Mary Martin, a Grammy-winning talent scout, manager and record executive who helped start the careers of a long list of future legends, including Leonard Cohen, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell — and who introduced Bob Dylan to the Band — died on July 4 in Nashville. She was 85.
Mikayla Lewis, a documentary filmmaker and close friend, said she died in a hospice from complications of cancer.
Among the musicians whose work exists somewhere between rock, country, folk and Americana, Ms. Martin was a legend in her own right, widely respected for her fierce loyalty to artists and her keen eye for budding talent.
“She saw the bumpkin in me, and she also saw something that was going to develop,” Mr. Crowell said in an interview. “She was one of those people who just said, ‘Shut up and let me show you something of the world that you may not have seen.’”
A chain smoker with a keen love of football, she seemed to know everyone, and she had a knack for being in the right place at the right time.
Ms. Martin was in the crowd at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Mr. Dylan first performed with electric instruments. She recalled two things from the appearance: the raucous boos and her conviction that he needed a polished backup band.
Around the same time, Rick Danko, a friend, sent her a demo tape by the Hawks, in which he played bass. Ms. Martin thought the group would be a perfect match for Mr. Dylan. But the Hawks were a rock band, and Mr. Dylan was still considered a folkie, and at first neither side was interested.
“Mary was a rather persevering soul,” Mr. Dylan said in a 1969 interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “She kept pushing these guys the Hawks to me.”
She persuaded Mr. Dylan to try out two of the band’s five members, the drummer Levon Helm and the guitarist Robbie Robertson. After Mr. Helm insisted that the Hawks were a package deal, Mr. Dylan relented, and the Hawks — soon to be known as the Band — went on tour with him, setting in motion one of the greatest collaborations in rock history.
She was later an executive for Warner Bros. and RCA Records, first in Los Angeles and then in Nashville. She became a nightly fixture at Music City venues like the Bluebird Cafe, where aspiring musicians and songwriters perform — and hope to get noticed by people like Ms. Martin.
“She was fierce, honest and had the most colorful language of anyone I ever encountered,” said Ms. Lewis, whose documentary “Mary Martin: Music Maven” is in postproduction.
Ms. Martin faced headwinds throughout her career — not only because she was a woman pushing ahead in a male-dominated industry, but also because she was adamant about putting musicians’ interests before profits.
“It was very clear that what was important to artists was important to her as well,” said Matraca Berg, a singer-songwriter whom Ms. Martin signed to RCA in 1990. “She didn’t give a whole lot of attention to demographics or being a big star.”
In the late 1990s, Ms. Martin and another executive, Bonnie Garner, used their extensive contacts to begin assembling “Timeless,” a compilation album of songs by Hank Williams performed by Mr. Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Tom Petty and others.
It won the Grammy for best country album in 2002, a career-capping achievement for Ms. Martin.
“She didn’t have a lot of tolerance for those who stood in her way,” Ms. Garner said. “The glass ceiling — if it existed — we didn’t recognize it.”
Mary Martin was born on June 15, 1939, in Toronto. Her mother, Alida (Starr) Martin, managed the home, and her father, Crawford, was an insurance executive.
Ms. Martin attended the University of British Columbia and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University), but did not graduate from either school.
In 1962, she moved to New York City, gravitating to Greenwich Village, where she sought a foothold in the neighborhood’s music scene. She landed a job with Albert Grossman, the manager of some of the city’s leading folk acts, including Mr. Dylan, Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary.
While climbing the ranks in Mr. Grossman’s office, she became close friends with many of his clients. One weekend at Mr. Grossman’s home in upstate New York, she swam a race against Mr. Dylan.
She lost, but as a consolation prize Mr. Grossman gave her his cat, Lord Growing — the same cat Mr. Dylan holds on the cover of his 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home.”
Ms. Martin set off on her own in 1966. Among her first clients was Mr. Cohen, then known as a poet, who had left his home in Montreal for Nashville, where he hoped to become a songwriter. He stopped in New York to meet Ms. Martin, on the recommendation of a friend, and decided to stay.
Mr. Cohen recorded his first demo, including “Suzanne” and “The Stranger Song,” in her bathroom. In 1966, she persuaded her friend Judy Collins to include three of his songs, “Priests,” “Sisters of Mercy” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye,” on her 1967 album, “Wildflowers,” cementing his future as a songwriter.
She joined Warner Bros. in 1972 as an A&R executive, essentially a talent scout. She signed then-unknown acts like Ms. Harris, Leon Redbone and Bonnie Raitt but lost a campaign to sign Bruce Springsteen, whom her bosses, she said, dismissed as too “East Coast.”
In 1980, Ms. Martin, then living in Los Angeles, left Warner Bros. and returned to managing, taking on Mr. Crowell and later Vince Gill before the world knew their names. She moved to Nashville in 1985 to work for RCA, where she encouraged a young Australian musician named Keith Urban to follow his dreams and move to Nashville.
Ms. Martin left RCA in 1991 and took time off to decide on the next phase in her career.
The next spring, she was asleep in her home when a man crept through her window, bound her and raped her. Even after he was arrested, he continued to taunt her with phone calls and letters until his conviction.
Ms. Martin was vocal about the attack and became a prominent supporter of sexual assault victims in Tennessee, primarily through the organization You Have the Power.
She is survived by her brother, Tony.
She returned to the music business one more time, as an executive at Mercury Records, where she helped produce “Timeless.” A decade later, as a freelancer, she helped produce a follow-up album, “The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams” (2011).
“When I went into the business, people said I was too young,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2002. “People would also say, ‘You’re not a musician or a songwriter. Why do you think you know anything about music?’ Well, I knew my instincts were good, and I knew I cared passionately about music.”
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