On October 11, 1982, Marty Robbins stood on stage at the CMA Awards in Nashville, holding an honor he never expected to receive. He had just been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Visibly shocked, he told the audience he felt other people deserved it before he did. Then he added one more line.
“Possibly that it might not happen again so I’m gonna take it tonight.”
Fifty-eight days later, Marty Robbins was dead.
The night he almost stayed home
Marty Robbins did not walk into the ceremony expecting anything. According to his son, Ronny Robbins, the Country Music Association had never been particularly warm toward his father. In a span of a dozen or more years, Ronny said, Marty had barely been nominated for anything at all.
He might not have gone that night if it hadn’t been for Eddy Arnold. The fellow country legend persuaded Marty Robbins to attend, while keeping the news of his induction a secret until he revealed it live during the broadcast.
Ronny was watching on television at a CBS party. He later said the honor meant a great deal to his father, precisely because it came from the CMA.
A year of second chances
The induction capped what had been a remarkable comeback year. In May 1982, his single “Some Memories Just Won’t Die” became a Top Ten country hit. That same October, Billboard gave Marty Robbins its Artist Resurgence Award, for the performer who had seen the greatest career revival over the past year.
At 57, the man behind “El Paso” was riding high again.
A heart that had already been tested
Marty Robbins had lived with heart trouble for more than a decade. He suffered a heart attack in August 1969, and on January 27, 1970, he underwent bypass surgery at a time when the operation was still considered experimental. By October 1970, he was back behind the wheel of a stock car. He had another heart attack in 1981, one that did not require surgery.
None of it slowed him down for long.
The last weeks
On November 7, 1982, less than a month after the Hall of Fame ceremony, Marty Robbins raced in the Atlanta Journal 500, driving a Buick Regal built by Junior Johnson. It was his last race.
On December 1, he gave a performance in Cincinnati. It was his last show.
The next day, December 2, after he had returned home, Marty Robbins suffered a massive heart attack. Tests showed a blood clot had cut off blood flow to a major part of his heart. He was rushed into emergency surgery at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville. Over eight hours, surgeons repaired the three bypasses from his 1970 operation and added a fourth.
Six days
For the next six days, Marty Robbins fought to stay alive. Doctors said his heart had not begun working on its own the way it should have. The 1969 heart attack and this new one together had badly weakened the main pumping chamber of his heart. He was kept alive with medication, a balloon pump and dialysis as his kidneys failed. On December 8, a hospital spokesman described his condition as a moment-to-moment situation.
Marty Robbins died that day, December 8, 1982. He was 57 years old. He and his wife, Marizona, had been married for 34 years. He was buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Nashville.
The words that stayed with his family
Looking back years later, Ronny Robbins thought about what his father had said on stage that October night, that the honor might not come around again so he would take it while he could. Ronny called it prophetic, because his father was gone just two months later.
Marty Robbins placed 94 songs on Billboard’s country singles charts over his career. Four of them charted after his death.
Do you remember watching Marty Robbins on the Opry, or where you were when you heard he had passed?