Sara Martin

[3] Martin was born Sara Dunn in Louisville, Kentucky, and was singing on the African-American vaudeville circuit by 1915.

[6] Through the 1920s she toured and recorded with such performers as Fats Waller, Clarence Williams, King Oliver, and Sylvester Weaver.

On stage she was noted for a dramatic performing style and for her lavish costumes, which she changed two or three times per show.

[8] Martin's stage work in the late 1920s took her to New York, Detroit, and Pittsburgh and to Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico.

[10] She performed with Thomas A. Dorsey as a gospel singer in 1932, after which she worked outside the music industry, running a nursing home in Louisville.