Beverley Martyn

Beverley Martyn was a British folk singer who first found success in the mid-'60s with her hip and moody renditions of tunes written by Cat Stevens, Donovan, and others. She worked with members of Led Zeppelin, contributed to Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends album, and performed at the Monterey Pop Festival during this time, and in the early '70s made two stellar and mysterious folk albums with her then-husband, John Martyn. She retreated from making music publicly for many years, but returned several years before her death in 2026 with new music like 2014's The Phoenix and the Turtle. Beverley Martyn was born Beverley Kutner in 1947 and cut her first single by age 16, working as part of a band called the Levee Breakers on their 1965 cut "Babe I'm Leaving You," which was released on the Parlophone label. She then released several singles as a solo artist for Deram, going simply by Beverley. She was active in the international folk scene during this time, playing Monterey Pop and working with Simon & Garfunkel. By the end of the '60s, she met and married fellow folk artist John Martyn, and in 1970, the couple released two albums, Stormbringer and Road to Ruin, both of which became important documents of the British folk scene happening at that time. Beverley contributed to her husband's albums for the next many years, and disappeared from music after their divorce in 1980. In the '90s, she returned to the stage on a tour supporting Loudon Wainwright III, and in 1998 released No Frills, her first fully solo album. In 2014, Martyn released her next album, The Phoenix and the Turtle. It included a previously unrecorded song she wrote with Nick Drake and was made with contributions from members of Los Lobos, the Counting Crows, and more. In 2018, a collection of rare or unreleased tracks from Beverley's early days in the mid- to late '60s was released as Where the Good Times Are. Martyn died on April 27, 2026, at the age of 79. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi