A belated update: Sara Martin got her headstone.

The National Jug Band Jubilee and the Kentuckiana Blues Society were successful in collecting enough funds to provide a headstone for Louisville jazz singer Sara Martin (1884-1955). The photo is from the unveiling in 2017. I mentioned this way back on July 13, 2014. Unfortunately the link to Louisville Music News is broken.

 

 

Before LeBron James, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lawler ... before Kong itself ... there was King Oliver.

The song Sweet Like This may not be the very best example of Joe "King" Oliver's work, but as a cut included on an LP called Guide to Jazz, it was my introduction to his body of work. The album was intended as accompaniment to a book of the same name, by the French jazz critic Hugues Panassié, and was released in the mid-1950s. At the age of 10, or thereabouts, I checked it out from the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library and committed it to cassette tape.

You might say that I caught up with rock and roll a bit later.

Why think back to King Oliver? Because of Sara Martin. And who was Sara Martin? Louisville Music News explains.

A Headstone For Sara Martin, at Louisville Music News

Here’s a fundraiser for all Louisville music fans – and I mean EVERYBODY - to pay attention and donate a few shekels toward: Louisville blues singer Sara Martin, noted for her early 20th Century recordings which earned her the nickname of “The Famous Moanin’ Mama” (and “The Colored Sophie Tucker”), is buried in an unmarked grave in Louisville Cemetary. The Kentuckiana Blues Society and the National Jugband Jubilee have joined forces to raise money to buy a headstone for Martin’s grave ...