In the realm of rockabilly, Janis Martin emerged as a distinctive presence in a scene long controlled by male artists, even though others such as Lorrie Collins had also participated. RCA applied the title "the Female Elvis Presley" to her, apparently with Colonel Tom Parker’s consent. That tag may well have spelled disaster by generating irreconcilable associations. Her contract with RCA supplied a measure of support, yet her vigorous approach as a woman in a style that frowned on suggestive male stagecraft created multiple barriers to an extended run. Her ability remained evident, however, in the body of work she recorded.
Born in Sutherlin, VA, during 1940, Martin grew up with a mother eager to place her onstage and with a father plus an uncle who both played music as amateurs, circumstances that steered her toward performance almost inevitably. Before turning five she was already playing instruments and singing. At six she had learned the basic chords on a child-sized guitar while adopting a vocal manner shaped by Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams. She became a regular entrant in neighborhood talent competitions and won every one. At age 11 she began performing on the WDVA Barndance broadcast from Virginia. During her mid-teens she shared stages with Ernest Tubb, the Carter Family, Sonny James, and Jean Shepard.
The extensive stage time she had logged at such a young age steered her toward rock & roll. By her mid-teens Martin had grown weary of country material, above all the slower numbers she had been delivering for ten years. Her moment aligned well with the era: she encountered R&B in the middle of the 1950s and soon folded those songs into her sets. RCA A&R chief Steve Sholes listened to one of her audition tapes and signed her to the label at 15, a mere two months after Elvis joined the roster.
Her first single, the original “Drugstore Rock ’n Roll,” also became her strongest seller, moving roughly 750,000 copies. Midway through 1956 she made appearances on the Today Show, The Tonight Show, and additional variety programs, performed at the Grand Ole Opry, and received Billboard’s designation as Most Promising Female Vocalist.
The “Female Elvis” campaign met resistance before long, as listeners concluded she was trading on his name and manner for quick advantage. Despite the promotional tie-ins, the management-mandated release “My Boy Elvis,” the shared studio band, and overlapping country-and-R&B tastes, Martin did not witness the Memphis Flash in person until his national television debut. By then her own approach, strikingly close to his yet formed separately, had already taken shape. She encountered Elvis on only two brief occasions during which almost nothing was said. Their paths simply met at a comparable juncture.
Early momentum notwithstanding, Martin could not maintain a rock & roll trajectory, chiefly owing to her gender and shifting public tastes. Observers, particularly on country bills, deemed her movements and forthright singing inappropriate for a woman once the first wave of enthusiasm for the new music subsided. Country packages that booked her typically placed her before crowds already cool toward rock & roll, leaving her stranded between opposing expectations: her label and handlers urged continued rockabilly emphasis onstage while the promoters favored plain country selections.
A private development in 1958 removed any remaining chance of threading that needle. Married in secret since 1956, she traveled to Europe while her husband served overseas with the army and visited him that year. The outcome was that the 17-year-old rockabilly performer became pregnant and was promptly let go by RCA.
She attempted to continue performing and received offers from King Records and Decca Records before choosing the Belgian imprint Palette, where she recorded four tracks in 1960. By then she had entered a second marriage; the new husband objected to her professional life, so she limited appearances to venues near her Virginia home. In the 1970s, once more independent, she assembled the Variations and performed across Europe, where crowds greeted her with undiminished excitement as though it were still 1958.
Her name persisted in Elvis-related discographies through “My Boy Elvis” and the 1959 South African LP Janis and Elvis, a two-thousand-dollar collector’s item that saw heavy bootlegging in the late 1970s. RCA itself ignored and failed to reissue her original sides. In the 1980s Bear Family Records assembled her complete output on the CD The Female Elvis, finally restoring easy access to those scarce recordings.
