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.
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.
