enjoyed learning about.

Also, don’t forget to check out ALL the fantastic women I have written about as of January 2024 on my ‘Women of the Big Band Era Everyone Should Know‘ series page.