Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, actor, and guitarist. Born in Rosewood, Kentucky, 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". 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 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.
He is considered by some to be one of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century.
Contents
Biography
Early years
Merle Travis was born and raised in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, which inspired many of his original songs; he specifically mentions Ebenezer, Kentucky, in "Dark as a Dungeon" on the 1947 album Folk Songs of the Hills. (This is the same coal-mining county mentioned in 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 for 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 Black country blues guitarist Arnold Shultz. 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 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) 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 rhythm-and-blues musicians Hank Ballard, Wynonie Harris, and most notably, James Brown.
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. Early hits such as "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, although they did not all showcase the guitar work for which Travis was renowned 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. 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. 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.
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 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. 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." 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.
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.
Late career
After a career dip during which he struggled to overcome alcohol and drug abuse, 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 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 country fiddler Clayton McMichen, with whom he had played in the 1930s.
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.
Legacy
Many of Travis' 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.
Discography
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.
Music DVDs
1994 Rare Performances 1946–1981, Vestapol (with 36-page booklet)
2002 Legends of Country Guitar, Vestapol (with Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and Mose Rager)
2003 More Rare Performances 1946–1981, Vestapol (with 21-page booklet)
2005 At Town Hall Party, Bear Family
Music films
1. Soundies Distributing Corporation (1946)
"Night Train to Memphis"
"Silver Spurs"
"Texas Home"
"Old Chisholm Trail"
"Catalogue Cowboy"
"Why'd I Fall for Abner" (with Carolina Cotton)
"No Vacancy" (with the Bronco Busters and Betty Devere)
2. Snader Transcriptions (1951)
"Spoonin' Moon" (with the Westerners and Judy Hayden)
"Too Much Sugar for a Dime" (with the Westerners and Judy Hayden)
"I'm a Natural Born Gamblin' Man" (with the Westerners)
"Petticoat Fever" (with the Westerners)
"Sweet Temptation" (with the Westerners)
"Nine Pound Hammer" (with acoustic guitar)
"Lost John" (with acoustic guitar)
"Muskrat" (with acoustic guitar)
"John Henry" (with acoustic guitar)
"Dark as a Dungeon" (with acoustic guitar)
Filmography
Film appearances as musical performer
1944: I'm from Arkansas - Musician (uncredited)
1944: The Old Texas Trail - Guitar and Banjo Player (uncredited) (U.K. title: Old Stagecoach Line)
1945: Montana Plains (Short) - Musician
1945: When the Bloom is on the Sage (Short) - Himself
1945: Why Did I Fall for Abner? (Short) - Vocalist-Lead Guitarist
1945 Texas Home (with Carolina Cotton) - Himself - Lead Singer-Guitarist
1946: Roaring Rangers (U.K. title False Hero) - Guitar Player Travis (with the Bronco Busters)
1946: Galloping Thunder (U.K. title On Boot Hill) - Guitar Player (with the Bronco Busters)
1946: Lone Star Moonlight (U.K. title Amongst the Thieves) - Himself (with the Merle Travis Trio)
1946: Old Chisholm Trail (Short) - Vocalist
1947: Silver Spurs (Short) - Vocalist-Guitarist
1951: Cyclone Fury - Guitar Player (with the Bronco Busters)
1953: From Here to Eternity - Sal Anderson (vocal with acoustic guitar)
1966: That Tennessee Beat - Larry Scofield
Other film appearances
1945: Beyond the Pecos - Slim Jones (uncredited)
1961: Door-to-Door Maniac (U.S. video title Last Blood) - Max
1962: The Night Rider (TV Short) - Kentucky
1982: Honkytonk Man - Texas Playboy No. 3 (final film role)
Original film music
Harlan County, USA (1976)
An Acknowledged Influence
Mose Rager. Mose's Blues - MOSE RAGER MOSE'S BLUES (1979)