Ollis Martin

about

If harmonica players on the 1920s Alabama blues scene were barbecue, then the meat eaters would complaining about the shortage. To some blues researchers, the situation seems so bad they take delight in pointing out that one of these rare bluesmen, Frank Palmes, was actually a pseudonym for Birmingham's best-known bluesman, Jaybird Coleman. There was really an Ollis Martin, however, and he warns us that "Police and High Sheriff Come Ridin' Down" on the Document Great Harp Players compilation. Perhaps the law was coming to get him, because he never recorded again under his own name after this 1927 session for Gennet. Martin was active around the Birmingham area in the latter part of that decade, also showing up on some sides cut by Coleman, with whom he recorded gospel harmonica duets. Much more is known about Coleman than Martin or any of the former man's various musical partners. In fact there is a theory that Martin did not perform the second harmonica part on the Coleman recordings from this era, that it was probably another even more obscure Birmingham harmonica player instead. For what it was worth, Coleman and his obscure friends were the blues scene in the Birmingham environs around that time. The somewhat dismal picture that is left via documentation is really the fault of talent scouts, not the state's blues players. The prewar scouts of blues talent apparently visited Alabama much less often than some other states. These scouts were sometimes referred to as "race re

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