Sophronie · Ocean of Diamonds

Jimmy Martin called himself the King of Bluegrass, and he had the records to argue the point. He learned the trade the hard way, as a Blue Grass Boy under Bill Monroe in the early 1950s, where his powerful lead voice and aggressive rhythm guitar gave Monroe's band some of its best years. When he struck out on his own with the Sunny Mountain Boys, he brought that drive with him.

After a lone 1954 session for RCA Victor, Martin signed with Decca, and it was at Owen Bradley's studio on 16th Avenue in Nashville that he made his name across the late 1950s and 1960s. The Decca singles are masterclasses in timing: Martin's guitar pushing the beat, his voice out front and fearless, on numbers like "Hit Parade of Love," "Ocean of Diamonds," and "Widow Maker."

The Sunny Mountain Boys was the most demanding finishing school in bluegrass after Monroe's own. Martin had exacting standards and a temper to enforce them, and the banjo chair alone passed through a remarkable run of talent — among them a young J.D. Crowe, who joined as a teenager and absorbed the Martin rhythm machine from the inside. Mandolinist Paul Williams anchored the harmony for years.

Martin's misfortune was that the Grand Ole Opry never made him a member, a snub that wounded him for the rest of his life. But his influence ran everywhere; the "Jimmy Martin sound" — that hard, joyful, perfectly-timed lead-and-rhythm attack — became one of the templates every later band measured itself against.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.