Vince Martell was born on November 11, 1945, in the Bronx, New York. As Vanilla Fudge’s original guitarist, he helped turn familiar pop songs into extended arrangements built around organ, guitar and a forceful rhythm section. The band’s version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” brought that approach to its 1967 debut, Vanilla Fudge.
Martell’s musical education began well before that record. In a 2012 interview with Blues.gr, he recalled a family expectation that children learn an instrument, and guitar lessons that covered classical music and jazz. Rock and roll widened his interests, but those earlier lessons remained part of his vocabulary. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he moved to Florida and played in a cover band at an amusement park on weekends. Learning other people’s songs was practical work long before rearranging them became his band’s calling card.
By the mid-1960s, Martell was playing with organist Mark Stein and bassist Tim Bogert in the Pigeons. The group’s developing sound needed room for all three instruments, and Carmine Appice’s arrival on drums added another forceful player. Martell described their interplay as guitar and organ moving between accompaniment and lead parts while the bass followed melodic paths of its own. That helps explain why a Vanilla Fudge arrangement could feel so busy even at a slow tempo: several musical conversations were happening at once.
The decision to slow down “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” had an emotional purpose. “We always thought the song was too happy, too fast, too jumpy,” Martell told Peter Lindblad in a 2009 Goldmine interview. The Supremes recording gave them material they could pull into a different shape. Martell recalled taking inspiration from the Vagrants’ slower arrangements, while lessons from his sister, a classical pianist, encouraged him to look beyond standard rock approaches. Producer George “Shadow” Morton heard the possibilities in the band’s treatment, recorded them and helped them reach Atco. They signed in 1967 and adopted the Vanilla Fudge name.
Their first album established them through interpretations of other writers’ songs. On Renaissance, released in 1968, Martell also contributed an original, “Thoughts.” The album shifted the balance toward material written within the group, giving his songwriting a place alongside his guitar playing. Looking back in the Blues.gr interview, he singled out Renaissance as a particularly creative record for the band and one that gave his guitar prominent solo roles. It’s a useful next stop for listeners who know him principally through the debut’s best-known cover.
The following year’s Near the Beginning offered another change: Vanilla Fudge produced the album themselves. Martell explained in the June 2021 issue of Vintage Guitar that their experience in studios and onstage had made them clearer about what they wanted. He credited Morton with helping shape the arrangements on their first three albums; this time, the group took responsibility for the production.
For Martell, “Shotgun” supplied a specific opportunity to try something different on record. He had used a wah pedal onstage, and touring with Jimi Hendrix had encouraged him to explore its sound further. Vanilla Fudge’s version of the Junior Walker and the All Stars song became his first recorded use of wah. A familiar song had again provided the starting point, with Martell bringing a new part of his playing into the arrangement.
