We often assume that musicians eat, sleep, and breathe their artistic craft, and while that’s often true, Marty Robbins used music as a means to an end to fund his true dream job: a stock-car racer.

In one of the final interviews before his death in 2003, Johnny Cash declared, “There’s no greater country singer than Marty Robbins.” Quite a bold statement from the Man in Black, but Robbins lived ...