Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and guitarist born in Rosewood, Kentucky, United States.[1] His songs' lyrics were often about the lives and the economic exploitation of American coal miners. Among his many well-known songs and recordings are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues", "I am a Pilgrim" and "Dark as a Dungeon". However, it is 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, for which he is best known today. Travis picking is a syncopated style of guitar fingerpicking 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.[1]
Biography
Early years
Merle Travis was born and raised in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, a place which would inspire many of his original songs. (This is the same coal mining county mentioned in the John Prine's song "Paradise".) He became interested in the guitar early in life and first played one made by his brother. Travis reportedly saved his money to buy a guitar which he had window-shopped for some time.
Merle developed his guitar playing style out of the native, western Kentucky fingerpicking tradition. Among its early practitioners was the black country blues guitarist Arnold Shultz.[2] 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.[1] 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,[3] 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[4] 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 Louis Marshall "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)[5]Hank Penny and Joe Maphis, all of whom became lifelong friends.[6]
In 1943, he and Grandpa Jones 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 drafted during World War II, Travis enlisted in the US Marine Corps. His stint as a marine was very brief, and he returned to Cincinnati.[7] 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 has been called "possibly the best white gospel group ever."[8]
During this period, Travis appeared in several soundies,[9] an early form of music video intended for visual jukeboxes where customers could view as well as 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.[10] 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).
Career peak
Travis performed in stage shows and landed bit parts and singing roles in several B westerns. He recorded for small West Coast labels until 1946 when he signed with Hollywood-based Capitol Records.[1] Early hits like "Cincinnati Lou", "No Vacancy", "Divorce Me C.O.D.", "Sweet Temptation", "So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed", and "Three Times Seven", all his own compositions, gave him national prominence,[1] although they did not all showcase the guitar work that Travis was renowned for among his peers. His design for a solid body electric guitar, built for him by Paul Bigsby with a single row of tuners, is thought to have inspired his longtime pal Leo Fender's design of the famous Broadcaster in 1950.[1] The Travis-Bigsby guitar now resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum in Nashville.
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.[1] 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".[1]
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.[1]
Travis' string of 1940s' chart topping, honky tonk hits did not continue into the 1950s despite the reverence of friends like 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 magazine 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 uptempo single "Merle's Boogie Woogie" showed him working with multi-track 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.[1] 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 at 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.
Guitar style
Merle Travis is now acknowledged as one of the most influential American guitarists of the 20th century. His unique guitar style inspired many guitarists who followed, most notably Chet Atkins, who first heard Travis's radio broadcasts on Cincinnati's WLW Boone County Jamboree in 1939 while living with his father in rural Georgia. Among the many other guitarists influenced by Travis are Scotty Moore, Earl Hooker, Lonnie Mack, Doc Watson and Marcel Dadi. His son, Thom Bresh (1948–2022), had continued playing in Travis's style on a custom-made Langejans Dualette.
Although his early tutors were among the first to use the thumbpick 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.[12] 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 finger-picking to flatpicking in the midst of a number by gripping his thumbpick 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."[13] 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."[12] 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.[14][15]
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.[16]
Late career
After a career dip during which he struggled to overcome alcohol and drug abuse,[1] Travis put his career back on track in the 1970s. He appeared frequently on such country music TV shows as The Porter Wagoner Show, The Johnny Cash Show, Austin City Limits, Grand Old Country, and Nashville Swing; and he was featured on the 1972 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album Will the Circle Be Unbroken which introduced him to a new generation of roots music enthusiasts. His 1974 album of duets with Chet Atkins, The Atkins - Travis Traveling Show, won a Grammy award in the category "Best Country Instrumental", and a later album Travis Pickin' received another nomination. In 1976, he contributed to the musical score of the Academy Award-winning documentary Harlan County, USA. Toward the end of the 1970s, he signed a new contract with the Los-Angeles-based country music label CMH which launched one of the most prolific recording periods in his career. The many titles that followed included new guitar solo albums, duets with Joe Maphis, a blues album, and a double album tribute to the country fiddler Clayton McMichen, with whom he had played in the 1930s.
Merle Travis and his Gibson Super 400 at the Country Music Hall of Fame
Many of his original LP albums are now available on CD and his posthumous discography continues to grow due in large part to the efforts of independent labels. In 1993, Rounder Records released a live concert album Merle Travis in Boston, 1959 that shows Travis' singing and guitar work still at its peak. In 1994, Bear Family Records released a major retrospective of his work and career that includes much previously unreleased material, Guitar Rags and a Too Fast Past, a five CD box with an 80-page booklet authored by Rich Kienzle, who interviewed many of Travis' contemporaries. The Country Routes label has issued several discs of transcriptions of his radio broadcasts of the 1940s and 1950s. Vestapol and Bear Family released several DVDs recently that collect many of his music videos and television appearances. In 1996, he was an honoree of the two hour television special An Evening of Country Greats: A Hall of Fame Celebration and two classic Travis performances are included in the 2001 four part PBS television documentary American Roots Music which is available in CD and DVD formats.
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
The 1956 and 1968 Capitol albums are collections of unaccompanied electric guitar solos.
The 1957 Capitol LP album Back Home contains the 8 tracks of the 1947 box set Folk Songs of the Hills together with four previously unreleased tracks; the 1996 remastered CD reissue of this album, which reverts to the original title, adds a further unreleased track.
The 1960 Capitol album consists of unaccompanied acoustic guitar solos with a few vocals.
The Capitol albums Back Home, Walkin' the Strings, and The Best of Merle Travis were awarded the top (five-star) rankings in the Rolling Stone Record Guide
The 1974 album with Chet Atkins received a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental
The 1979 CMH CD consists of late-period recordings, tracked over two days in New Mexico four years before Travis' death
The 1981 LP Travis Pickin' is an acoustic solo guitar album
On the 1981 CMH LP Rough, Rowdy and Blue Travis accompanies himself on 12-string acoustic guitar
The 1991, 1995, 1998 and 2003 Country Routes CDs contain remastered radio transcriptions
The 1993 Bear Family double reissue contains remasterings of all tracks from Back Home (1957) and Songs of the Coalmines (1963)
The 1993 Bear Family 5-CD collection contains Capitol singles from 1946 to 1955 as well as early singles recorded for small labels such as King and Bel-Tone as well as comprehensive notes by country music historian and Travis authority Rich Kienzle.
The 2002 Varèse Sarabande CD is a collection of remastered mid-50s live recordings, taken from appearances on Jimmy Wakely's radio show
The 2003 Proper Records 2-CD album is a compilation of remastered recordings from 1943 to 1952 accompanied by a 15-page booklet listing recording dates and personnel. Includes rare Sheppard Brothers and Browns Ferry Four tracks.
The 2003 Rounder Records CD is a concert recording of songs accompanied on acoustic guitar
The 2008 2-CD Delta Leisure Group album is a digitally remastered compilation of recordings from the 1940s and 1950s.
^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"Archived September 30, 2018, at the Wayback Machine
^An interview with Merle Travis Yesteryear in Nashville, archived from the original on December 22, 2021, retrieved July 10, 2010
^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
Travis, Merle. 1976. Foreword to Country Roots: the Origins of Country Music by Douglas B. Green. New York : Hawthorn Books. ISBN0-8015-1781-8, ISBN0-8015-1778-8 pbk
Travis, Merle. 1979. "Recollections of Merle Travis: 1944–1955" (Parts 1 & 2). 1979. John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly, Vol. XV, Nos. 54 and 55, pp. 107–114; 135–143.
Travis, Merle. 1955. "The Saga of Sixteen Tons", United Mine Workers Journal, December 1, 1955.
"Merle Travis on Home Ground", Interview with Hedy West in Sing Out, Vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 20–26.
"Interview: Merle Travis Talking with Mark Humphrey" (Parts 1 to 4). 1981–1982. Old Time Music nos. 36–39, pp. 6–10; 20–24; 14–18; 22–25.
Kienzle, Rich, 2004. "Merle Travis". In Paul Kingsbury, ed., The Encyclopedia of Country Music: the Ultimate Guide to the Music. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-517608-7, ISBN0-19-517608-1
Gold, Jude. 2006. "The secrets of Travis picking: Thom Bresh passes on the lessons of his legendary father, Merle Travis," Guitar Player, April 1, 2006.
Dicaire, David. 2007. The First Generation of Country Music Stars: Biographies of 50 Artists Born Before 1940. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN0-7864-3021-4
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