An awesome mix of truckers and traditional country music, loaded with everything from humorous, to tear jerking songs, including two duets with legendary, Moe Bandy.

14 MP3 Songs
COUNTRY: Traditional Country, COUNTRY: Americana

Details:
Leland Martin
Bio

Leland Martinâs voice hits you like a drum roll, alerting you that serious emotions lie ahead. He sings the hard life heâs experienced on his pilgrimage from the sawmills and honky tonks of southern Missouri to the spotlights of Nashville.

Martin was born in the small community of Houston, Missouri. He and his eight brothers and sisters grew up in the even tinier and improbably named settlement of Success.

What Martin lacked in material comforts, he made up for with a vivid imagination. âMy main influences as a child,â he says, âwere the Elvis Presley movies Iâd see on TV. That was a big treat. When Iâd see him performâand I was just a little tykeâIâd think, âMan, that is so cool. Thatâs what I want to do.â Every time I could save up three dollars, Iâd go buy me an Elvis record.â

But Elvis wasnât the only star twinkling on Martinâs young horizon. He also immersed himself in the Merle Haggard and Buck Owens albums he found in his momâs record collection. When he was 11 or 12, as he recalls, his mother bought him a guitar for Christmas. âI tried it, and I quit,â he confesses. âI didnât like it. It was too hard. So I threw it in the closet.â Still, the need to make music tugged at him. So, after a few months, he dug the guitar out and tried again. This time, he caught on.

âI just kind of taught myself,â Martin notes. âIâd watch somebody play and ask them questions. Then Iâd go home and work on it.â The first song he learned to play was Haggardâs âOkie From Muskogee.â âIt was so easy,â he says. âIt had two chords. The songwriting that inspired meâas I got older and learned how to playâwas the stuff like Haggard wrote.â

Once Martin had his basic guitar techniques down, he taught his older brother to play. The two of them wound up playing in a bar band when Martin was only 15.
âThere were guns going off outside and fights and brawls inside,â he remembers. âIt was scary for a 15-year-old kid.â It was even scarier in the next bar they worked in. âWhen the bottles started flying,â he explains, âwhich was practically every night, weâd have to turn the speakers around on the stage so that the glass would hit the backs of them. The first time I played in a bar that didnât have a fight all night, I thought, âThis is alright'.

When Martin reached the point that he was making $15 a night two nights a week, he quit high school, a decision he still regrets. âIâve struggled awful hard because I didnât stay in school and get my education.â In 1974âthree days shy of his seventeenth birthdayâMartin got married. To support himself and his bride, he began working in the local sawmills and cut back his performing to the weekends. âThis was my way of life for years,â he says.

During his early years, Martin had tried to write songs but was never satisfied with the outcome. Then, in 1980, he finally wrote a couple that sounded good to himâgood enough, in fact, that he decided to record them. They were âT-Bird Heavenâ and âTribute To Patsy Cline.â Money was still scarce, though, so he and his buddies spent two or three hot summer days cutting âa whole load of cord wood.â Together, they earned $1,100 and gave it all to Martin to pay for 1,000 copies of a 45 single of his two songs. Except for some local airplay, the record went nowhere.

By 1983, Martin was working at a shoe factory in Houston and still playing nights in clubs. A local musician, Bobby Burkhead, who now works with George Jones, was putting together a band for Freddie Hart. âBobby came out to the club and watched me and said he wanted to hire me to play lead guitar for Freddie,â Martin recounts. Two days after he went to Nashville to rehearse with Hart, Martinâs son was born. âIt was 10 days before I got back home,â he says. âThat was toughânot getting to see your new baby.â

Touring with a big star, Martin soon discovered, wasnât what he hoped it would be. âI didnât like it,â he says flatly. âFreddie and I are still friends and he taught me valuable lessons in songwriting, but we would play a couple of dates and then come home and sit a couple of weeks. I wasnât getting paid except when I went out. I wasnât making any money. So I quit and went back to working and playing, and I ended up with my own band again.â

One day, while he was hauling propane gas, Martin had an inspiration. âI was in a hurry to get somewhere,â he says, âand I thought, âIf you people will just keep your pants on, Iâll be there in a little while.â That gave me the idea to write a song called âKeep Your Pants On.â I thought it was so darn good that if somebody would hear it I might get somewhere. So me and a friend got enough money to demo it, along with one more song Iâd written called âI Just Want To Sing.ââ

This burst of creativity happened just as compact discs were coming into vogue. Figuring that radio stations would be more impressed by a CD than a cassette, Martin spent a hard-earned $160 for just two CD copies of his songs. It turned out to be a wise investment. The owners of a local trucking company heard âKeep Your Pants Onâ on the Houston radio station and invited Martin to sing at a company picnic. âAfter the show,â he says, âthe owners came up to me and told me I was really great. They said theyâd like to help me get into the music business.â Thus was born his first album, Keep Your Pants On.

âWe got the album done but we couldnât do anything with it,â says Martin. âWe couldnât get much airplay. But while we were working the album, I wrote the song, âIf I Had Long Legs (Like Alan Jackson).â That became the really big turning point in my life.â CDX, the compilation-album series, serviced âLong Legsâ to radio stations across the country and netted Martin his first national attention.

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