Vince Martin born 17 March 1937

Vince Martin (born Vincent Marcellino; March 17, 1937 – July 6, 2018) was an American folk singer and songwriter.

Martin’s career began when he recorded the 1956 pop song “Cindy, Oh Cindy,” with the Tarriers. The song was Martin’s only Top 40 hit and peaked at Number Nine. The record's flip, "Only If You Praise the Lord", written by Dick Cella, was a hit in England and Ireland. Martin’s pop contributions were overshadowed by his influential folk career. 

In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, Martin formed a duo with singer-songwriter Fred Neil. They released what would be a seminal folk-rock album Tear Down These Walls in 1964, with musicians John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful and Felix Pappalardi of Mountain. The record has been cited as a major influence on the burgeoning folk scene by bands from Spoonful to the Byrds and the Grateful Dead. In 1965 he was featured in a movie called Once Upon a Coffeehouse. This B movie is a charmer set in a, you guessed it, coffeehouse in Miami Beach where Vince lived for a time. 

                                    

Soon after, Martin was signed to and released two solo albums on Capitol Records. The first, 1969’s If The Jasmine Don’t Get You … The Bay Breeze Will, is regarded as an early folk gem. It was recorded with the same band Bob Dylan had just finishing playing with to record his album Nashville Skyline. 

When Martin moved to south Florida in the early 1970s, he became similarly influential in Miami’s Coconut Grove scene of the 1960s, out of which David Crosby and Joni Mitchell emerged. He subsequently lured many of his peer performers to the area, creating a music scene that had not existed before, at small coffee houses such as the Flick and the Gaslight South. His second album, Vince Martin, was released in 1973. 

Martin was also the first of the musical community to get involved with Ric O'Barry's work with dolphins, (recently documented in the Oscar-winning "THE COVE"), known as the Dolphin Project. Vince performed tirelessly, donating time and efforts to the early Dolphin Project concerts, which were the basis of today's movement towards the humane treatment of dolphins. 

In more recent years, Martin gained an unlikely fan in Thurston Moore. According to Kwait, the Sonic Youth guitarist met Martin at a show in New York and expressed gratitude for Martin’s obscure folk-rock album, If The Jasmine Don’t Get You. The encounter with Moore spurred Martin’s desire to record. In 2003, he released what would be his final album, Full Circle, on a small New York label. He remained active in music ever since. In 2010, Martin was featured in a documentary about his life titled Vagabondo!  

Martin was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and was hospitalized in March 2018. He died in a nursing home facility near his native Sheepshead Bay, New York on July 6, 2018. 

(Edited from Rolling Stone & Wikipedia)