Lloyd “Skip” Martin (Part 1)

By Jeff Sultanof

Another musical workhorse who was all over the top big bands and later the Hollywood and TV studios, Skip (or Skippy) Martin could be called upon to arrange and orchestrate a swing or jazz selection for a movie musical, but he was also an excellent ballad arranger, and in fact, his most well-known credit may be for a movie with an absolute classic ballad performance.

He was playing clarinet with orchestras in Indianapolis, Indiana, and attended Indiana University. He quickly got work at radio station WLW in Cincinnati. His first recorded arrangements were played by Count Basie:

• Smarty (You Know it All)
• Our Love was Meant to Be

He joined the Charlie Barnet Orchestra, and along with Billy May, built up the book for that orchestra with ballads and jump tunes.

• A Lover is Blue with featured vocalist Judy Ellington
• The Right Idea (The flip side of this record is called The Wrong Idea which has a rare Billy May vocal!!)
• Flying Home
• A Lover’s Lullaby

In 1940, he joined Benny Goodman, where he chiefly played alto and baritone sax, and contributed two arrangements which stood out. One had already been recorded by Count Basie, Tuesday at Ten.

The other was Caprice XXIV Paganini.

In late 1941, Martin joined the Miller band. He is usually listed as lead alto, but that is deceptive. Wilbur Schwartz was chief lead on clarinet of course, but when the sax section was written for 2 alto saxes, Martin played lead. He may be seen as part of the sax section in the motion picture Orchestra Wives.

I have never seen an arrangement credited to him, and that seems very surprising to me. Surely Miller knew of his abilities; it may have been a conscious decision by Martin not to write for the band. As far as I can determine, he was never asked about this (I learned a long time ago that you can sometimes hit a nerve with a musician over a circumstance such as this one), and it’s a pity.

He stayed with Miller until the leader disbanded to go into the service. Reportedly Martin freelanced writing for CBS and NBC since there was plenty of work in radio all over the country. He soon joined the Army Air Corps and trained as a pilot.

When he got out of the service, he headed to the west coast and took up where he left off. We will join him with the Les Brown Orchestra in Part II.

—Jeff Sultanof