Bad case of9/12/2023 ![]() ![]() Then she delivers a masterful yodel that ribbons from her chest to her head to the rafters. Martell looks cool yet approachable, the gal at the party who’s got a clever read on everyone. But when she launches into the chorus, the camera pushes in close on her face. Green floral dress with an A-line skirt, flouncy sleeves, polished white heels, legs snapped together like a diver. When you catch sight of Martell, she’s standing prim and straight as a mic stand, on a stage surrounded by hay bales. And there’s a video clip of her performing “Bad Case of the Blues” on Hee Haw. There are a few photos of her-pretty, slim, and glowing in the paisley prints and mini-dresses of the era. There’s a scrap of origin story: Raised on gospel music, she recorded her first singles as part of an r&b group while still a teenager, then switched her focus to country music when a rowdy crowd in Charleston demanded it. Martell is not mentioned in Ken Burns’s new sixteen-hour-long Country Music documentary, and it’s notably hard to find information about her life.Īll we have is one sparkling album and a few artifacts of her career. Until recently, I’d never heard of Martell, even after living for a time not far from where she grew up. She returned to her home state of South Carolina-where she’d grown up Thelma Bynem, a small-town pastor’s daughter-and stayed. In 1974, five years after her breakout success, Martell retired from the business. She seemed poised, like Charley Pride, to achieve a stardom of longevity and versatility. Martell released modest hits and appeared on popular TV shows. Released with Shelby Singleton’s Plantation Records in 1970, the album followed a splash Martell had made with mainstream country audiences the year before with Top 25 single “Color Him Father.” In August 1969, she became the first African-American female vocalist to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, where she would appear eleven more times. “Bad Case of the Blues” is the first track and last charting single from Martell’s Color Me Country-her first and last album. “Livin’ and a-workin’ in the city, I thought I was a big girl,” Martell opens over a jaunty swing and winking fiddle, “Ah, I felt so smart and my whole life I could choose.” It’s a song about humbling heartache and growing pains and a return to the singer’s roots-but Martell’s voice is so self-aware you’d bet that she’ll still leap at the next chance for big love and adventure under the marquee lights. ![]() The song may be called “Bad Case of the Blues,” but Linda Martell’s bright, countrypolitan voice sounds anything but downtrodden. She enjoys being different and never has stripes again.Track 5 – “Bad Case of the Blues” by Linda Martell Camilla is successfully reverted to a human and continues to eat lima beans although her friends consider her strange for liking them (and for her bow being covered in stripes), she doesn't even care a bit. Camilla is afraid to admit her willingness to eat them at first, but after realizing that this could be her only hope of being cured, she allows the old woman to feed her them. Finally, she melts and merges into her room after an environmental therapist tells her to “become one with the room”.įinally, an old lady tells her to eat some lima beans. She even has viruses, bacteria, and fungus colonies grow on her body after the community's expert scientists discuss these as a possible cause to her situation while examining her. She turns into a pill after being given one and grows roots, berries, crystals, feathers, and a long furry tail after receiving different medicine. The principal sends her home as she is proving to be a distraction, and calls her parents to keep Camilla home from school till her symptoms wear off.Īt home, Camilla goes through a number of increasingly preposterous metamorphoses. But when she does the next day, most of the other children tease her and some of the other children call out colors and patterns which cause the colors on her skin to shift around. Bumble, determines that Camilla is well enough to attend school tomorrow. On the first day of school, she wakes up to discover thick, solid-colored stripes all over her body. ![]()
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