Boxcar Willie

▪ 2000

Lecil Travis Martin 

      American country music singer (b. Sept. 1, 1931, Sterrett, Texas—d. April 12, 1999, Branson, Mo.), delighted fans with his hobo persona and imitations of train sounds and helped revive a traditional style of country music. The son of a fiddle-playing railroad man, he grew up in a small house beside the tracks and began imitating the sounds of train whistles as a toddler. He made his radio debut in 1942, and as an adolescent he performed under the name Marty Martin in bars, honky-tonks, and the Big D Jamboree, a regional music festival. In the late 1950s he recorded the little-known album Marty Martin Sings Country Music and Stuff like That. He served as a pilot in the air force for a number of years before returning to country music. One day while stuck in traffic waiting for a freight train to pass, he saw a hobo resembling an old friend named Willie, so he composed the song “Boxcar Willie” and adopted the name and persona. The promoter Drew Taylor saw him at a Nashville, Tenn., club in 1977 and immediately signed him for the first of four British tours. This led to a 1979 engagement at the 11th International Country Music Festival at London's Wembley Stadium, an event that put him on the track to stardom. Two years later his album King of the Road rolled out through television ads, selling more than three million copies. Subsequent albums included Last Train to Heaven (1982) and The Spirit of America (1991). He was made the 60th cast member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1981. In the late 1980s he made a permanent stop in Branson, where he gave performances in his own dinner theatre as often as six times a week before being weakened by leukemia.

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