Benny Martin

Benny Edward Martin (May 8, 1928 - March 13, 2001), was an American bluegrass fiddler who invented the 8-string fiddle. Born in Sparta, Tennessee, his father and two of his sisters played music professionally. From childhood, he learned the fiddle taught to him by Carl Alverson, Sr., of Sparta and ukulele, as well as the guitar and in his early teens left home to go to Nashville to pursue a full-time career as a country musician. Martin was working at radio station WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee in 1948 when he was asked to replace Bill Monroe's fiddler Chubby Wise who was going to leave the Bluegrass Boys. In 1949, he became a member of Don Reno's Tennessee Cutups. For the next seventeen years, until December 1966, Don Reno and Martin...