(Image: Agency)
THIS week’s Scottish Icon was a Broadway star and understudy to Barbra Streisand. She was also a secret habitué of the Barras.
You may have read recently about the death of singer Lena Martell, announced on 5 October. Oddly enough, on skimming the news, I hadn’t been sure she was Scottish with that surname, which was actually borrowed from a French brandy. Luckily, she didn’t go for Lena Three Barrels.
Needless to say, after our bombshell opening paragraph, Lena – her father’s nickname for her – was a talented and popular singer, whose television show attracted 12 million viewers a week and who sold almost 20 million records. Her most famous hit, One Day at a Time, sold nearly three million.
“One day at a time, sweet Jesus/I’m only human, I'm just a woman … Well, Jesus, You know, if You're looking below, it’s worse now than then/Cheating and stealing, violence and crime.” Mentioning yon Jesus? “Just” a woman? Harking back to a happier past? It’s a mystery she wasn’t cancelled, till you remember that this was 1979, before the world went insane.
It was also, I guess, the tail-end of punk, a wholesome musical movement lubricated by gobbed saliva and generously plastered gel for that Oor Wullie hairstyle look.
I remember Lena being associated with our parents’ generation, apart from one oddly well groomed young fellow – short hair, straight side parting – at school, who admired her regardless. One thing we know for sure: whatever her talents, and they were many, she contributed little of note to prog rock. Thirty albums and not one mention of Rivendell.
Lena Martell was born Helen Thomson on 15 May 1940 in Possilpark, Glasgow, and grew up in nearby Hamiltonhill. At the age of 11, she began singing in her big brother Allan’s Dixie band. She was then invited to perform with the Jimmie McGregor Band at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom.
Teenage kicks
HER big break, leading to her first recording contract at 16, came when she won a television talent show called Find the Singer on ITV in the late 50s.
She told the Scottish Sun: “It got millions of viewers – a lot more than the X Factor. But instead of phone votes, people just wrote letters.
“So you weren’t voted off in front of the TV cameras and didn’t have to endure the public humiliation as they do now – they just didn’t ask you back. The whole process from beginning to end, when I won, took four months.”
After several clerical jobs, Lena set off, as talented folk do, for yonder London, where she spent her last penny on nylons and a new hair-do for an audition which led to a residency at Mayfair's exclusive Bagatelle Club.
She featured in the cabaret, somewhat improbably performing impressions of gravel-voiced Louis Armstrong, as well as Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt.
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Even more improbably, she came to the attention of Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid, who wrote in the Radio Times: “[H]er ability to sound like Louis Armstrong while looking like a school hockey captain is disconcertingly unique.”
She also caught the attention of American showbiz star Sammy Davis Jr., who subsequently invited her to open his 1963 British tour.
Soon, Broadway beckoned. She understudied for Barbra Streisand in the Broadway production of Funny Girl in 1964. In New York and Las Vegas, she performed alongside Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli.
However, homesick, she returned to Glasgow and, in 1971, landed her own prime-time Saturday night BBC show, Presenting Lena Martell, in 1971. In 1978, she performed a headline run at the London Palladium, rivalling Shirley MacLaine and Bette Midler as box office attractions.
Queen of country
ALREADY one of the country’s major light entertainment stars of the ’70s, with an extensive catalogue of standards, ballads, country-influenced songs and popular favourites, her mega-moment came in 1979 with a cover of country gospel favourite One Day at a Time, penned by Marijohn Wilkin and Kris Kristofferson.
It reached the top of the UK singles chart and stayed there for three weeks. Indeed, altogether, it remained in the charts for 36 weeks, earning Lena, the first solo Scottish singer to top the chart, a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
The song’s success also propelled Lena’s Music Album to number four in the UK LPs chart. Across her fantastic career, she achieved six UK Top 40 albums, including two which reached the Top 10.
She continued performing after the peak of her chart success, with later recordings featuring more Scottish material. Her album My Homeland returned her to the Scottish album chart in 2004, and she also recorded with other popular figures from Scotland’s traditional entertainment scene.
But her appeal extended well beyond Scotland. She performed internationally, in the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa, and was a star of cruise ships, accompanied by pianist George Paxton of Saltcoats.
Life, alas, isn’t all fun and success. In later life, Lena suffered cancer and heart problems (undergoing triple-bypass surgery). She nursed her mother Helen through Alzheimer’s. Her beloved brother Allan was killed, aged 22, by a drunk driver. Her first love Gordon Cameron died from a brain haemorrhage.
Bad management deals cost her a fortune in royalties. She was made bankrupt when a property company she owned folded. Through it all, she kept singing, selling out Glasgow’s Pavilion and releasing new music through the Scot Disc record label. She was, she said, living “one day at a time”, as her most famous song put it.
Mail admirers
IN recent years she lived a “quiet” life at home in Bishopbriggs, with her long-term partner David. Later, in a nursing home, she still received fan mail. She died after a short illness, at the age of 86.
Musician Dougie Stevenson, who toured with the singer and worked with her as Scot Disc’s managing director, told The Herald: “She was so full of humour and had ideas all the time for not just music, but plays and sitcoms. She’ll be sadly missed, especially down at the Barras. She would always be down there with dark glasses, incognito. She really loved Glasgow.”
Iain Gordon, former Pavilion manager, described her as “the last of Scotland’s music hall greats”, and compared her to Susan Boyle, “both Scottish girls who had no superstar airs and graces – but they had big voices”.
A close friend, meanwhile, told the Daily Record: “She was held in the affections of a strong fan base in the same way as Sidney Devine, a proper entertainer who was Scottish through and through.”