Beverley Martyn, folk singer who inspired 1960s icons, dies at 79

Beverley Martyn, born Beverley Kutner near Coventry, England, in 1947, died peacefully at home on April 27, 2026, at 79, leaving behind a career that moved from the center of the 1960s folk boom to a late life reclaiming of credit long delayed. A family statement called her “a remarkable woman of great inner strength” and praised her as “beautiful, intelligent, warm and kind.”

She first emerged in the mid-1960s as the singer and 12-string guitarist fronting the jug band The Levee Breakers, while still a student. Her early singles included “Happy New Year” and “Museum” in 1967, and the recording of “Happy New Year” featured Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones. By then, Beverley Martyn was already moving through the same circles that would later define the canon, from London folk rooms such as Les Cousins, Bunjies and The Troubadour to the larger stage of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where she appeared alongside Simon and Garfunkel.

Her life intersected with several of the era’s most mythologized names. She had a brief romance with Paul Simon while he was in London, was a close friend of Nick Drake, later performed at a Nick Drake tribute concert in 1999, and was also linked to Bert Jansch, who taught her guitar. Those connections placed her near the center of a scene that elevated male auteurs while often leaving the women around them as footnotes. Even Barbra Streisand was said to envy her.

Martyn met and married John Martyn in 1969, and the pair recorded Stormbringer! and The Road to Ruin together in 1970. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1980 after about 10 years, and Beverley Martyn largely stepped away from music for years while raising their family. The long silence helped obscure a figure who had already helped shape the sound of the period’s jug-band and folk crossover.

She returned with her first solo album, No Frills, in 1998, then reached a wider late audience with her memoir, Sweet Honesty: The Beverley Martyn Story, in 2011. The Phoenix and the Turtle followed in 2014, her first solo album in fourteen years, a reminder that her career had not vanished so much as been delayed by the industry’s habit of canonizing some voices while overlooking others. Beverley Martyn is survived by her children.