![British folk artist Beverley Martyn passes away at 79.]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/British-folk-artist-Beverley-Martyn-passes-away-at-79-758x426.jpg "British folk artist Beverley Martyn passes away at 79.] 1")
Beverley Martyn, the British folk singer who collaborated with artists including Jimmy Page, Donovan and Nick Drake, has died. A statement from the family of her former husband, singer-songwriter John Martyn, said she died peacefully at home on April 27. She was 79.
Born Beverley Kutner, she moved to London in the early 1960s to attend drama school and was soon swept up in the city’s burgeoning folk scene. Not long after arriving she formed the group the Levee Breakers. Their 1965 single “Babe I’m Leaving You,” recorded when she was about 17, was not a commercial hit, though the band became a regular fixture on the southeast England folk circuit.
She found greater success on her second try the following year. Signed to the then-new label Deram as Beverley, she released the single “Happy New Year,” written by American composer Randy Newman, who at the time was supplying songs for British acts such as Cilla Black and the Alan Price Set.
For the session she was backed by future Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, Rolling Stones sideman Nicky Hopkins, and Andy White, the session drummer who famously replaced Ringo Starr on an early version of the Beatles’ 1962 song “Love Me Do.”
“It was a remarkable session,” Page said later. “At the time it was recorded I knew that she was a shining talent in the world of performance and songwriting.”
Deram’s distributor, Decca Records, evidently thought so too and chose “Happy New Year” as the fledgling label’s debut single. The following year she released “Museum,” a song written by the Scottish folk singer Donovan.
During this time she developed a romantic relationship with acoustic guitarist Bert Jansch, who taught her to play guitar. She also became involved with Paul Simon during his pre-fame days in London.
“He had a Napoleon complex,” she recalled to The Guardian in 2014. “Very intelligent. Moody, but witty.”
Like Simon and his musical partner Art Garfunkel, Martyn performed in June 1967 at the celebrated Monterey Pop Festival, where the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience made their U.S. debuts. She later contributed to the song “Fakin’ It” on Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 hit album Bookends. (She speaks the line, “Good morning, Mr. Leitch, have you had a busy day?”—a reference to Donovan, whose surname is Leitch.)
In 1969 she met John Martyn and married him soon after. Together they released two albums — 1970’s Stormbringer! and The Road to Ruin — and had two children. But once Martyn decided to pursue a solo career, she was left at home to raise the family.
My career was over. I had my hands full. I did the odd gig with John, and the odd one on my own, but I had no future.”
— Beverley Martyn
“My career was over,” she said. “I had my hands full. I did the odd gig with John, and the odd one on my own, but I had no future.”
She continued to write songs and co-wrote “Reckless Jane” with the British folk artist Nick Drake, who also babysat her children. But her marriage to Martyn was troubled. He struggled with alcohol and drug addiction and became violent toward her.
“There was love there,” she said of their marriage. “It was the drink and the bad drugs, the very heavy ones, that changed his disposition, and they made life unbearable for anyone around him.”
Their marriage ended in 1980. By the 1990s she was making music again, working with Loudon Wainwright III and Wilko Johnson. She performed at the 2013 concert A Celebration of Bert Jansch alongside Donovan and Robert Plant.
In 2014 she finally released her first solo album, The Phoenix and the Turtle, which included the previously unreleased Drake co-write “Reckless Jane.”
“It was a great relief to finally do something on my own terms. That was a dream I’d almost given up on,” she said.
Aside from a compilation of her 1960s recordings, Where the Good Times Are, it would be her final release.
“Beverley was a remarkable woman of great inner strength,” Martyn’s family said in a statement announcing her death. “She was beautiful, intelligent, warm and kind.”
