A Sweet Home man will be inducted to the National Four-String Banjo Hall of Fame in May.
Ralph Martin was selected for the honor for his promotion of the banjo. He joins a list of prior inductees that includes performers Eddie Peabody and Andrew “Buddy” Wachter.
The induction ceremonies will be held at the Guthrie Jazz Banjo Festival in Guthrie, Okla., on May 22. Cathy Reilly-Finn and Scotty Plummer also will be inducted for performance. C.C. Richelieu will be inducted for banjo design and manufacture. Charlie Tagawa will be inducted for education and instruction of the banjo.
Martin has worked with many in the Hall of Fame throughout his banjo career. Of all the youths he had in his Southern California Banjo Band, 18 have become professional musicians.
The banjo, the only instrument the United States can claim as its own, was popular throughout the 19th century on into the 1930s. Then the guitar started rising in influence. Performer Eddie Peabody was instrumental in helping keep the banjo in use through the next 20 years when enthusiasm for the banjo began a comeback, eventually leading to a variety of annual banjo events beginning in 1967.
Martin was an adult before the banjo demanded his attention.
“I used to race motorcycles,” Martin said. “We were at a desert race…. They hired a little band for us the night before. There was this guy sitting on the end of the stage plinking on one of these things.”
At the age of 36, Martin, a longshoreman living in Carson, Calif., fell in love with the sound of the instrument. After a three-week vacation to Alaska to visit his brother, he bought a banjo.
He started going to the Pizza Palace in Torrence, Calif., where performers played banjo five nights a week.
“I was really thrilled with that banjo,” Martin said. He started trying to find someone to tell him something about it. In 1967, he attended the first Sacramento Banjorama in 1967.
“On my way home, I said, ‘Doggone it, I want to do it,'” Martin said. He didn’t care that by then “I couldn’t hardly play the songs.”
He told a friend that owned a venue called the Gas Light about his idea. He told Martin he could play there, and Martin began playing with two others, “chording along with them all right.”
That effort eventually became the Southern California Banjo Band, which would number as many as 150 members at its peak. Though small now, the band continues to perform.
When he officially started the banjo band, 13 to 15 persons showed up in June 1968. By November, he went back to Sacramento with a 30-member band. By 1969, Martin started thinking he needed to put on a show. He went to the Palladium, owned by Lawrence Welk, and he said Martin could put on the show. Welk and his band had several of “my kids” up one night to advertise the show.
Martin always refers to the youths in the band as “my kids.”
Martin put on his first Banjo Spectacular there in 1970. At the Banjo Spectacular, he hosted performers, like Peabody. From those days, Martin keeps hundreds of pieces correspondence with Peabody and other performers along with piles of photographs and newspaper clippings.
He organized the Banjo Spectacular every year through 1983.
“Then we started just having an annual banjo party at my home in the desert,” Martin said. That started as a birthday celebration, falling between his birthday and his wife, Joyce’s. One year, two people brought birthday gifts leaving other participants feeling bad for not bringing gifts.
The Martins didn’t want any gifts, so they put an end to the birthday portion of the event but kept the annual party going. The Martins moved to Sweet Home in 1992, but they continued the party in California for a couple more years.
In 1994, they brought the party, the Oregon Trail Banjo Camp, to Sweet Home, and banjo players come from all over the United States for a week of banjo playing, camping and good eating every year for Independence Day. The performers typically play at the VFW on July 4.
With a brother living in Lebanon, the Martins were familiar with Sweet Home.
“We’ve done a lot of things spontaneously,” Martin said. They began looking for a summer cabin in the area and eventually just moved to Sweet Home.
“I was taken by surprise (by the announcement),” Martin said. “I’m impressed especially with the guys they’ve got already lined up for it. The guys ahead of me are top notch. How come I’m included? I don’t even know what to say.… I wasn’t trying to promote it. It was just the things I did.”
Mrs. Martin explained that he was heavily involved in teaching children to play banjo. At shows, he would get kids from the audience up to sing. He would ask them whether they played banjo. When they told him they didn’t, he would ask them why not and say he would have to talk to their parents.
The next time he saw the kids, Mrs. Martin said, they would have a banjo.
“Parents liked the banjo too,” Mr. Martin said. “That’s why they were there.”
Mr. Martin ran a banjo shop where he would provide banjos to children at his cost. He taught many how to play at a weekly workshop, and many of those youths became part of his banjo band.
While many of his students were capable of playing solo, Mr. Martin himself says he not a soloist, even today.
His involvement in the banjo has continued since his move to Oregon. He was band leader in a Salem band, and he continues to travel to a variety of banjo events. Coming up, he will head to Sacramento for a Buddy Wachter show then a banjo band party. From there, he will visit Los Angeles and the Southern California Banjo Band.
“I’m proud of all the kids that came through my band,” Mr. Martin said. “They’re all winners. That’s probably the biggest thing I can think of.”