In a cramped radio station studio at Sacramento State, Pinkie Rideau sang the last few words of “Bring Me Sugar,” signaling blues musician Mick Martin to beam his vibratious harmonica across the airwaves. From his seat next to the console in April 2023, Martin lowered his instrument after his solo, took a breath and heard Janis Joplin’s “One Good Man” fade in.
Behind him, a condensed version of the Mick Martin Big Blues Band gathered in the small space: singer Rideau, bassist AJ Joyce and guitarist Andrew Little were tuning up and observing the space as Martin flashed a smile and pivoted quickly into a story about Joplin.
“You know, I’m one of the few people who could actually say that I was friends with Janis Joplin,” Martin began.
Martin went on to describe watching people mill about one morning in October 1970 when Joplin was found at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood, overdosed on heroin. A story easily dismissed, if told by anyone but the oracular Martin. But fans, friends and bandmates all know the story: He was there.
A journalist, author, musician, tutor, radio show host and co-founder of the Sacramento Blues Society, Martin — who died the morning of Sunday, July 13 — had reportedly been everywhere. Martin was 76 years old.
His omnipresent nature is what led local siren Rideau to join his band. In 1978, Rideau’s brother was the assistant manager for K-100 in Marysville when the radio station was sold. At the wake thrown for the station at the Marriott Hotel, Martin was performing and then-17-year-old Rideau got to meet him.
Years later, when Rideau was booked as an opener for Blues on the River, she said she felt shock and awe when she witnessed, from the crowd, Martin climb on stage with her. And bellow to her before the crowd, asking if she’d like to join him when it came time for his band to perform at the festival.
“He happened to be there for the whole festival and got to hear me sing,” Rideau said. “I thought I was going to swallow my tongue, because I thought he was a celebrity, but after all these years have gone by, to have somebody like that ask me if I wanted [to join him on stage] — me. ‘Are you sure? I’m just Pinkie. I’m not anything special.’ He was one of the people in my life that proved I was wrong.”
For a period of time, Rideau was Martin’s assistant and in that position, filled the role of nurse, dietician and chauffeur, and the two always shared a routine of pestering each other about anything and everything, she said.
“In a position like that, you see the real Mick,” Rideau said. “In driving him around, he would talk incessantly then ask, ‘Does my talking bother you?’ and I’d say, ‘You’re like a mosquito in my ear.’ I would just snip at him. The day he died, there was a mosquito in [my house]. I hadn’t had a mosquito in here for two years. I captured it, cupped it in my hands, let it go outside and started crying. I don’t have a crotchety old man to bother anymore.”
Martin began playing music in high school. One of his earliest public love affairs with pop culture began in 1976 when, on a stringer assignment for the Sacramento Union, he reviewed “Star Wars.” He continued to write film reviews for that paper until its closure in 1994. That year, Martin formed the band that gave him his earliest music success: Mick Martin and the Blues Rockers. That band gained enough fame to land a worldwide tour that saw Martin play in Italy, Belgium and England.
Like Rideau, blues powerhouse Katie Knipp has been touched by the Mick Martin magic. Martin played her 2018 album “Take it With You” on his Capital Public Radio show, “Mick Martin’s Blues Party,” which ran from 1991 to 2023. From there, Knipp asked the harmonicist to contribute to her 2020 EP “The Well,” and the two began a kinship that saw them sharing the stage and swapping studio time for each other’s albums.
“He really supported me. I would help him with new-age advice and he’d help me with old-school advice,” Knipp said. “He’s pushed me. He’s had me play piano in his band. It’s one thing to sing but another to shred and he’s inspired me to work harder on my skills and keep improving.”
Nick Brunner worked with Martin at Capital Public Radio as a fellow employee when Brunner began at the station in 2007. When Brunner became assistant music director in 2020, he also became Martin’s supervisor.
“You know, I’m one of the few people who could actually say that I was friends with Janis Joplin,” Martin began.
Martin went on to describe watching people mill about one morning in October 1970 when Joplin was found at the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood, overdosed on heroin. A story easily dismissed, if told by anyone but the oracular Martin. But fans, friends and bandmates all know the story: He was there.
A journalist, author, musician, tutor, radio show host and co-founder of the Sacramento Blues Society, Martin — who died the morning of Sunday, July 13 — had reportedly been everywhere. Martin was 76 years old.
His omnipresent nature is what led local siren Rideau to join his band. In 1978, Rideau’s brother was the assistant manager for K-100 in Marysville when the radio station was sold. At the wake thrown for the station at the Marriott Hotel, Martin was performing and then-17-year-old Rideau got to meet him.
Years later, when Rideau was booked as an opener for Blues on the River, she said she felt shock and awe when she witnessed, from the crowd, Martin climb on stage with her. And bellow to her before the crowd, asking if she’d like to join him when it came time for his band to perform at the festival.
“He happened to be there for the whole festival and got to hear me sing,” Rideau said. “I thought I was going to swallow my tongue, because I thought he was a celebrity, but after all these years have gone by, to have somebody like that ask me if I wanted [to join him on stage] — me. ‘Are you sure? I’m just Pinkie. I’m not anything special.’ He was one of the people in my life that proved I was wrong.”
For a period of time, Rideau was Martin’s assistant and in that position, filled the role of nurse, dietician and chauffeur, and the two always shared a routine of pestering each other about anything and everything, she said.
“In a position like that, you see the real Mick,” Rideau said. “In driving him around, he would talk incessantly then ask, ‘Does my talking bother you?’ and I’d say, ‘You’re like a mosquito in my ear.’ I would just snip at him. The day he died, there was a mosquito in [my house]. I hadn’t had a mosquito in here for two years. I captured it, cupped it in my hands, let it go outside and started crying. I don’t have a crotchety old man to bother anymore.”
Martin began playing music in high school. One of his earliest public love affairs with pop culture began in 1976 when, on a stringer assignment for the Sacramento Union, he reviewed “Star Wars.” He continued to write film reviews for that paper until its closure in 1994. That year, Martin formed the band that gave him his earliest music success: Mick Martin and the Blues Rockers. That band gained enough fame to land a worldwide tour that saw Martin play in Italy, Belgium and England.
Like Rideau, blues powerhouse Katie Knipp has been touched by the Mick Martin magic. Martin played her 2018 album “Take it With You” on his Capital Public Radio show, “Mick Martin’s Blues Party,” which ran from 1991 to 2023. From there, Knipp asked the harmonicist to contribute to her 2020 EP “The Well,” and the two began a kinship that saw them sharing the stage and swapping studio time for each other’s albums.
“He really supported me. I would help him with new-age advice and he’d help me with old-school advice,” Knipp said. “He’s pushed me. He’s had me play piano in his band. It’s one thing to sing but another to shred and he’s inspired me to work harder on my skills and keep improving.”
Nick Brunner worked with Martin at Capital Public Radio as a fellow employee when Brunner began at the station in 2007. When Brunner became assistant music director in 2020, he also became Martin’s supervisor.
“Now, no one really supervises Mick Martin; you’re just in his orbit,” Brunner said. “We’d have these supervisor-employee chats every Friday for hours and rarely talk about work. It was a fascinating time to hear his perspective on everything.”
Brunner said it was always an energizing experience to witness him at work or in the wild. “He can just opine on anybody for any length of time,” Brunner said. “He just sort of held the room, wherever that room was, no matter the audience or size. He was a bigger-than-life presence.”
Martin has fostered the talent of many blues musicians by exposing their music in a public forum through his radio show which, after being cut from the budget at CapRadio, continued at the online revival of Sacramento’s historical radio station KZAP. His guitarist Andrew Little is one of those talents, but one of the most frequently heard stories by anyone who saw Martin perform live, or heard about how he felt about influencing younger musicians, involves Kyle Rowland.
Martin and Rowland corroborate a legendary origin story in which Martin was performing with his band in 2004 at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee. In the crowd, Rowland, who was only 10 years old at the time, could be heard playing harmonica and matching Martin note-by-note. Stunned by the pied piper-level charm, Martin called to the crowd for the yet-unseen player to stand up.
There was a pause, but no member of the crowd made themselves seen. “Did you hear me, I said, ‘Whoever was playing harmonica in the crowd, stand up!’” Martin is known to have said.
“I was standing up and waving and he asked a couple times,” Rowland said, recalling the day they met. “I had to end up standing up on a chair and waving him down and he says, ‘Get on up here.’”
Rowland recalled running on stage and playing several songs with Martin. He said he began taking lessons from Martin and five years later, Rowland was joining Martin on stage regularly as a guest of the Big Blues Band. That relationship of mentor and mentee continued for decades.
“Later, he produced my first CD when I was 16,” Rowland said of Martin. “Our relationship was such a tight bond; like a family. I called him Uncle Mick and he called me his nephew. Last November, he was instrumental in getting me inducted in the Sacramento Blues Society’s Hall of Fame.”
Brunner said it was always an energizing experience to witness him at work or in the wild. “He can just opine on anybody for any length of time,” Brunner said. “He just sort of held the room, wherever that room was, no matter the audience or size. He was a bigger-than-life presence.”
Martin has fostered the talent of many blues musicians by exposing their music in a public forum through his radio show which, after being cut from the budget at CapRadio, continued at the online revival of Sacramento’s historical radio station KZAP. His guitarist Andrew Little is one of those talents, but one of the most frequently heard stories by anyone who saw Martin perform live, or heard about how he felt about influencing younger musicians, involves Kyle Rowland.
Martin and Rowland corroborate a legendary origin story in which Martin was performing with his band in 2004 at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee. In the crowd, Rowland, who was only 10 years old at the time, could be heard playing harmonica and matching Martin note-by-note. Stunned by the pied piper-level charm, Martin called to the crowd for the yet-unseen player to stand up.
There was a pause, but no member of the crowd made themselves seen. “Did you hear me, I said, ‘Whoever was playing harmonica in the crowd, stand up!’” Martin is known to have said.
“I was standing up and waving and he asked a couple times,” Rowland said, recalling the day they met. “I had to end up standing up on a chair and waving him down and he says, ‘Get on up here.’”
Rowland recalled running on stage and playing several songs with Martin. He said he began taking lessons from Martin and five years later, Rowland was joining Martin on stage regularly as a guest of the Big Blues Band. That relationship of mentor and mentee continued for decades.
“Later, he produced my first CD when I was 16,” Rowland said of Martin. “Our relationship was such a tight bond; like a family. I called him Uncle Mick and he called me his nephew. Last November, he was instrumental in getting me inducted in the Sacramento Blues Society’s Hall of Fame.”
For more than 30 years, Martin and Sacramento blues and gospel phenom Marcel Smith have been collaborators and friends. Smith described Martin as a brother, with a history dating back to his work with his group The Soul Prophets in the 1980s and ’90s. Now, Smith is the president of the very Sacramento Blues Society Martin helped create in 1979.
“He’s the link between the old and the new allies within the Sacramento Blues scene,” Smith said. “There’s definitely a void there, just his presence alone. The elder. A guy who had a lot of knowledge and didn’t mind sharing that knowledge.”
Smith said the two musicians always exchanged greetings of love at the end of every phone call, a sentiment he misses now as an artist and as a friend. As their relationship developed, like with Rowland and Knipp, Smith became a regular expected guest performer of Mick Martin’s Big Blues Band.
“He called me the preacher or the pastor,” Smith said, laughing. “He played Carnegie Hall with Jimmy Smith. Can you imagine that? That’s where you know he had a resume from here to eternity. And he always took it to another level of pouring that energy into the next generation.”
Mindy Giles carries a name synonymous with the Sacramento Blues Society. She runs the group’s Facebook page and can be seen at nearly all the events they put on as well as being an inductee to the SBS hall of fame.
Giles said that when she was vice president of Alligator Records in Chicago, Martin’s name was well known, not only because of his radio show, but his music and his work with the Sacramento Blues Society.
“Mick was known by any blues label because of what he was doing in Sacramento,” Giles said. “Mick loved to talk so when I first met him, I already knew his voice. He was so knowledgeable about people I’d worked with. He used to ask me to tell him stories because I worked with his heroes like Albert Collins and Koko Taylor.”
Giles said Martin shined especially brightly when he played with any iteration of Big Blues Band. In this setting, not only could he perform alongside talented veteran musicians, but he always invited younger musicians to join the band.
“When he did shows with the big band, it was his dream come true,” Giles said. “The music that he heard in his head, the writing that he did — it finally came to a bigger fruition when he was able to put the big band together. The happiest I think I had ever known him to be was the last few years of being able to do these bigger shows and showcase his musical blues kids. … Younger generations he was incredibly proud of and was able to champion.”
Rowland, Brunner and Knipp all lamented the missed calls, the voicemails and the silly phone conversations about movies, music, life — everything and nothing. Knipp said a month ago, she received a voice mail from Martin that relayed a tone of peace knowing that his health wasn’t going to let him live forever.
“When the doctor started talking, I felt this great calm come over me,” Martin said on the voice mail. “I could tell he was pained to have to tell me the news. … I comforted him: I’m happy. I’ve done everything I ever wanted to do. I’ve seen this thing through to the ending. I don’t have to do this anymore.”
Knipp said it’s been hard to imagine not being able to hear from a person she considered her best friend.
“We just ended up talking on the phone every day,” Knipp said. “He just always made me laugh and it’s really weird to not have him be part of my day. We’d talk most days and I can’t call him right now. This is really fresh and really weird and hard to handle. Huge loss to the community and to me, but a huge gift to the community as well.”
“He’s the link between the old and the new allies within the Sacramento Blues scene,” Smith said. “There’s definitely a void there, just his presence alone. The elder. A guy who had a lot of knowledge and didn’t mind sharing that knowledge.”
Smith said the two musicians always exchanged greetings of love at the end of every phone call, a sentiment he misses now as an artist and as a friend. As their relationship developed, like with Rowland and Knipp, Smith became a regular expected guest performer of Mick Martin’s Big Blues Band.
“He called me the preacher or the pastor,” Smith said, laughing. “He played Carnegie Hall with Jimmy Smith. Can you imagine that? That’s where you know he had a resume from here to eternity. And he always took it to another level of pouring that energy into the next generation.”
Mindy Giles carries a name synonymous with the Sacramento Blues Society. She runs the group’s Facebook page and can be seen at nearly all the events they put on as well as being an inductee to the SBS hall of fame.
Giles said that when she was vice president of Alligator Records in Chicago, Martin’s name was well known, not only because of his radio show, but his music and his work with the Sacramento Blues Society.
“Mick was known by any blues label because of what he was doing in Sacramento,” Giles said. “Mick loved to talk so when I first met him, I already knew his voice. He was so knowledgeable about people I’d worked with. He used to ask me to tell him stories because I worked with his heroes like Albert Collins and Koko Taylor.”
Giles said Martin shined especially brightly when he played with any iteration of Big Blues Band. In this setting, not only could he perform alongside talented veteran musicians, but he always invited younger musicians to join the band.
“When he did shows with the big band, it was his dream come true,” Giles said. “The music that he heard in his head, the writing that he did — it finally came to a bigger fruition when he was able to put the big band together. The happiest I think I had ever known him to be was the last few years of being able to do these bigger shows and showcase his musical blues kids. … Younger generations he was incredibly proud of and was able to champion.”
Rowland, Brunner and Knipp all lamented the missed calls, the voicemails and the silly phone conversations about movies, music, life — everything and nothing. Knipp said a month ago, she received a voice mail from Martin that relayed a tone of peace knowing that his health wasn’t going to let him live forever.
“When the doctor started talking, I felt this great calm come over me,” Martin said on the voice mail. “I could tell he was pained to have to tell me the news. … I comforted him: I’m happy. I’ve done everything I ever wanted to do. I’ve seen this thing through to the ending. I don’t have to do this anymore.”
Knipp said it’s been hard to imagine not being able to hear from a person she considered her best friend.
“We just ended up talking on the phone every day,” Knipp said. “He just always made me laugh and it’s really weird to not have him be part of my day. We’d talk most days and I can’t call him right now. This is really fresh and really weird and hard to handle. Huge loss to the community and to me, but a huge gift to the community as well.”
This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics, the city had no editorial influence over this story. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Hmong Daily News, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.