YORK blues and country singer Suzy Martell is releasing a retrospective album produced in Nashville on August 8.

Entitled Heartbreaks & Outtakes, it is the latest act of defiance from the Heworth musician, whose career has been blighted by ill health.

“I’ve had to withdraw from touring due to fighting stomach cancer, undergoing operations and many hospitalisations, but all the time I’m battling and planning on getting back out there singing the blues when my health allows,” says Suzy, who travelled to Nashville earlier this year.

The resulting album, Heartbreaks & Outtatkes, will be issued on Suzy’s own label, Timberwolf Records, and will be available from iTunes and Amazon or direct from Timberwolf at suzy.martell@btinternet.com

“It’s a look-back that takes in some of my rare unreleased studio recordings and live tracks from various blues festivals and gigs, and it’s a very personal record,” says Suzy.

“It includes two versions of Cry Me A River, which may annoy blues purists, but I lost my dad in February this year and it was his favourite song, so that’s why it’s on there twice, one live, the other a studio version; no apologies.

“That’s why I own my own record label and publishing company, so I can do what I want.”

The album includes Suzy’s live versions of The Faces’ Stay With Me, Randy Newman’s Guilty and Billie Holiday’s Tell Me More And More (And Then Some), and studio takes of Suzy’s own song, A Dose Of You, Mary Gauthier’s Lucky Stars and new recordings of Helen Reeves’s I Won’t Ever and AP Carter’s Will The Circle Be Unbroken.

“I hope my fans and new fans enjoy this new look at what’s gone on before, as it was you who asked me to put this CD out to hear the new tracks,” says Suzy, whose recordings feature guest vocalists Lady Diane Hill and Lee Noble and her great friend Rosie Flores, the American singer and guitarist, as well as jazz guitarist Gary Boyle, among others.

Suzy, the youngest of four children, has entertained and written songs from a young age.

“I was the show-off, the one who shouted the loudest to be heard,” she says. “I started playing clubs and pubs in Yorkshire and built up a steady following on the infamous Yorkshire working men’s club circuit, regularly playing six or seven nights a week for years and years.

“It was a hard training ground: you learned to stick up for yourself; you were the act in between the all-important bingo. They were tough audiences. I could write a book about those club years and nobody would believe it.”

Unfortunately, the constant touring and singing night after night in smoky clubs affected her voice. She required several throat operations and a tumour in her throat turned out to be cancer.

More operations and treatment followed. At one point, her parents, Bill and Hazel Barton, were told Suzy would not sing again but doctors had underestimated her willpower.

Her health improved, enabling her to go to Nashville, where she gained a following, playing gigs, writing songs and recording the country album Broken Hearts In Nashville with producer Danny Lee Ramsey.

After her throat surgery, Suzy’s voice was deeper and smokier, and so she took the opportunity to switch focus to her first love, the blues of Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith. She formed a band featuring Gary Boyle, played the Chicago Blues Festival, headlined Colne Blues Festival and released A Dose Of You, a single that made the British and American blues charts.

Suzy was struck by cancer again, this time in her stomach, but while the blues tours have stopped, the travelling to the United States has not, even though travel insurance is problematic because of her medical record.

Her resolve is as strong as ever in her 40s.

“A new album of original songs, all written by me, will be out in 2014 if God is willing and the creek don’t rise,” she says. “I’m intending to go back to Nashville to do the recordings, as I’ve been promising all these years.”

You try stopping her.