Oklahoma songwriter, Capitol power pop, and a hit he lent to Robert Palmer
John David Martin left Oklahoma with a guitar, a bowl cut, and a habit of writing songs that sounded like detective novels set to power pop. In Los Angeles he picked up the nickname Moon and signed to Capitol. Shots from a Cold Nightmare landed in 1978. The record is lean: dry guitars, short choruses, a voice that stays cool even when the lyric is hot. On that album sits «Bad Case of Loving You», the song Robert Palmer would cover a year later and turn into a worldwide hit. Martin’s own version barely charted. The publishing cheque did.
Escape from Domination followed in 1979. «Rolene» reached the Billboard Hot 100 and gave him a face on American television: glasses, blond fringe, leather jacket, the look of a private eye who also knew three chord changes. «No Chance» kept the same clipped rhythm. Street Fever (1980) pushed him toward European radio. In France, «Bad News» became the track that locals still name first when someone mentions Moon Martin. He was never a stadium act. He was a craftsman who could deliver a hook in under four minutes and leave the room before the chorus got soft.
He also wrote for other voices. «Cadillac Walk» went to Willy DeVille. The Palmer cover of «Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)» hit the US Top 20 in 1979 and became the song most people still associate with Martin’s pen, even when they never heard his original. That gap between writer and star is the real plot of his career: the catalogues remember the chorus, the credits remember the Oklahoma name.
Mystery Ticket (1982) and later albums kept the spy-movie cool without chasing fashion. «X-Ray Vision» found a second life when MTV used the track in early network IDs. Live, he stayed a guitarist first: compact band, no spectacle, songs that sit between new wave and classic rock radio without begging either format for mercy.
What survives is a short stack of sharp singles and the knowledge that one of the late seventies’ cleanest rock hooks came from a man who looked more like a photographer than a pin-up. Put on «Rolene», then the original «Bad Case of Loving You», then Palmer’s cover: same skeleton, different suits. Martin died on 11 May 2020 in Encino, California. The songs still sound like they were written with a notebook on a bar and a deadline at Capitol.
For RIFFS AND BEATS he belongs next to the power-pop craftsmen who fed radio without owning the magazine covers: precise choruses, noir humor, and a career that proves a hit can travel farther than its author.
