Sara Martin born 18 June 1884

Sara Martin (June 18, 1884 – May 24, 1955) was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was billed as "The Famous Moanin' Mama" and "The Colored Sophie Tucker". She made many recordings, including a few under the names Margaret Johnson and Sally Roberts. 

A contemporary of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, Martin was born in Louisville, Kentucky and as a teenager started performing in vaudeville there. Hen she was 16 she . Around 1915, she took her act north to Chicago, and within five years had made it to the entertainment circuit in New York City. She was sought after as much for her dramatic performances and her versatility as for her voice, which was reportedly unexceptional and sometimes abrasive in tone. 

When Martin began singing in New York City clubs and cabarets, she attracted the notice of Clarence Williams (1898–1965), an African-American composer who was also the most frequently recorded jazz pianist in the 1920s. As a music publisher and promoter who founded a New York publishing house and opened several music stores, he recorded more African-American jazz musicians than anyone else at the time, frequently for the Okeh label, and through him Martin became one of the first female blues singers to be recorded. 

Martin & Weaver

Her first recordings with Okeh Records in 1922 included "Uncle Sam Blues" and "A Green Gal Can't Catch On," and "Sugar Blues" and its flip side, "Achin' Heart Blues." In the same year, she also recorded on the Columbia label with her own group, the Brown Skin Syncopators. In 1923, she recorded again on the Okeh label with Eva Taylor , Shelton Brooks, and Fats Waller; when Louisville guitarist Sylvester Weaver came to New York, Martin recorded with him, and so sponsored the first American recordings by a country bluesman. She also toured with Waller (1922–23) and with the W.C. Handy Band (1923) on the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA) circuit, the main circuit for black entertainers, performing among other places in Nashville, New Orleans, Atlantic City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. 

                                    

Sara Martin appeared in many 1920s revues, theatrical shows, and musicals, singing everything from traditional 12-bar and 16-bar blues to vaudeville comedy songs and even foxtrots which she delivered in the style of Sophie Tucker . She wore lavish gowns onstage, and frequently appeared in two or three different outfits in one show. At one point, she performed with her husband, William Myers, on banjo, and their three-year-old son onstage. She sang on radio in 1924 and 1927, and appeared in the 1927 film Hello Bill. 

In 1928, she toured Jamaica, Cuba, and Puerto Rico with the Get Happy Follies Revue, and the following year appeared with Mamie Smith in The Sun-Tan Frolics at the Lincoln Theater in New York City. Although Martin's reputation as a live act outshone her recorded output, the singer made more than 100 recordings during the 1920s. During 1930, Martin again toured East Coast theaters, and performed also in Cleveland, Ohio clubs. 

Martin's career, along with those of many other performers, suffered with the onset of the Great Depression. Her last major stage appearance was in Darktown Scandals Review in 1930. Shortly after that, Martin left blues and vaudeville behind and began singing gospel music with Thomas A. Dorsey, who had also recently switched from the blues. They toured Chicago-area churches in 1932. (She had earlier recorded gospel music with Sylvester Weaver, Arizona Dranes, and, in 1927, her future husband, Hayes Withers.) As a gospel singer, however, she never achieved the renown she had won on the vaudeville and blues club circuits. During the last decade of her life, having retired from performing, Sara Martin owned and managed a private nursing home in Louisville. She died of a stroke on May 24, 1955, and was buried at the Louisville Cemetery. 

She was married three times, the first marriage to Christopher Wooden when she was 16. Christopher Wooden died in 1901. Her second marriage was to Abe Burton. At the time of her death she was married to Hayes Buford Withers. 

Her performances live on in Martin's Complete Recorded Works, a four-volume set released in 1996 by Document Records.  (Edited from article by Timothy Borden @ All About Jazz & Wikipedia) 

( Edited from Encyclopedia.com & Wikipedia)