Female Rockabillys

Janis Martin was a unique figure in the history of rockabilly -- there were other women working in that male-dominated field , but Janis Martin was the one dubbed "The Female Elvis Presley" by RCA, reportedly with the approval of Col. Tom Parker. She had too many strikes against her for a lasting career, but she was good and she left behind the records to prove it.
Janis Martin was born in Sutherlin, Virginia March 27 1940. With a stage mother on one side and a father and uncle who were amateur musicians on the other, Martin was practically predestined for a performing career. She was playing and singing before age five. By six, she'd mastered chords on her junior-sized guitar and was singing in a style influenced by Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams. Martin became a fixture in local talent contests and won all of them. Martin was playing and singing on the WDVA Barndance out of Virginia by age 11. By her mid-teens, she'd appeared alongside the likes of Ernest Tubb, the Carter Family, Sonny James, and Jean Shepard.

From the Barndance, she traveled with Glen Thompson's band for two years and then went on the road with Jim Eanes, a former Starday recording artist. In 1953, she appeared at a Tobacco Festival with Ernest Tubb and Sunshine Sue. As a result of this appearance, Janis was invited to become a regular member of the Old Dominion Barndance in Richmond, Virginia third largest in the nation, ranking only behind the Grand Old Opry and the Wheeling, West Virginia Barndance.

Her amazing amount of experience for one so young helped push her into rock & roll. It turned out that Martin had tired of country music by her mid-teens, especially the slow ballads, having been doing them for a decade. The timing was perfect, for she discovered rhythm & blues in the mid-1950s, and was soon bringing that material into her own song lists

Two staff announcers at WRVA (the station that carried the Barndance over the CBS network) were successful songwriters penning the hit "Little Things Mean A Lot".When the fifties exploded with rock or rockabilly music, they wrote "Will You, Willyum". Asking Janis to sing it on the Barndance for audience reaction, and they 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 rushed over to Steve Sholes of RCA Victor. Sholes contacted Janis contacted and invited her to Nashville to record the song on Victor Records. At the age of fifteen, she became a recording artist. This record was her biggest hit and on the flip side of the record was a song called "Drugstore Rock And Roll" that Janis wrote herself. This record sold about 750.000 copies and she became in constant demand for appearances all over the US.

Wanda Jackson was only halfway through high school when in 1954, country singer Hank Thompson heard her on an Oklahoma City radio show and asked her to record with his band the Brazo Valley Boys. By the end of the decade, Jackson had become one of America's first female country and rockabilly singers.