Remembering Marty Robbins

I was 14 the first time I saw country singer Marty Robbins going around in a race car. It was in the early ’60s, and I was helping him. There I was, turning a display rack of 45-rpm records when whoa!—a very cool purple ’33 Ford Modified coupe came into view. I thought to myself, I got to have this record, if only for the picture. Back then, color pictures of Modifieds were very rare.

There was just one small problem—my allowance was already spent, and I think I was already advanced on it. When I asked Mom if I could get the record, I knew what her answer would be: “Wait till next week.” When next week came around, Marty was long gone—sold out.

Almost 40 years later, I got to see the “Devil Woman” car again when a Nashville newspaper did a story on Winston Cup driver Bobby Hamilton’s racing roots. Hamilton’s grandfather, Preacher, built the Devil Woman Modified and several other cars for Marty.

This led me to the offices of Marty Robbins Enterprises and several talks with Marty’s son Ronny, who raced himself. Ronny recalled his experiences as a boy watching his Dad race as far back as the early ’50s. He also put me in touch with several key people who were with Marty throughout his racing years. The icing on the cake was opening the Robbins’ family albums, for a look at photos most people have never seen. All in all, like my first glimpse of the Devil Woman, it’s easy to see why Marty Robbins left some strong-lasting impressions. Ronny Robbins says he barely recalls going to some Midget races in Phoenix. Jimmy “Cowboy” Bryan was one of his heroes. He remembers going into the Nashville fairgrounds in the early ’50s and holding on to his pants leg. A few years later, he saw a car on the track with “Marty Robbins Special” painted on the side.

“It was a Modified coupe driven by ‘Bullet’ Bob Reuther, and I thought that was the neatest thing,” Ronny says. “Daddy loved going to the races, and by sponsoring a car he got connected to Preacher Hamilton, who built a lot of cars back then. I remember pushing little Bobby around on a creeper at his Grandpa’s shop.

“Around 1958 our neighbor had started racing Micro Midgets and asked Daddy to come to the races with him. It was Sunday afternoon, and we all went to a little 1/8-mile dirt track on Ewing Lane. That day there was a car for sale—a gold #7, ugliest little car you’ve ever seen. Well, Daddy bought it.

“That was his first bona fide race car. He ran Midgets for several years on a circuit all over the South.”

Marty had several Micro Midgets, including the El Paso and Big Iron Specials. Bill Caswell, who grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, recalls seeing Marty in the Big Iron at his hometown track. “One time, a bunch of the pro drivers got together to pull a prank on him,” Caswell says. “They decided to let him have an easy win and kept moving over. This went on for around seven laps. Well Marty got wise to what was going on, pulled in the infield, and threw down his helmet.” Marty would get his turn at pulling racing pranks years later.

The Devil Woman

Nashville Speedway’s first track champion, “Bullet” Bob Reuther, says Marty would always ask him if he needed anything. When Bob retired from driving in ’63, Marty went from being a sponsor to a sponsor/driver and ran the Devil Woman Modified that Preacher built. It was the first in a long line of purple and yellow cars.

Devil Woman had a 292 Ford, then later a 327 Chevy engine and a torsion-bar front suspension. Marty ran it on dirt and asphalt at Ridgetop, (now known as Highland Rim), Nashville, Birmingham, and West Memphis Speedways. At those tracks he dueled with Bobby and Donny Allison, Red Farmer, Coo Coo Marlin, and many more.

Bobby Allison says, “Marty was a guy who had a great music career going for him, but he also had a strong passion for racing—he tried it and liked it. At first, he was a little over his head, but then he started getting real good at it.”

Ronny says in 1965, Nashville changed from early Modifieds to Late Models, and that’s when his father started running well. “We had a ’59 Plymouth with a 426 Stage III Wedge that had a real exotic manifold on it,” he says.

“After that one got wrecked, we went to a ’62 body. There was only one car there he could not outrun: Coo Coo Marlin (father of Winston Cup driver Sterling Marlin). But he did get him one night—he basically out-blocked him. He qualified second to Coo Coo. Somehow, Daddy got the jump on him at the start then blocked him for 30 laps. It was probably the most exciting race I ever seen. Coo Coo would get up to the door, and that was about it. He knew he couldn’t spin Daddy, as the crowd would have lynched him. Daddy had won a couple of heats before then, but that was his first feature.”

“The last car Robbins was truly competitive with at Nashville was a ’64 Plymouth on a ’57 Chevy frame. The rule was, you had to have a stock firewall, and the engine had to be in front of it,” Ronny continues.

“They never said anything about the radiator, so we put it in the rear and tried to get some balance. The body was set back about 13 inches, and it looked like a funny car with round track tires. It ran great and equaled the track record in practice, but seemed to be jinxed. Something bad happened every weekend.

“I recall being down in the pits, and I saw a guy blow an engine and spin in number four. Then I saw Daddy going into number three and thought, Ahhh, this ain’t good. Next thing I saw was a yellow wheel flying 60 feet in the air. If it wasn’t that, it seemed something mechanical would break every week.

“The following year, they went to the 9 pounds-per-cubic-inch Sportsman rule, and we had to downsize to a 340 engine, which was not competitive with the 350 Chevy.”

Taking a Tumble

Marty’s journey into Grand Nationals and Winston Cup also had some colorful moments. Don Winters sang in his band for 23 years and accompanied him to most of those 35 major league races.

“I got into it originally as part of an agreement; he would be my fishing buddy if I went racing with him,” Winters says. “I learned to love the sport and especially the people associated with it. Marty was like a little kid when he got behind the wheel. He was in it truly because he loved doing it.

“All the drivers liked Marty. They thought the world of him, and he was like a brother to me. But I tell you, I was there for all his bad wrecks, and they were making a wreck out of me. I’d go running over to the field hospital, and they had to calm me down with a tranquilizer and a glass of water. After a while, they saw me coming and had it ready. The first bad one was at Charlotte in ’74. I saw him turn into a wall at 160 to avoid T-boning the car in front of him.”

The car Marty avoided was driven by Richard Childress. “If Marty hadn’t turned into the wall, it’s highly likely I might not be here today,” Childress says.

Says Winters, “Marty was very lucky. It was like a bomb going off—the Lord’s hand was on him that day. He came out of it with a broken tailbone and a couple of broken ribs. His face took 37 stitches, and he had two black eyes.

“I loved to watch him run, though. He’d get into some tight situations that he’d get out of, and a lot of drivers would comment on how he handled it. Another bad one at Talladega knocked him out, and when he came to, he tried to recall the words to ‘El Paso.’ After a couple of tries, he finally got through it and said, ‘I guess I’ll be all right.’”

Bending the Rules

Talladega also played a part in one of the most talked-about Marty Robbins racing stories ever. Ronny says the story has never been told in its entirety, and he wants to set the record straight.

“Bobby and Eddie Allison have taken the heat for this years, but it was really Daddy’s idea all the way,” Ronny says. “The only thing Ed did was help him get it through tech. I had just gotten out of the service and went to visit him in Bryan, Texas. I’m knocking on his motel door and hadn’t seen him in a year or so, and it’s ‘Hey! Come on in. Have I got something to show you!’

“I follow him over to the sink, and there’s a carburetor sitting in it. He says, ‘Take this hammer and knock on these rings. The restrictor rings had a knurling—they went in one way and wouldn’t come out. I hit them and said, ‘Well isn’t that what they are supposed to do?’

“He says excitedly, ‘Yeah! Now take this gasoline and pour a little on them.’ He had a small squirt bottle, and about 15 seconds later I hear plink, plink—all four of them dropped out.

“I said, ‘Why do you want them to do that?’ He said, ‘Because I want to have some horsepower!’

“It really was kind of ingenious. He had sanded the knurlings down and glued them in with airplane glue. When they ran through tech, they had a little metal rod with a hook on it that went around the butterfly to measure the bore. So what he did was go out in practice to get the jetting right, and he used a motorcycle spoke to keep the loose restrictors from entering the ports. They just bounced around the bottom of the manifold. He qualified legally at 174 mph; during the race he ran 191. To him it was a harmless prank. The only reason he wanted to do it was to be able to pass guys like Richard Petty and have them scratch their heads. He always intended to tell them about it.”

Marty and Ronny told NASCAR they had carburetor trouble and got permission to switch them. Then they pushed the car to the starting line to get it past inspection on race morning. When they fired it, it blew all kinds of black smoke for a few seconds. When it cleared, the car began to roar. David Pearson and Buddy Baker were just running away with the race.

“Daddy would run hard a few laps and then back down for a few,” Ronny says. “Around the middle of the tri-oval, Baker went by him. By the time Buddy was in Turn 1, he had about a 400- to 500-yard lead on Daddy, then all of sudden Daddy got on it, and by turn 3 he was on Buddy’s bumper.

“Another thing was, Daddy had never driven that fast before and has said in several interviews, ‘I wanted to pass the leaders on the front stretch so everyone could see it, but I was not sure if the car would turn at that speed. I thought, If I don’t make it, I’m going to land on Daytona Beach! Being smart, he backed off.

“They wanted him to come to the press booth and give him a Rookie of the Race award. That’s when he said, ‘I can’t accept that. It wasn’t legal.’ They wouldn’t believe him, ’cause Daddy was always teasing and cutting up. Some feelings got hurt, and that bothered him. He knew he never had enough money to put into his car to be competitive with the front runners, so it was just his way to find out what it felt like and give his fans a thrill, too.”

For the amount of seat time, no sponsor money, and health problems that would sideline most, Marty made a showing that is nothing but impressive.

In 35 Grand National (the forerunner of today’s Winston Cup Series) starts from 1966 through 1982, Marty’s best finish was a fifth at Michigan. He had five other top 10s at tracks like Darlington and Charlotte. Several drivers, including Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, and Bobby Allison, who knew him the longest, all agree that if Marty had wanted to race full-time, he would have been one tough competitor.

His last race at Atlanta came just a month before he died of heart failure in December 1982. Though his time here was too short, it seemed to be the right time.

Marty Robbins raced strictly for fun and relaxation. He did it his way and left a strong, lasting impression.