Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Born in Rosewood, Kentucky, his songs' lyrics were often about the lives and the economic exploitation of American coal mining. Among his many well-known songs and recordings are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues", "I Am a Pilgrim", and "Dark as a Dungeon". He is best known today, though, for his unique guitar style, still called Travis picking by guitarists, as well as his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Travis picking is a syncopated style of guitar pattern picking rooted in ragtime music in which alternating chords and bass notes are plucked by the thumb, while melodies are plucked by the index finger. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977.
He is considered by some to be one of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century.
Merle developed his guitar-playing style out of the native, western Kentucky fingerpicking tradition. Among its early practitioners was Black country blues guitarist Arnold Shultz.Lightfoot, William E. 1990. "A regional musical style: The legacy of Arnold Shultz," in Sense of place: American regional cultures, edited by Barbara Allen and Thomas J. Schlereth, 120–137. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky; Kienzle, Rich. "The evolution of country fingerpicking" Shultz taught his style to several local musicians, including Kennedy Jones, who passed it on to other guitarists, notably Mose Rager, a part-time barber and coal miner, and Ike Everly, the father of the Everly Brothers. Their thumb and index fingerpicking method created a solo style that blended lead lines picked by the finger and rhythmic bass patterns picked or strummed by the thumb. This technique captivated many guitarists in the region and was the main inspiration to young Travis. Travis acknowledged his debt to both Rager and Everly, and appears with Rager on the DVD Legends of Country Guitar (Vestapol, 2002).
At the age of 18, Travis performed "Tiger Rag" on a local radio amateur show in Evansville, Indiana, leading to offers of work with local bands. In 1937, fiddler Clayton McMichen hired Travis to be the guitarist in his Georgia Wildcats. He later joined the Drifting Pioneers, a Chicago-area gospel quartet that moved to WLW radio in Cincinnati, the major country music station north of Nashville. Travis' style amazed everyone at WLW, and he became a popular member of their barn dance radio show, the Boone County Jamboree, when it began in 1938. He performed on various weekday programs, often working with other WLW acts, including Grandpa Jones, the Delmore Brothers, (in Alton Delmore's book Truth is Stranger Than Publicity on pages 274–275, Alton describes how he taught Merle Travis how to read and write music) Truth is Stranger Than Publicity, 1995 ed. Hank Penny and Joe Maphis, all of whom became lifelong friends.
In 1943, Grandpa Jones and he recorded for Cincinnati used-record dealer Syd Nathan, who had founded a new label, King Records. Because WLW barred their staff musicians from recording, Travis and Jones used the pseudonym the Sheppard Brothers. Their recording of "You'll Be Lonesome Too" was the first to be released by King Records, which subsequently became known for its country recordings by the Delmore Brothers and Stanley Brothers, as well as R&B musicians Hank Ballard, Wynonie Harris, and most notably, James Brown.
With the threat of being Conscription during World War II, Travis enlisted in the US Marine Corps. His stint as a marine was very brief, and he returned to Cincinnati.An interview with Merle Travis When the Drifting Pioneers left radio station WLW, leaving a half-hour hole in the schedule, Merle, Grandpa Jones, and the Delmore Brothers formed a gospel group called the Brown's Ferry Four. Performing a repertoire of traditional White and Black gospel songs, with Merle singing bass. They became one of the most popular country gospel groups of the time, recording nearly four dozen sides for the King label between 1946 and 1952. The Brown's Ferry Four have been called "possibly the best White gospel group ever."by William E. Lightfoot, 2003. The Three Doc(k)s: White Blues in Appalachia, Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1/2, pp. 167–193; see also "Brown's Ferry Four" by Bruce Eder, Allmusic
During this period, Travis appeared in several soundies, an early form of music video intended for visual jukeboxes where customers could view and hear the popular performers of the day. His first soundie was "Night Train to Memphis" with the band Jimmy Wakely and his Oklahoma Cowboys and Girls, including Johnny Bond and Wesley Tuttle, along with Colleen Summers (who later married Les Paul and became Mary Ford). His performance of "Why'd I Fall for Abner" with Carolina Cotton was chosen for inclusion in the 2007 PBS documentary Soundies. Several years later, he recorded a set of Snader Telescriptions, short music videos intended for local television stations needing filler programming. His performances included playful duets with his then-wife, Judy Hayden, as well as several songs from his 1947 album Folk Songs from the Hills (see below).
In 1946, Capitol asked him to record an album of folk songs. Travis combined traditional songs and several original compositions recalling his family's days working in the mines. Capitol released the results as the four-disc, 78 rpm box set Folk Songs of the Hills. The album, with Travis accompanied only by his guitar, contains his two most enduring songs, both centered on the lives of coal miners: "Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon".
"Sixteen Tons" became a number-one Billboard country hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955, and has been recorded many times over the years. Travis and Molly Bee appeared together as guests on November 24, 1960, on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. The darkly philosophical "Dark As A Dungeon", although never a hit single, became a folk standard during the 1960s folk revival, and has been covered by many artists, including Johnny Cash in his best-selling concert album At Folsom Prison, by Dolly Parton on her 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs album, and by Travis himself, along with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the landmark 1972 album Will the Circle Be Unbroken. In spite of its initial lack of commercial success, Folk Songs of the Hills, with added tracks, has remained in print virtually ever since.
Travis was a popular radio performer throughout the 1940s and '50s. He appeared on many country music television shows, co-hosting a show Merle Travis and Company with his wife, Judy Hayden, around 1953. He was a regular member of the Hollywood Barn Dance broadcast over radio station KNX, Hollywood, and of the Town Hall Party, which was broadcast first as a radio show on KXLA out of Pasadena, California, and later as a TV series from 1953 to 1961. Despite his successes, his personal life became increasingly troubled. A heavy drinker and at times desperately insecure despite a multitude of talents (including prose writing, taxidermy, cartooning, and watch repair), he was involved in a number of violent incidents in California, and he married several times in the course of his life. He suffered from serious stage fright, though amazed fellow performers added that once onstage, he was an effective and even charismatic performer. In spite of his problems, he was respected and admired by his friends and fellow musicians. Longtime Travis fan Doc Watson named his son Merle Watson, and Travis admirer Chet Atkins named his daughter Merle Atkins, in Travis' honor.
Travis' string of 1940s' chart-topping, honky-tonk hits did not continue into the 1950s, despite the reverence of friends Grandpa Jones and Hank Thompson, with whom he toured and recorded. He was lead guitarist in Thompson's Brazos Valley Boys during the time when Billboard rated them the number-one country-western band for 14 years in a row. (Thompson, who could pick Travis-style, even had Gibson design him a Super 400 hollow-body electric guitar identical to the one Travis began using in 1952.) Travis continued recording for Capitol in the 1950s, broadening his repertoire to include new guitar instrumentals, blues, and boogie numbers. His up-tempo single "Merle's Boogie Woogie" showed him working with multitrack disc recording at the same time as Les Paul.
He found greater popularity after appearing in 1953's hugely popular and multiple Academy Award-winning movie From Here to Eternity, singing and playing "Reenlistment Blues" and following the success of his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford's million-selling rendition of "Sixteen Tons" in 1955. His reputation as a folk-inspired singer-composer and guitarist grew after the release in 1956 of the album The Merle Travis Guitar, the reissue of Folk Songs of the Hills with four additional tracks under the title Back Home in 1957, and Walkin' the Strings in 1960, the latter two of which won five-star ratings from Rolling Stone. His career acquired a second wind during the American folk music revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading to appearances at clubs, folk festivals, and Carnegie Hall as a guest of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in 1962. In the mid-1960s, he moved to Nashville and joined the Grand Ole Opry. During this time, he became Johnny Cash's close friend and occasional hunting partner.
Although his early tutors were among the first to use the thumb pick in guitar playing, freeing the fingers to pick melody, Travis' style, according to Chet Atkins, went on in musical directions "never dreamt about" by his predecessors.Chet Atkins, liner notes to 1996 reissue of the album Walkin' the Strings His trademark mature style incorporated elements from ragtime, blues, boogie, jazz, and Western swing, and was marked by rich chord progressions, harmonics, slides and bends, and rapid changes of key. He could shift quickly from fingerpicking to flatpicking in the midst of a number by gripping his thumb pick like a flat pick. In his hands, the guitar resembled a full band. As his son Thom Bresh puts it, on first hearing his father as a child, "I thought it was just the coolest sound, because it sounded like a whole bunch of instruments coming from one guitar. In it, I heard rhythm parts, I heard melodies, I heard chords, and all this wrapped up in one."Gold 2006. Equally at home on acoustic and electric guitar, Travis was one of the first to exploit the full range of techniques and sonorities available on the electric guitar.
Though Chet Atkins was the most prominent guitarist to be inspired by Merle Travis, the two players' styles were significantly different. As Atkins explained, "While I play alternate bass strings, which sounds more like a stride piano style, Merle played two bass strings simultaneously on the one and three beats, producing a more exciting solo rhythm, in my opinion. It was somewhat reminiscent of the great old Black players." The resemblance was no coincidence; Travis himself acknowledged the influence of Black guitarists such as Blind Blake, the foremost ragtime and blues guitarist of the late 1920s and early 1930s.Ferris, William R., Michael K. Honey and Pete Seeger,"Pete Seeger, San Francisco, 1989", Southern Cultures Volume 13.3, Fall 2007, pp. 5–38
Guitarist Marcel Dadi explains and exemplifies Travis' style on his DVD The Guitar of Merle Travis, which includes videos of Travis performing "John Henry" and "Nine Pound Hammer", and includes transcriptions of Travis solos in tablature.Available from Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop GW 918, 1993
In 1983, Travis died of a heart attack at his Tahlequah, Oklahoma, home. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered around a memorial erected to him near Drakesboro, Kentucky.
Guitar style
Late career
Legacy
Discography
Albums
1947 Folk Songs of the Hills Capitol 1956 The Merle Travis Guitar (Instrumental Album) 1957 Back Home (LP reissue of Folk Songs of the Hills plus some songs not released before) 1960 Walkin' the Strings (Acoustic instrumentals and songs recorded in the 1940s and 50s) 1962 Travis (Compilation of songs recorded in the 1940s and 50s) 1963 Songs of the Coal Mines 1964 Merle Travis and Joe Maphis 1967 The Best of Merle Travis Our Man from Kentucky Hilltop 1968 Strictly Guitar (Instrumental Album) Capitol 1969 Great Songs of the Delmore Brothers (with Johnny Bond) 1974 Merle's Boogie Woogie + 3 (with Ray Campi) Rollin' Rock The Atkins - Travis Traveling Show (with Chet Atkins) 30 RCA Victor 1976 Guitar Player Shasta 1979 Country Guitar Giants (with Joe Maphis) CMH The Merle Travis Story: 24 Greatest Hits 1980 Light Singin' and Heavy Pickin Guitar Standards 1981 Travis Pickin' ( Instrumental Album) 1982 Country Guitar Thunder (1977–1981) (with Joe Maphis) The Clayton McMichen Story (with Mac Wiseman) Farm and Home Hour (with Grandpa Jones) (includes the 1981 re-recording of the instrumental "Rose Time")
Posthumous albums
1986 Rough, Rowdy and Blue CMH Records 1991 Merle Travis Unreleased Radio Transcriptions 1944–1949 Country Routes 1994 Guitar Rags and a Too Fast Past (5 CD-Set) Bear Family 1995 Country Hoedown Shows & Films Country Routes Unissued Radio Shows (1944–1948) 1998 Turn Your Radio On (1944–1965) 2002 The Very Best of Merle Travis Varèse Sarabande 2003 Boogie Woogie Cowboy 1944–1956 Country Routes In Boston 1959 Rounder
Selected compilations and reissues
1990 The Best of Rhino 1993 Folk Songs of the Hills: Back Home/Songs of the Coalminers Bear Family 1995 Guitar Retrospective (instrumental compilation album) CMH 2000 The Best of Merle Travis: Sweet Temptation 1946–1953 Razor & Tie 2002 Sixteen Tons ASV Living Era 2003 Hot Pickin Proper Records 2005 I Am a Pilgrim Country Stars 2008 Merle Travis: The Definitive Collection Delta Leisure Group Legend of Merle Travis Country Stars
Notes on the recordings
Singles
1946 "Cincinnati Lou" 2 "No Vacancy" 3 "Divorce Me C.O.D." 1 "Missouri" 5 1947 "So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed" 1 "Sweet Temptation" 5 "Steel Guitar Rag" 4 "Three Times Seven" 4 "Fat Gal" 4 1948 "Merle's Boogie Woogie" 7 "Kentucky Means Paradise" 9 "Crazy Boogie" 11 1949 "What a Shame" 13 1955 "Wildwood Flower" (w/ Hank Thompson) 5 1966 "John Henry, Jr." 44
Music DVDs
Music films
2. Snader Transcriptions (1951)
Filmography
Film appearances as musical performer
Other film appearances
Original film music
An Acknowledged Influence
Bibliography
External links
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