Today - Marty Robbins

 

Too Many Places

Today

Marty Robbins

Produced by Marty Robbins

Arranged by Bill McElhiney

Cover Design: Ron Coro

Cover Photo: Al Clayton

Engineering: Mike Figlio and Lou Bradley

Columbia C 30816

1971

From the back cover: When word gets around that one of the nation's most popular singers has taken to risking his neck driving racing cars, people start wanting to know what he's really like. Well, people aren't the only ones-journalists become curious about it, too, and so when I went to Nashville recently I exerted considerable energy in an attempt to find and talk to Marty Robbins.

Priming myself by watching Steve McQueen in "Le Mans" and by racing my BMW against a Red Triumph halfway from Louisville to Bowling Green, I called first on Clayton Ratliff, for preliminary information. Clayton is a school teacher, and he always seems to know everything about every celebrity in Nashville, including, I would estimate, the location of 70 per cent of their birthmarks.

"If you want to see Marty Robbins before 10 o'clock, you'll have to go to the race track," he said.

"He said so himself."

I called a record producer in Nashville who said he had no idea where Marty might be, but thought he was in town somewhere and gave me the name of a friend who might be better informed.

"He's probably out racing cars," the friend said, giving me the names of two other friends.

The first of these thought Marty might be on his way to the site of the next race. The second thought it more likely that he was holed up somewhere a some selected race track practicing on cornering.

Several other calls to "connections" in the fringe of Nashville's music business produced a "picture" of the Marty Robins personality that was about as comprehensive as a mosaic after an earthquake. One acquaintance said he was stand-offish"; another described him as "a very warm person"; "a loner," said a third: "charming," said a fourth. All wanted to talk mainly about the voluminous folklore on Marty Robbins and motor racing. None knew where he might be. (Well I once owned a Porsche, so I know how sharply the bug can bite-even though in my case the sports car bug eventually blunted its teeth on a clutch that kept falling apart.) After checking a couple of race tracks and finding them as empty and bland as they usually are in the middle of the week, I gave up. Didn't even cross the trail of Marty Robbins' exhaust as far as I knew. Later I learned that he had probably been in the studio all along cutting this recording.

No one had thought of that-and thus did I learn something about Marty Robbins. He makes such an impression on people that it's difficult for them to believe that he can be more than one thing at a time. He has been making records, of course, but his auto racing exploits had become such an overnight legend that it was assumed, at any given moment, he was out roaring about in his machine. I guess the great difference between the two activities is what we all-people and journalists alike-find difficult to reconcile. We know enough about motor racing to wonder how any man could have enough energy to do that and some- thing else, and we know enough about recording to wonder how any man could have enough energy to do that and something else.

Yet it seems there is a common denominator we may have overlooked: concentration. Motor racing is said to require a greater degree of concen- tration than any other activity. Racing teams have experimented with radios to provide communication between the driver and his pit crew, believing they would greatly simplify the logistic problems involved in long distance races but then had to take the radios out, as they found it just wouldn't do to have the driver hearing voices when he was going into a curve at 130 mph -the car, the track, the other cars, demanded all the concentration any driver could muster.

Concentration is concentration, no matter where you find it. A singer who concentrates poorly won't slam into a wall or go cartwheeling into the infield, but neither will he ever be a great singer. Having proved how well he can concentrate in a speedy machine, Marty Robbins has indirectly revealed one of the secrets of his success in front of the microphones. You can hear it in this record.

His ability to concentrate better than most of us accounts for his sense of timing and the way he controls his breathing while singing-two of a singer's most critical problems. Marty's timing is precise. He ends a phrase exactly as it should end. He starts exactly on the beat, and possibly has caused arrangers to faint by being one of those unheard-of singers who blends his voice with the backing instruments exactly the way the arranger had it all worked out. To get an idea of Marty's control, just try singing any one of these songs the way he sings it, pausing no longer between phrases than he does. But be careful: you could collapse both lungs trying to emulate Marty Robbins.

Few have made the singing of difficult songs so easy. Few singers have come equipped with the quality of nerve, versatility, and concentration that Marty Robbins, the warm, stand- offish, charming loner, possesses. Exactly what Marty Robbins is really like may remain unknown to most of us, but we do know this about him: he has what it takes to hold the throttle wide open while others grope and cope and hope for the caution flag. – Noel Coppage, contributing editor, Stereo Review

Early Morning Sunshine

Late Great Lover

I'm Not Blaming You

Another Day Has Gone By

Thanks, But No Thanks, Thanks To You

Quiet Shadows

Too Many Places

You Say It's Over

Put A Little Rainbow In Your Pocket

Seventeen Years

The Chair