One of gospels' giants of the 1950s and 60s, Roberta Martin created and left a dynasty of gospel singers and a portfolio of unduplicated gospel music. Martin created defined an entire era in the story of gospel, and profoundly influenced the musicians who have carried the gospel torch into its more recent days. Roberta Martin was born Roberta Evelyn Winston on 12th February 1907 in Helena, Arkansas, one of six children. From the age of six, Roberta began to play piano. Her early piano instruction was entirely in the classical repertoire. She never heard the inspirational music now known as "gospel" until years later.
When she was eight years old, her family moved north, settling first in Cairo, Illinois, then in Chicago two years later, a city that would become the epicenter of her influential career and the development of urban gospel styles. At Chicago's Wendell Phillips High School, Martin continued to study piano with the school's choral director, Mildred Bryant Jones. She also began performing regularly at Sunday school and church events. After graduating from Phillips, she began studying music at Northwestern University in nearby Evanston, Illinois, with the hope of launching a career as a concert pianist. Roberta was influenced by the blind pianist Arizona Dranes whose driving rhythmic mix of ragtime and barrelhouse piano playing was totally unlike the piano work of most religious recordings.
In 1931 Martin was hired as accompanist for the Young People's Choir of Ebenezer Baptist Church, touted as one of the first gospel choirs, where she worked under the guidance of Thomas A. Dorsey and Theodore Frye. Dorsey and Frye would go on to become mentors of a sort to Martin, helping establish her as a leading practitioner of gospel in the early phase of her career. She had still never heard gospel music up to this time; her work at the church consisted of traditional hymns and spirituals, religious choral music, and secular songs. A 1933 concert featuring the Bertha Wise Quartet led Martin to develop a new style of her own. It proved to be a life changing experience. Dorsey and Frye, who were as impressed as Martin was by the Wise ensemble's performance, convinced Martin that gospel was the way to go for music in church. That same year, Martin and Frye founded the Martin-Frye Quartet.
That youth group consisted of Eugene Smith, Norsalus McKissick, Robert Anderson, James Lawrence, Willie Webb and Romance Watson, with Martin as the lone female accompanying them on piano and contributing the occasional vocal solo. By 1936, The group was renamed the Roberta Martin Singers. The group's innovative approach to gospel music, blending traditional spirituals with contemporary arrangements and sophisticated harmonies, set them apart. They became a cornerstone of the Chicago gospel scene, performing regularly and influencing countless other musicians with their dynamic sound and heartfelt delivery. She penned numerous gospel standards that became widely popular, including "God Will Take Care of You" and "Truly Wonderful."
Her compositions often featured a blend of spiritual depth and accessible melody, making them favorites in churches and concert halls alike. Her songwriting contributions were instrumental in shaping the repertoire of gospel music for generations to come. In 1939 Martin became a businessperson, launching the Roberta Martin Studio of Music, a Chicago-based gospel music publishing house. The Roberta Martin Singers recorded "Grace Is Sufficient," written by sixteen year-old James Cleveland. Roberta would play a major role in the early career of James Cleveland. Her first song, "Try Jesus, He Satisfies," became a hit in 1943. Her publishing house distributed her compositions as well as those of James Cleveland, Dorothy Norwood, and Alex Bradford. One of the Studio's primary functions was as publisher of Martin's original compositions, and it soon became one of the largest publishers of gospel music in Chicago.
Over the next several years, Martin and her ensemble essentially defined the sound we now know as "gospel". In the mid-1940s, Martin changed the formula by adding women to the group, the first being Bessie Folk and Delois Barrett Campbell, becoming the first prominent small gospel ensemble to include both male and female voices. By creating a mixed-gender group, Martin forged a distinct sound that successfully melded the ranges and textures of male and female voices. They were able to produce more complex and subtle harmonies than gospel audiences were accustomed to hearing in the past. Her piano style showed influences from her classical training, which was more sophisticated than the accompaniment behind most gospel groups.
Demand for performances by the Roberta Martin Singers was strong throughout the 1940s and onward, and they were among the most often recorded gospel groups in the country. During the 1940s, they recorded on the Apollo label. The group's innovative approach to gospel music, blending traditional spirituals with contemporary arrangements and sophisticated harmonies, set them apart. They became a cornerstone of the Chicago gospel scene, performing regularly and influencing countless other musicians with their dynamic sound and heartfelt delivery. In 1947, she married James Austin; they had one son. In spite of a change in surnames, her stage name remained the same throughout her career. Martin continued to sing, play piano, and travel with the Roberta Martin Singers.
By 1947, the Roberta Martin Singers had begun their recording career. Their 78s on small labels like Fidelity, Religious Recordings and R.I.H. weren't particularly successful. In 1949, the group signed with Bess Berman's New York label Apollo Records who were by that time breaking all records for gospel 78 sales with Mahalia Jackson's "Move On Up A Little Higher". Around that time, she decided to stop performing regularly with the group in order to concentrate her attention on music composition and arrangement, and to tend to the operation of her music publishing business. Although the Roberta Martin Singers' recording of "Only A Look" never quite reached the multi-million sales of "Move On Up", it was a major gospel hit and became a theme song the group always sung at the opening of their concerts. "Only A Look" was composed by Anna Shepherd but published by the Roberta Martin Studio Of Music.
Martin complemented her group's performance with her piano accompaniment, which often dictated the rhythm and pace of the song or commented on it by responding to or accenting a singer's performance. While her arrangements featured close harmonies that showcased a skilled blending of voices, Martin was also interested in highlighting the unique identity of each individual voice, allowing the singers to express themselves with semi-improvised freedom at times. Between her career as a performer, arranger and publisher, Martin's music reached untold thousands of gospel musicians and listeners across the United States. By the middle of the 1950s, the vast majority of African American church choirs in the country were mimicking the style of the Roberta Martin Singers.
From 1956 to 1968, Martin served as music director of Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Chicago. While she did not perform regularly with the Roberta Martin Singers during this period, she remained active as an occasional performer. In 1963 she participated in a European tour, the highlight of which was her performance at the Spoletto Festival in Italy. Though stricken with cancer, Martin reportedly refused painkilling drugs during the time leading up to her death on January 18, 1969, in Chicago, believing that God could perform a miracle. Her group disbanded upon her death, but the surviving members continued to perform as a group in reunion concerts. Many of the members later had solo careers, such as Delois Barrett and Gloria Griffin, who was the composer of the classic gospel song "God Specializes", made famous by the Roberta Martin Singers. Roberta Martin reached iconic status in Chicago, Illinois, where she influenced numerous artists (such as Alex Bradford, and Albertina Walker) and had an impact on an entire industry with her innovation and business acumen.