On December 1, 1982, Marty Robbins and his band played a banquet for the bus-tour industry at the Cincinnati Convention Center. It turned out to be his final concert. One week later, on December 8, Marty Robbins was dead at 57.
What we know about that day comes mostly from two men who were on the stage with him: steel guitarist Wayne Hobbs and guitarist Gary Adams. Both later shared their memories with Marty’s biographer, Diane Diekman. Hobbs told his story in a 2006 phone interview. Their accounts do not describe a dramatic farewell. They describe something quieter, and stranger.
The shortest show the band ever played
A Marty Robbins concert was famous for running long. He usually played an hour and a half, sometimes two hours, and he was known for running well past his scheduled time. Wayne Hobbs said that half an hour was nothing for Marty. It was about the point where he was just getting warmed up.
In Cincinnati, the show began the normal way. Marty opened with “Ribbon of Darkness,” then went into “A White Sport Coat,” and the band played roughly the usual first four songs. Then Marty turned around and called for “Some Memories Just Won’t Die,” his 1982 single. Hobbs said the band members looked at each other, because the song was nowhere near where it usually fell in the set.
They played one more song. Then Marty turned to his lead guitarist, Jack Pruett, whom he called by the nickname Bandy, and gave the cue:
“El Paso, Bandy.”
That was the end of the show. By Hobbs’s estimate, it ran somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. He remembered people in the audience looking at the band as if to say that was a short show, wasn’t it?
Why “El Paso” always came last
Calling for “El Paso” was not unusual in itself. Marty Robbins closed his concerts with it for the rest of his life after recording it in 1959. It had topped both the country and pop charts as 1959 turned into 1960, and it won him a Grammy. He once said of the song:
“I do it every night, but I never get tired of singing it.”
What was unusual in Cincinnati was how soon it came. The closing song arrived when the show should barely have been getting started.
A strange day in Cincinnati
Gary Adams had joined the band only a few months earlier, in 1982, along with Mike Cutright. Both were Ohio musicians whom Wayne Hobbs had recommended. Adams remembered the Cincinnati date as a strange day. Everything seemed out of tune, including the piano.
Adams also had a personal reason to remember it. He had co-written a song with his brother, Don, called “Baby, That’s Love.” At the show, Marty told him he had just cut it in the studio:
“I just recorded your song yesterday.”
“Baby, That’s Love” was released on Some Memories Just Won’t Die, an album that came out after Marty’s death.
That recording work may explain how Marty looked that day. Hobbs said the band assumed he was tired, because he had been up all night working on his album. He looked like he needed sleep, Hobbs recalled, but he did not let on that he felt bad.
Good news on the bus
After the show, Marty Robbins came onto the band bus. Hobbs remembered that he told them not to worry, because he was going to put them all on a salary, with a raise for the whole year. Hobbs also recalled Marty talking about doing another movie with Clint Eastwood. Marty had a role in Eastwood’s Honkytonk Man, which was just about to reach theaters.
According to Hobbs, everybody left Cincinnati thinking the following year was going to be a great one.
Gary Adams felt differently. Marty was planning to have the bus redone, so the band had been told to take all their gear off. On the drive home to Ohio, Adams told Mike Cutright that they would not be getting back on that bus. He later said he simply had that feeling.
One week
On the morning of Thursday, December 2, Marty Robbins woke up at his home near Nashville with severe chest pains. He had lived with heart disease since a major heart attack in 1969. This time doctors found a blood clot, and he went through quadruple bypass surgery at St. Thomas Hospital.
He had been scheduled to appear on the Grand Ole Opry that Saturday, December 4. He never made it back. Marty Robbins died late on the night of Wednesday, December 8, 1982, six days after the heart attack and one week after he walked off the stage in Cincinnati. Only eight weeks earlier, he had been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Wayne Hobbs played steel guitar for decades after that, with names like Connie Smith and Barbara Mandrell on his résumé. He died in June 2024. Years after Cincinnati, he told Diekman that when Marty died, it felt to him as if Nashville had died, too.