M ERLE T RAVIS

T HE M AN W HO N AMED
by Mark Humphrey Id probably be looking at the rear end of a mule if it werent for Merle Travis. Chet Atkins Well, we liked good whiskey and we loved the pretty girls And we loved them guitarsme and Ol Merle. Joe Maphis, Me and Ol Merle, Silverhill Music (BMI) Now heres Kentuckys pride and joy, Mrs. Traviss little boy, Merle, and his ten little baby fingers on the Cannonball Rag. Cliffie Stone, introducing Travis on Harmony Homestead, KPAS, Pasadena, Oct. 31, 1945 Though its days were numbered, radio was still the supreme pop culture medium when World War II ended. It hosted everything from soaps to symphonies, but live hillbilly music was one of its top draws. The GIs who marched to war with heads full of Roy Acuff and Elton Britt (Theres a StarSpangled Banner Waving Somewhere) returned to find hillbilly music embroiled in a critical transition. They tuned in their radios to hear a revolution being waged in several forms of country musicwhat weve come to call bluegrass, Western Swing, and honky-tonk were plentiful on the air waves, and radiated a potent post-War infusion of energy. Today, the late 1940s is deemed by many as countrys Golden Age. It was a time of emerging legends (Hank Williams foremost), and of adroit, aggressive instrumentalists who set high standards to which subsequent generations have aspired. This was the era when Earl Scruggs redefined the role of the
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THE

S TYLE

Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

banjo in Bill Monroes Blue Grass Boys. Bob Wills was leading his most progressive group of Texas Playboys then, with the jazzy steel of Noel Boggs and bluesy guitar of Junior Barnard. And Willss band was only one element of an effervescent country talent pool on the West Coast. It was in such swift currents that a 27 year-old Kentucky songwriter/guitarist was singled out as something uniquely exciting, even in the fast company of Texas Playboys, singing cowboys, and sundry Hollywood dudebillies. With little seeming effort, Merle Travis delivered a dazzling new sound to country guitar, one with a distinctive signature. Weve come to call this style Travis picking for the man who shaped and popularized it. Looking back over more than three generations of country, folk, and rock guitar players, its hard to imagine our world without it. Honored extensively in his later years, Travis was relentlessly self-effacing about his achievements. He was not the father of Travis picking, he insisted. Credit for its paternity must be shared among Mose Rager, Ike Everly, and others in Western Kentucky who inspired him. As for popularizing the style, Travis allowed that he probably had, but lavished praise on his star pupils, Chet Atkins and Doc Watson among them. Their talents, he said, surely surpassed their masters. But even those who share Traviss self-deprecating assessment acknowledge that it was Travis who was the seminal catalyst for one of the American guitars significant stylistic leaps. Rank him among such prime movers as Lonnie Johnson in blues and Charlie Christian in jazz. Travis was of that stature. Remarkably, guitar playing was not his only talent. Travis had early aspirations of making a name as a cartoonist, though we can be grateful that his talent with a pencil was never rewarded sufficiently to detract from his genius on the guitar. He had considerably better luck as a songwriter, and little wonder. He wrote with wit and pathos of Kentucky's coal miners in songs which became folk-pop classics, Sixteen Tons and Dark As A Dungeon. His other well-known songs reflected honky-tonk humor (Divorce Me C.O.D.) and cornpone lust (Sweet Temptation, So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed). Though his songs about mining life have been likened to Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads, Travis had a knack for being topical in song without being overtly political, a pragmatic stance in the McCarthy era. He was also a gifted prose writer and scripted the Ride This Train segments of Johnny Cash's 1969-71 ABC TV series. In later years his autobiographi3

cal reflections were published everywhere from Guitar World to the scholarly John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly . Travis described himself to this writer as a fidgety person... I'm not a person that can sit down and sit still and stare... I'm a frustrated cartoonist, and I write a few little poems. That Travis channeled his nervous energy into creative outlets is to his enduring credit, and has surely been to our benefit. Merle Robert Travis first saw light in Rosewood, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, on November 29th, 1917. He was the youngest of William Robert and Laura Etta Travis's four children. Decades later, he recalled that his family was as well off as anyone else, but that, in Kentucky coal country, wasn't really saying much. In Chet Hagen's Country Legends In The Hall Of Fame (Thomas Nelson Publishers, Country Music Foundation Press, Nashville, 1982) , Travis wrote an autobiographical sketch with these recollections of childhood: The Rob Travis family never lived in a house with electricity, plumbing (inside or out), we never had a radio... Dad never owned a car in his life... there was no money and new clothes, bought on credit at Beech Creek Coal Company store, came seldom... our clothes were patched-over patches...But we stayed clean, and always had enough to eat except a few time during coal mine strikes... The first house I could remember living in was owned by a good old Negro couple that we called Uncle Rufus and Aunt Rowena Littlepage. They had been slaves before the War Between the States and were quite old when we moved to the old Littlepage place at the top of Browder Hill...It was in this old pre-Civil War house that I discovered music. Music arrived in the form of a 5-string banjo Rob Travis had gotten from his brother, John. I was fascinated by that as a kid, Travis told me in 1979. His father played such tunes as Ida Red and Going Across the Sea in the frailing style, and Merle soaked it up. While he learned the banjo, his brother, Taylor, made a flat-top guitar which he abandoned after landing a factory job in Indiana. I mustve been about 12, Merle recalled. Taylor wrote a letter back, and at the end of the letter he said, Give Merle the guitar. Then I took an interest in it. Taylor was nearly 20 years older than Merle and was already married. His wife May played fingerpicking style real good, Travis recalled. Old stuff she played like The Devil and Old Aunt Dinah, Lost John, and a whole lot of pretty stuff. While the Travis family lacked electricity, that didnt prevent them from owning a Westrola phonograph. We had a
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guitar solo record by Nick Lucas, Travis remembered. One side was called Picking the Guitar and the other side was called Teasing the Frets. And, boy, wed say, Cant that feller play? Wow! Me and my brother, John, wed play it over and over again. We also had one by Chris Bouchillon, you ever hear of him? He was a comedian and hed talk, and man, if he hadnt been talking people wouldve said what a great guitar player he was! Hed play fingerpicking style behind his talking stuff like Born In Hard Luck and it was fine, good picking. Aside from his sister-in-law and the family phonograph, Travis was soon exposed to plenty of fine, good picking via a thriving local guitar scene. We dont know why the guitar was the favorite instrument around Muhlenberg County but it had overshadowed the fiddle and banjo by the mid-1920s. Downhome, them ol boys just kinda knocked on a banjo and played after a fiddle, Ike Everly recalled at the Newport Folk Festival in 1969. All of em down there liked the guitar. It seemed to be all guitar players. Get out on the railroad crossing, you know, and thered be a bunch as big as this and youd just pass the thing [guitar] around, and every guy would try to outdo the next one, you know. Or seems as though he did. They all could play. And there were plenty of them. In his careful efforts to give credit where due, Travis often reeled off the names of unrecorded Kentucky guitarists of the 1930s who impressed him:

Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

Orval Raymer, Pip Stevens, Plucker English, Raymond McClellan (His eyes were crossed and his lower lip stuck out) , and Cundiff Durham, whose fingers were a foot long, Travis wrote in GUITAR WORLD . When he played Tiger Rag his hands looked like giant spiders. There were others too, and while we cant know how much of their music we would today call Travis picking, there was a strong current of fingerstyle guitar music running through Western Kentucky. One of its sources was an AfricanAmerican guitarist/fiddler, Arnold Shultz (1886-1931). Shultz made an enduring impression on Bill Monroe, who grew up north of Traviss territory in Rosine and vividly recalls seconding Shultz as a kid. Monroe credits Shultz as the source of many of the blues elements in bluegrass. Shultz appears to have played a similar role in the development of the guitar tradition around Muhlenberg County. About 1920 Shultz had met and impressed a young white man from the area, Kennedy Jones, wrote Charles K. Wolfe in Kentucky Country: Folk and Country Music of Kentucky (The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1982). Jones provided the link between Shultz and the players who had the greatest impact on Travis, such as Ike Everly and Mose Rager. He was the first guy I ever saw play with a thumbpick, Rager said of Jones. And so I just went crazy about that kind of pickin...he could pick a tune out on the guitar and itd sound like two guitars playin'. At a Newport Folk Festival workshop, Phil Everly said of this style, Dad learned it from a man named Kennedy Jones, who learned it from Arnold Shultz... If you look at the area around Drakesboro, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, your basic elements of country music come from a black man. Travis never saw Arnold Shultz, and only saw Kennedy Jones after his own career had begun. Of Everly and Rager he would say, Id like to hear something today that thrilled me like they did then...I thought that it was the prettiest music I had heard in my life. So I went home and found a piece of celluloid that was a comb originally, and I scraped it down thin enough to put in hot water and shape into a thumb pick. And I tried to play like they did. Everly demonstrated just how they played at the Newport Folk Festival, picking such tunes as Ike Everly Rag. What he played sounded not unlike the guitar ragtime of Gary Davis: there may be a stylistic kinship between Piedmont style guitar and what some historians tag western Kentucky choking style. Everly played the oldest tune I know, an unidentified melody picked straight, slow, and sentimental. Then, he said, if you wanted to dance... He picked up the pace of the tune, laying
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down the thumbed bass and melodic syncopation, demonstrating the clear bass-treble register separation which is a signature of Travis picking. Its a sound less suggestive of old-time banjo (one supposed inspiration for the style) than stride piano. In the same way that pianists learned to rag (syncopate) a familiar tune, Kentucky guitarists made square melodies danceable. And that may be the original raison detre of Travis picking: it was a means for a lone guitarist to produce dance music in the absence of other musicians. Travis was mastering the guitar style which would later bear his name during the Depression. Chronic unemployment left the men of Muhlenberg County plenty of time to hone their guitar skills. The picking parties ended, however, when Travis became one of the quarter million young men who went off to Civilian Conservation Corps camps in the wake of the New Deal legislation of 1933. I was paid thirty dollars a month, he recalled, but I had to send twenty-five back home, so I ended up making five dollars a month. But a Depression dollar went a long way, so Travis easily saved enough to buy a Gretsch (the first decent guitar I had) . With a new guitar and ample teen spirit, Travis bummed around the country for a few months with a mandolinist, Junior Rose. They sang and played for tips on street corners: I have a sick sister in Texas, Travis would lie. If any of you people would like to help us, just pitch any loose change you have in your pockets here in front of us. He stopped over in Evansville to visit his brother Taylor, and found himself playing for a live broadcast of one of those infamous They Shoot Horses, Dont They? dance marathons. I played Tiger Rag as much like Mose Rager as I could, Travis recalled. The performance led to a job for the 18-year-old on Evansville station WGBF as guitarist with the Knox County
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Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

Knockabouts. By 1936, radio was well established as the major means of communication and entertainment in America, and radio jobs, even ones where the only pay was the opportunity to plug gigs, were coveted. Traviss stint as a Knockabout was short-lived, but he returned to Evansville radio in another band, the Tennessee Tomcats. Then he hit the road with a legend of American fiddling, Clayton McMichen (1900-1970). For the better part of a year, Travis was a Georgia Wildcat. (In 1981, Travis recorded a tribute to his old boss, The Clayton McMichen Story, CMH-9028.) Travis was closing in on the big time, which meant exposure at a major radio station. Cincinnatis WLW had 50,000 watts and was heard across much of America. Travis arrived there as a Drifting Pioneer, one of a quartet garbed in buckskins and coonskin caps two decades before the Davy Crockett craze. The Pioneers sang gospel and played what Travis believed today would absolutely be called bluegrass music. We had a mandolin, fiddle, guitar and bass, and I played 5-string banjo now and then. This was from 1938 to 1941, something like that. A Drifting Pioneers Song Folio from WLW offered brief bios of the band members, and underlines the extent to which Traviss guitar style was already a draw: Merle (Pappy) Travis, youngest member of the group, sings bass in the quartet and is famous for his guitar playing, which he first learned in the hills of old Kentucky at Drakesboro. Traviss stint at WLW introduced him to other musicians who became lifelong friends and legends in their own right, notably the Delmore Brothers and Louis M. Grandpa Jones. In his autobiography, Everybodys Grandpa: Fifty Years Behind the Mike (with Charles K. Wolfe, the University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1984) , Jones wrote: Merle was rough-and-tumble in those days, and he and Red Phillips used to go out and get in fights just for the exercise of it. Sometimes theyd come in pretty banged up, but they would be able to do their show and pick as clean as ever. WLW took Travis picking to remote hamlets; Doc Watson, who grew up in Deep Gap, North Carolina, has often recalled onstage how he tried to apply Traviss style to the Delmore Brothers Deep River Blues. In his autobiography, Country Gentleman (with Bill Neely, Ballantine Books, New York, 1974), Chet Atkins wrote: I would pick up WLW and Merle about once a month when conditions were right...His guitar style was closer to that sound I had been searching for than anything I had ever heard. The clever way he played melody and rhythm at the same time
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knocked me over. I knew he was finger picking, but I didnt know how he was doing it...From Merle Travis I added a lot of songs to my repertoire. He certainly stimulated my imagination as to what could be done with a guitar. Working at a major radio station gave Travis the opportunity to refine his own playing, too. I used to listen to big bands, he recalled, and listen to that guy play those pretty chords. When I got on radio, wed do our country programs, and then Id slip in to where the big orchestras were playing and Id watch the staff guitarists reading that music and playing them chords! The orchestral chords and harmonic sophistication learned from radio staff guitarists added another dimension to the style Travis brought with him from Kentucky. December 7, 1941, the Day That Shall Live In Infamy, changed everyones life in America. Well-fed radio musicians were understandably not among the first to enlist to repel the Axis, though their day would come. Meanwhile, Travis, the Delmore Brothers, and Grandpa Jones were performing sacred songs on WLW as the Browns Ferry Four. We sang spirituals, gospel numbers, and hymns, Travis recalled. Spirituals got a little hard to find, but we found a source. We would go down in the black part of town on Central Avenue in Cincinnati and go to a used-record shop. Wed go to where it said Spirituals, and, man, they were there by the dozens, by the Golden Gate Quartet and other black quartets.

Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

Now the fellow who owned this [shop] Syd Nathan, was a little short man who had asthma and wore real thick glasses. We got acquainted with him. One day he said, Why dont you boys make your own records? We said, Well, there aint nobody asked us. He said, Well, Im asking you. Im going to start me a record company. I want you boys to record for me.' Fearing the wrath of WLW, with whom they were under exclusive contract, Travis and Jones became the Sheppard Brothers in a Dayton, Ohio recording studio in September, 1943. They recorded Youll Be Lonesome, Too and The Steppin Out Kind. The record (King 500) went nowhere, but is significant as the first release on Nathans King label, which figured prominently in the R&B, bluegrass, and country of the 1950s. Traviss first solo effort became the second King release. Though attributed to Bob McCarthy, there was no attempt to disguise his signature guitar. Thirty-six years after making his first record, Travis played a chipped, cracked copy of its A side for me. When Mussolini Laid His Pistol Down celebrated the demise of Il Duce in July, 1943. There was the unmistakable Travis guitar style, accompanying a much higher voice than Id ever heard from him! Bob McCarthy had a one-shot recording career and Merle Travis joined the Marines. His was a brief military stint (I wasnt no Sergeant York), and he returned to Cincinnati in the bitter winter of 1944. WLW welcomed Travis home, but he was restless and borrowed enough money for a train ticket to Los Angeles. There he found himself in the midst of one of the most active country music scenes in the nation and one with the lure of Hollywood films attached. Travis never said he went West with movies in mind, but he no doubt had seen the silver screens variously-talented crooning cowpokes and may have figured he could do that too. Travis did not star in any of the Forties oaters Hollywoods second-string studios delivered en masse, but he did whoop, shoot, ride down hills, and deliver the occasional line: Lets see what Nevadas got to say, uttered in a Ray Whitley epic was his first. The singing cowboy fraternity embraced Travis, and his friendship with the likes of Tex Ritter, Eddie Dean, Smiley Burnette, and Jimmy Wakely kept Travis steadily employed, sometimes on movie sets and more often on bandstands and radio soundstages. Cliffie Stone was perhaps his most important early L.A. ally, for Stone was an affable MC/bassist who enlisted Travis to perform on several L.A.-area radio showsHarmony Homestead, Dinner Bell Round Up, Hollywood Barn Dance, etc.
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He also apprised Capitol A&R man Lee Gillette of Traviss talents, and Capitol signed him as an artist in 1946. Traviss first release under his own name on a major label, Cincinnati Lou b/w No Vacancy, became a double-sided hit. And the hits, for a couple of years anyway, flew thick and fast from Travis.

Hank Thompson & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)

Ironically, his best remembered recordings from his commercial prime were flops which Travis produced with some reluctance. People got folk song happy for awhile, Travis recalled. Cliffie Stone said, We [Capitol] need you to make an album of folk songs. In those days, albums didnt mean anything; it was singles that sold. I said, Cliffie, Bradley Kincaid and Burl Ives have sung every folk song that I ever heard of. He said, Write some. I said, You dont write folk songs. He said, Well, write some that sound like folk songs. Travis wrote Sixteen Tons and Dark as a Dungeon for the eight-song Folk Songs of the Hills 78 album, which met with little commercial success in 1947. Its eventual impact is discussed at length in Archie Greens Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1972). While his first album bombed, Traviss singles (especially So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed) were among the most popular country records of 1947, the same year Travis wrote Capitols first million seller, Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette), for Tex Williams. He was 30 and in his creative
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prime, a Kentucky cowboy on a motorcycle whose wild side occasionally landed him in the drunk tank. But more often he was up to something interesting like designing a solid body electric guitar. Travis admired the sustain of steel guitars and reckoned it was because the steel guitar was solid. An announcer for L.A. area motorcycle races, Paul A. Bigsby, had made a beautiful steel guitar for Joaquin Murphy and Travis drew a guitar with a peghead showing all the pegs on one side and asked Bigsby to build one. A few weeks later Bigsby called, saying, Travis, Ive got that crazy looking guitar you wanted. It attracted a lot of admirers, including Leo Fender, who asked to borrow and copy it. Travis obliged, and the rest, they say, is history. The original Travis/Bigsby solid body is now in Nashvilles Country Music Hall of Fame Museum. At this time too, Travis was experimenting with multitracking, an innovation usually associated with Les Paul. I had a record released like that before Les did, Travis said. I learned how to do that by messing around with the old home recording machines. Id take the thing that turned the turntable off and that would make it turn slow. Id cut it slow and then play it back fast and it would sound sort of like Mickey Mouse. And I had a record released called Merles Boogie Woogie where I did that. The 1948 recording, a natural for the hillbilly boogie craze of the late Forties, included a line Travis got from Leadbelly. Me and Leadbelly and Tex Ritter once played for an affair, he recalled. They recorded us as we performed, and then auctioned off our records for a benefit. Leadbelly taught me a verse I used on one of my old records, one of the first multi-track recordings I guess was ever made. It went, Got a little gal with great big legs, walks like shes walkin on soft-boiled eggs. The flood of Forties hits turned to a trickle in the Fifties, though Travis remained active as a performer in Los Angeles. He was a fixture of early television country variety shows (All
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Frank Sinatra & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)

American Jubileeand Town Hall Party), and had a small but significant role as Sal Anderson singing Re-enlistment Blues in the classic 1953 film, From Here to Eternity. This was the era, too, of the Snader Telescriptions which comprise the lions share of this video. Travis remembered them in Recollections of Merle Travis: 1944-1955 (John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly, Vol. XV, No. 54, Summer 1979) . Mr. Snader figured, now that televisions here, folks will want to see the people who make records as well as hear them. He reasoned that a day would come when thered be some sort of jockey on TV playing music but they wouldnt call him a disc jockey. Hed probably be a film-jockey. For years transcriptions were played on the radio, so why not do the same thing with film? So that is how Snader Telescriptions came about. I made a good many of them. I done some alone, wherein Id walk on the scene and spout off a little bit about what I was going to pick and sing, then go to it. I also made a few with Judy Hayden [Traviss second wife]. They were fun. I still have a few of them. When I see the films I wonder if I was ever that young and foolish. Television liked Travis alright but loved the face of a man Travis had first met as a radio announcer, Tennessee Ernie Ford. By 1955, Fords face was familiar across America from his week-day half-hour show on NBC. It was there he introduced Jack Fas-cinatos arrangement of Sixteen Tons, and when he recorded it in September, he e f f e c t i v e l y changed Traviss life. (I owe my soul to Tennessee Ernie Ford, Travis ruefully sang in later years.) Fords Sixteen Tons had already rocketed to number one on Billboard pop charts by Thanksgiving, and by December 3rd the music trade marveled that Sixteen Tons was possibly the fastest rising platter to ever hit the charts. It had, in less than three months, sold over a million records. The song was more than a hitit was a sensation, and its author became a folk hero. Back home they dedicated a monument to Travis in
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Ernie Ford & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)

Ebenezer, Kentucky in 1956, engraved with the chorus of Sixteen Tons and an image of Travis with a guitar to his left and a miners pick and shovel to his right. His songwriting, his singing and his guitar playing, reads the inscription, have won the hearts of many and the respect of his fellow workers. Twentyseven years later, his ashes were scattered near this monument. The success of Sixteen Tons was a foreshock of the folk boom ushered in by the Kingston Trios Tom Dooley in 1958. Travis appeared at Carnegie Hall in 1962 on a bill with Flatt & Scruggs, but missed the opportunity to play much of a role in the 1960s urban folk revival. (The role to which he seemed best suited fell, by default, to Doc Watson.) Unreliability and tales of whisky and pills made bookings scarce and a 1963 album, Songs of the Coal Mines, shared both topicality and commercial obscurity with Folk Songs of the Hills without ever yielding another Sixteen Tons. Bob Kingsley, who today hosts the syndicated American Country Countdown radio show, toured with Travis in the mid-Sixties while Travis was attempting a comeback. Kingsleys job was to chauffeur Travis and keep him straight. He had a real problem believing how great he was, Kingsley recalls. He didn't believe it when people told him he was an innovator and one-of-a-kind. Thats what made him crazy. Craziness and creativity have never been strangers, and a mellowed Travis played a stronger elder statesman role in the 1970s. When the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band went to Nashville to record the influential Will the Circle Be Unbroken? album in 1971, Travis was among the honored elders enlisted to perform, along with Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, etc. The recordings underscored Traviss seminal role in country guitar, and brought him to an audience of baby boomers scarcely conceived in his commercial heyday. In 1975, he shared a Grammy with his star pupil, Chet Atkins, for The Atkins-Travis Traveling Show (the album won in the category, Best Country Instrumental Performance). Nashvilles hierarchy honored Travis with induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977, and the late Seventies brought Travis to a new label, CMH, for which he recorded extensively in his last years. Those years were spent in eastern Oklahoma, where the landscape turns lush and hilly as one moves towards the Arkansas Ozarks and its lake country. Merle Travis settled there in a wooden ranch house overlooking scenic Lake Tenkiller with his last wife, Dorothy. He suffered a heart attack at home and died in Tahlequa, Oklahoma, on October 20th, 1983.
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In the decade since his passing, his legacy as guitarist has been poorly served by CD reissues. Almost none of the classic guitar solos from Traviss 23-year-stint with Capitol are available on CD. Lets hope that changes. Meanwhile, guitarists neednt hesitate to apply the pause and rewind button when viewing this video. Theres a heap of hot licks here. And nonplayers can simply enjoy the avuncular personality of a multitalented Kentuckian who gifted Muhlenberg Countys best music on the world.

Notes by Mark Humphrey

Thanks to Mary Katherine Aldin for the Ike and Phil Everly material.

Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

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A N I NTERVIEW W ITH M ERLE T RAVIS

W ITH M ARK H UMPHREY J UNE 21, 1979

Photo by David Gahr

How did you come to record the collection of guitar solos called Walkin' The Strings? Now they had such a thing as fillers, and I went in to do some transcriptions, and Cliffie Stone was the producer. Now they call it producer, which is a weird name because thats the man who puts up the money and the directors the guy who tells you what to do. So Cliffie Stone was directing the session. Hed say, Play something that lasts 30 seconds. OK; when the clock went straight up Id just begin picking something, and when the 30 seconds was up Id quit. Now play one that lasts 45 seconds, and so forth and so on. So I played one Keep playing till you get tired so I played Ike Everlys Rag, one that Ike Everly used to play. But some of these transcriptions only lasted 15 seconds. A fellow named Joe Allison went to Capitol Records and said, You should release all those transcriptions on an album by Travis, and they did. And they made up names to the tunes one was called Louisville Clog, and one was called Pigmeat Stomp. And you had nothing to do with the names. No indeed. What year would this have been? I dont know. This was in the 40s when I recorded it, Im not sure when they released it. And this is the album called Walkin the Strings. Capitol, 1960 French Reissue, Path Marconi 1550801 1984 Yeah And thats kind of a rarity, isnt it?
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Well, it should be. (laughs) I didnt know this thing was released, and I was somewhere playing a show, and somebody came in, saying, Play Pigmeat Stomp. And I said, You got me there, I dont believe Ive ever heard of it. He said, Well you should, you recorded it! I said, Well, youre thinking of someone else. Maybe Chet Atkins, although Ive never heard Chet play it, and Im sure I never recorded Pigmeat Stomp. He said, You sure did! And I said, Well, now buddy, Id like to see a record of it. He said, Ive got it out in the car. (laughs) He brought in this album, and on it was a tune called Pigmeat Stomp. And if it was to save my life, I had no idea what it was. Ill bet this has thrown some curve balls to record researchers through the years, because Big Bill Broonzy recorded a tune in 1930 called Pigmeat Strut, and some folks have probably looked at a Travis discography and said, Aha! he got that from Big Bill Broonzy. (Laughs) I have no idea where they came up with those titles. I had no idea Big Bill Broonzy had a tune called Pigmeat Strut. Thats a new one on me. Did he record Louisville Clog? I dont think he did. Was this on electric guitar or acoustic guitar?

Thats the funny thing. The boys down at Capitol Records always seemed to get all screwed up in what they tried to do with me. Not one single tune on the Walking the Strings album had an electric guitar note on it. And on the cover was me sitting there just as big as life with an electric guitar. Now then, one time I got Curly Chalker and Carl Cottoner and Harold Hensley and Jimmy Pruett and a bunch of good musicians there in Hollywood and I went down to re-cut some of the old stuff Id done in the 1940s. This was in the 1960s. The title of the album was Travis. I didnt pick one note of acoustic guitar. There they put a picture of me with an acoustic flat-top round hole guitar leaning up against a rock. I declare, I believe that if Id made an album with me playing the clarinet, theyd have had me on the cover with a dulcimer.
Thats almost as bad as an album I have of bluesman Lightnin Hopkins that has a picture of Reverend Gary Davis on it. (Laughs) Maybe they should release one of mine and put Johnny Cashs picture on it. Among the things you are noted for is your design work on the first solid body electric guitar. How did that come about? This thing has backfired on me so many times! This is one of the things I told Chet Flippo about, the guy from Rolling Stone. You see, with a guitar like this (i.e., his Gibson Super 400), changing strings, you have to reach around, and I thought, Boy wouldnt it be nice if they made a neck with the keys all on one side? So I drew a picture of it. Now your recording machine (with the dials on top)
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is exactly how they should make an amplifier. They put the controls down below so that when you need to adjust your amplifier youve got to squat down and stick your rear end right towards the audience. They should put them on top. But Ive never been able to talk them into it. Well, with the guitar, I thought, Why not put the keys on one side? And if they have the electric pickups on it, why all this? (i.e., a reference to the full acoustic body of the Super 400) Paul Bigsby was a friend of mine who announced motorcycle races. He could build anything, he was a pattern maker at a factory. Hed built Joaquin Murphy, who played with Spade Cooley, a steel guitar. I said, Could you build me a guitar if Id draw you a picture of it? And Paul was a loud-talking braggart sort of guy. He said, I can build anything! So I drew him a picture. I said, Now I want this just a little over an inch thick and solid, because the pickups are what makes the noise anyhow. I drew him a picture of the neck and said, I want all the keys on one side. Well, he built it. It worked fine and it played good. Cliffie Stone was playing a dance at Placentia, CA four miles out of Fullerton. In those days, that meant four miles of oranges. Now its probably four miles of houses. Well, Leo Fender came out and said, How do you like that guitar? I said, Fine. I told him all the advantages you havent got all that bulk, you havent got so much to carry, when you want to tune it all the keys are right there handy, you dont have to reach under to get some. He said, Could I borrow it for a week and build one like it? I said, Sure. So he took it, and the next week he brought one out like it, and it was just
Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

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as good, although mine was built out of Birds Eye Maple, and he hadnt gone to that much trouble. Three or four fellows went to Bigsby and said, I want one of those solid-body guitars with all the keys on one side like Travis has got. Well after three or four, Bigsby said, Look, I aint got time to mess with those things. If you want one of those silly things, go out to Fullerton, Leo Fender will build you one. And they go out there, and Leo would build them one. He built them one hundred, he built them one thousand, he built them one million, and he built a big factory (laughs). He revolutionized the guitar. Naturally, somebody had to design it, even if it was an idiot like me. I told this story to Chet Flippo and he would go out to the Fender factory, asked some of the boys, and they said, Travis never played a solid-body guitar in his life. The Vice-President of the Fender Co., Forrest White, saw the article in Rolling Stone and he sent me a picture of me and steel guitarist Speedy West and Paul Bigsby sitting out in my backyard, and me with this guitar. The picture was taken two days after it was built. And Ive got a garage full of pictures of me playing this thing long before the Fender guitar was ever built. Let me say this about Fender guitars theyre fine precision built instruments, and I love em. Theyre great. Ive learned not to do this, but I have walked up to some young fellow and said, How do you like your Fender guitar? Hed say, Oh, I like it. Id say, I dont blame you, its good. By the way, I designed that guitar. And theyll look at me like I had smallpox, and walk away. I can imagine them saying, You know some old character came in here; he was a little off his rocker, he thought hed designed the Fender guitar. I guess they think it grew out of the ground that way. I dont think they think anybody designed it. You didnt try to patent it or do anything like that at the time? Theres nothing to patent. You couldnt patent a design. Like that drinking glass that you have there. You can make a glass any way you want to; its already been invented. As far as solid-body guitars, the solid-body steel guitars gave me the idea for mine. Steel guitars have so much more sustain; you pick them and they just keep on sounding. And I thought, Why dont they build regular guitars solid? And the keys all on one side because I was lazy. I think its unhandy to have to reach under here. This wouldve been around 1947? Probably so. You had something to do with the Bigsby bar also. Yeah. I had the first one ever built, but now a good friend of mine in Los Angeles, Tom Bresh, has it. This one on my Super 400 is probably one of the last ones ever built. He only built three of
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these with the long handles two for me and one for Hank Thompson. This one was all dolled up (theres some fancy engraving on it) by a gunsmith, Dick Allen. I had a Vibrola bar and Chet Atkins had one, made by the Gibson company. They worked up and down (parallel), just the opposite of the way the Bigsby bar does (horizontal). I like the effect, you got a good vibrato, but they pulled the strings out of tune. So I griped to Bigsby, I said, You say you can fix anything. Can you fix this thing so it wont pull the strings out of tune? Absolutely! Well he took it and worked on it, so I put it back on my guitar and it still pulled the strings out of tune. He tried it a couple of times, and finally said, The way that things designed, you cant fix it to where it wont pull the strings out of tune. I said, Why dont you build one? He said, I could build one that would never pull the strings out of tune. I said, You cant do it. He said, By George, Ill show you. Well, in about a week he came up with the one Tom Bresh has now. And it does not pull the strings out of tune. He said he sets the strings on a needle valve in there. They sit on a thing the size of a needle inside there. The first solid-body is in the Country Music Hall of Fame now. Yeah. It has quite a bit of decoration. Was all that your design? Yeah, I thought that would look pretty. I always thought a banjo looked pretty because it had an armrest, and a fiddle looked pretty because it had a tailpiece. So that ones got an armrest and a tailpiece. I admire people who stick by their principles, and Ive heard people say, I would never play an electric instrument. I play an acoustic guitar because I dont want the people I play for to hear an amplified guitar. So I play an acoustic guitar, period. And then when they go to perform they will gripe their head off unless the hall has a $100,000 public address system in order that his listeners can hear his guitar amplified through that system. Why not have one like this (his electric Super 400) with the pickups on it and the amplifier sitting down by you so you can adjust it yourself? Its exactly the same thing. If you make a record, the man in the control room turns the controls up to make the guitarists instrument sound big and pretty and loud. Thats exactly why the pickups are put on here. This is carrying the microphone on your guitar instead of sitting in front of it. The acoustic guitar purists all mean well, but they havent stopped to think, Now wait this is a guitar with the microphone under the strings instead of out in front of it. So you dont change your style at all playing acoustic or electric guitar? No.
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I wanted to ask you about that beautiful Guild hanging on the wall. Ive wondered about that since I saw it on the cover of the album, The Best of Merle Travis. Is that another one you designed? Yeah. I was playing that solid-body for awhile, and the Gibson company asked me, What could we do to get you to go back to playing a Gibson? Of course Id started out playing a Gibson as soon as I had enough money to get one. I said, if youll build me a Super-400 the way I design it, Ill play it. They said, Well do it. So I drew a picture of a Super-400, I put a star up here, I put my name on the neck, I dolled it up, and said, The Gibson, Special. So they built it for me, and its worked pretty well. Ive got 2 or 3 of these things. The same story with Guild. They said, What can we get you to do to play a Gretsch? I said, Ill do it if youll build one exactly as I draw it. I had some ideas, and its not bad. I said, I want you to carve the top out of a one inch piece of wood, but leave the inside uncarved. Leave it flat inside. So that guitar is arched on top but its an inch thick under the bridge. And the back, too. I drew the whole thing the red checkers around, I got that idea from a guitar Gene Autry used in pictures years ago. The sound hole is copied from an old-time Gibson the oval sound hole. And I designed that top up there, the curlicue. And you designed the armrest and the pickguard also. Yeah, I thought it made it look better. Why such thick wood? For sustain. I wanted it to sound like a solid-body but look otherwise. The reason I dont use it more is because the neck was a little too broad, and I took it to a friend and said, Make the neck a little smaller. And he cut it down to where its like a ukulele neck. (laughs) Would you tell me about your acoustic guitar? Its a D-28 Martin with a Bigsby neck. How old is the Martin body? I bought it probably in 1939. I had Bigsby put that neck on just
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Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

after he made that first solid-body guitar. I liked the neck so well, the size and everything, that I had him put one on the Martin. Now the neck on the Gibson is exactly the size of the Bigsby neck. Thats not a regular Gibson neck. Its smaller and thinner. So youve been playing the body of that acoustic guitar for about 40 years, and the neck for about 30. Yeah. Have you had to modify it at all in recent years? I put a new bridge on it not long ago. Have you had to change the frets? No, I havent. What gauge strings do you use? I just go in and say, Give me a set of Gibson electric and a set of Martin acoustic, and put them on and forget about it. When I open up the package and look at those numbers, I have no idea what they all mean. So you dont bother about light gauge or medium gauge. No, I dont. Did you ever use flat-wound strings? Yeah, but I never had much luck with them because they died too quick. After about one day theyd just go, thump, thump. Maybe theyve improved, I havent tried them in a long time. Do you change your strings very often? Not very often. If Im recording a guitar solo I like to have strings that are fairly new because you get a better ring from them. Otherwise, I dont change them too often. What kind of thumbpick are you using? These little old thin thumbpicks are hard to find, but if I can find them I use them. I have no idea who makes them. Youll find me awfully dumb when you ask me what gauge these guitar strings are. I use a Music Man amplifier, and Ill have young fellows come up and say, Hey, I like your amplifier. I like the way that amplifier sounds. How many amps has it got? And I dont know what to say. I say, You know, I never have counted them. Theyll say, Well, how many watts does it have? I say, I dont know. I never sat down and counted em. It might be 3 or 4 or 100. I have no idea how many watts or amps. If it sounds good and loud and clear, thats good. Most people think you pick with just the thumb and first finger, but sometimes you use two fingers. Sometimes I use three. Like in Caravan. (Demonstrates, playing a treble roll over the top three strings with three fingers.) Even in Wildwood Flower. (Demonstrates again.) Years ago, I used just thumb and index finger. In that style you can get a choke sound or you can play with open strings. How did you develop that choking effect?
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Mose Rager played like that. (Demonstrates with a blues.) On the album I did with Joe Maphis for CMH, we recorded Ike Everlys Rag. We told the company president that the song is owned by Margaret Everly, Ikes widow. We also recorded one called Mose Ragers Blues, and the royalties will go to Mose. Thats the least we could do. (The album referred to is Country Guitar Giants (CMH9017).) You recorded something where you put a high E string on for the third string and tuned that up an octave above normal pitch for the third string G. Right. It was like the top E string fretted at the third fret. I recorded with this string setup on Beer Barrel Polka and Black Diamond Blues. On some of your guitar solos, on the records of Fat Gal, Sweet Temptation and Follow Thru, the guitar breaks sound very high. Were you using any kind of unusual string setup? No, I might have been using a capo. Did you ever play in alternative tunings? Yes, Ive played some in open G. Thats a good tuning for blues. When I was a kid I used to pick some in that tuning, fretting with a bottle. Thats no big deal. Everybodys done that. Then theres one where you tune the fifth string (A) up to B. This is very good for playing rich orchestral-jazz type chords. What was your first electric guitar? It was a Gibson L-10 with a DeArmond pickup. The first time I used it on radio was on a show called Plantation Party, a network show. This wouldve been in 1939 or 40. It was sponsored by Bugler cigarette tobacco. I recently heard a tape of some stuff you had recorded when you were using multi-tracks and speeding up the tape, the sort of thing Ive heard Les Paul do. Yeah. I had a record released like that before Les did. I learned how to do that by messing with the old home recording machines.
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Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis

Id take the thing that turned the turntable off and would make it turn slow. Id cut it slow and then play it back fast, and it would sound sort of like Mickey Mouse. And I had a record released called Merles Boogie Woogie where I did that. Let me say this about Les Paul. I dont think anybody will ever top him on doing multi-tracks, because he had in his head just exactly how he wanted the bass, the rhythm, every fill, every harmony part, every obbligato, every bit of it from start to finish. He perfected it. I might have been the first one to butcher a little old tune on record, but Les Paul was the best. In your left-hand style you play with your thumb a lot and you dont play barre chords. Oh, sure, (Proceeds to play some complex barre chords.) But mostly I dont. Mostly I just grab a guitar neck like a hoe handle. Would you like to say anything about how you developed some of your famous guitar solos Walking the Strings, Cannonball Rag and Blue Smoke, for instance? Walking the Strings and Cannonball Rag are actually dolledup versions of a couple of little old tunes that Ike and Mose used to play. (Plays the breakneck intro of Walking the Strings.) Simplest thing in the world to play. For you, maybe. Blue Smoke (plays), now theres one where you use three fingers. Cannonball Rag is a round robin tune. Theres a million tunes like that. What do you mean by round robin? A round robin chord progression, like Salty Dog. (Plays a C/ A7/D7/G/C chord progression.) Thats a round robin. Youve been using a fingerpick on the index finger some while demonstrating this. I havent seen you use one before. Before this contract with CMH Records I was to do an album in Nashville with Shot Jackson. I was there, and my index fingernail broke off to the quick. Without that, I cant play anything at all. Not that I pick with the fingernail, but I use it as a brace. So Shot Jackson said, Why dont you try a steel pick? I put it on and said Good Lord, I couldnt play with one of those things if it was to save my life. He said, If you practised you probably could. Then you wouldnt have to worry about your fingernails. So we called and cancelled the session, because I couldnt play without that fingernail. But Shot said, Take that pick anyhow. Ive been messing with it, and you get real good sound out of it. (Plays.) Its much softer without the pick. For playing some tunes its a lot better. I never used one in my life till Shot Jackson gave me this one last fall. Its the only one Ive ever owned. On some of your tunes you play a lot with the top E string open, and this
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reminds me somewhat of banjo playing. Well, of course, the banjo is the first instrument I played. I talked to Sonny Osborne the other day and he said, You playing any drop-thumb these days? I said, What in the world is that? He laughed and said, Youll find out. Do you have any favorite solos among your instrumentals? No, I dont. I like to play slow pieces better than fast pieces. I like to put a rhythm and bass track on tape and sit and play with them, because every time youll play it different. I do that as a pastime a lot. What about practice? Im sure through the years youve been so busy working that you havent had to worry about it, but I guess at some point you did. I dont think I ever said, I think Ill sit down and practice, because if I wasnt in the mood there wouldnt be a bit of use in practicing. Now since Ive been talking to you Ive been sitting here picking on the guitar because Im a fidgety person. Im like Johnny Cash, Im not a person that can sit down and sit still and stare. If you werent here Id be out there cutting grass or in there helping Dorothy can beans. Im always busy. So when Im doing nothing else I play. When Im sitting watching TV I play every commercial and everything with them. Without even knowing it, I do it. I just feel better with a guitar in my hands. Thats about all the practice I do. The jazzy chords that you play, those were things you just worked out? I guess so. I never took any lessons. The nearest I ever came to taking lessons was bugging Alton Delmore. I said, What about those shape notes? And I learned that Do is the tonic note, it doesnt matter what key youre in. The Sons of the Pioneers, when theyre talking about harmony, will say, Youre supposed to hit a La there. Which is a lot easier than going to a piano or guitar and finding out what key its in. You know that La is the sixth note. When you are rehearsing singing, it makes it so much easier if everyone knows shape notes. When did you first hear Chet Atkins? Hey! Now youve brought up something. I dont think that there will ever be a chance for any other guitar player to be as great as Chet. He was born at a time when turn-of-the-century music, the songs of the 20s and big bands were still around and not laughed at. He knows it all, from the music to commercial stuff to what was recorded this afternoon in Nashville. He is the greatest guitar player that has ever been on this earth, in my opinion. I dont think there will ever be anyone greater. And thats what I think of Chet Atkins. What was your reaction when you first heard him? Chet had written me a letter or two and I had met him in
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Nashville. He told me he listened to me on the radio from Cincinnati. He said, I try to play the guitar like you. The first time I heard him really turn loose was in about 1945. Id been out of the Marine Corps a short while and I was going back to Cincinnati to visit friends. It was a cold morning; we did our shows early in the morning, before daylight in the winter time. Well, Chet Atkins was on the radio at the time on WLW in Cincinnati. And I was listening to the radio and the announcer said, Now well have a guitar solo from Chet Atkins. He started playing, and I pulled the car over it was snowing like everything and sat there and listened to him, and I thought, Wow! Chet honored me by naming his daughter after me. Doc Watson honored me by naming his son after me. One day I sat down, looking through letters, and found 43 people had named their children after me. And I have the worst name in the world! They get Merle mixed up with Earl and Pearl and Burl, and Travis mixed up with Davis and Traveler. Still, theres a lot of youngsters, because of me in my stupidity, named Merle and lots named Travis. When you made the album with Chet a few years ago, was that something youd both planned to do for a long time? Wed talked about it for many years, and Id been tied up with Capitol and of course Chets a big man at RCA. Wed talk about how much fun it would be to make an album together. When we finally made it, I think both of us couldve done a lot better picking than we did, because we were visiting so much and having fun. We cut half of it in Nashville and half in Hollywood. Jerry Reed was in the control room. As they say, he was producing most of it. Chet was playing some harmonics, and some of them werent sounding right. Jerry calls everybody son. He hollered through there at Chet, who is his boss at RCA, Son, when you hit them harmonics, just brush em, son, brush em. Chet looked over at me and grinned, he said
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Chet Atkins & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)

(imitates Atkins voice), OK, son, Ill just brush em. You know Chet has a beautiful East Tennessee accent. I imitate Chet, and Tom Bresh imitates me. You played some nice harmonics on your recording of Bicycle Built for Two. Now Chet, hes got the world skinned on that. He can hit a chord thats half harmonics. Bicycle Built For Two was a multitrack recording. Whats the trick to harmonics? Well, you pick with the thumb and damp with the first finger 12 frets below the note youre fretting (plays some chords in harmonics). Chet, he plays harmonics all over the place half chords and half harmonics, as well as arpeggios in harmonics. Is that a two-dollar word? (Demonstrates use of harmonics in playing Dance of the Golden Rod.) The more you play harmonics, the easier it is to play. Is that a tune you learned from a French harp player? No, I made up Dance of the Golden Rod. Goodbye My Bluebell is the one I learned from French harp player Paul McCormack. What do you think of Jerry Reed as a picker? Let me quote Chet Atkins on him. Chet said, You know, youll get to thinking youre a pretty good guitar picker, and then somebody like Jerry Reed will come into town and cut you to ribbons. Thats what he said to me one night, when he called and said, I want you to come over to the house and listen to Jerry Reed play. I said, Does he play pretty good? And thats what he told me. Jerrys fantastic. Have you worked with Doc Watson since you played at Winfield, Kansas in 1976? I worked with him in Santa Barbara, California. Im not sure when that was. I wish I had more time to be around Doc, because I was thrilled to death to meet him. When we made Will The Circle Be Unbroken? I walked in and recognized Doc and went over to talk to him. Ive got a gold record over there of Will The Circle Be Unbroken? Ive got six gold records upstairs. I hope William McEuen doesnt read this, but Ive got two copies of the album, and Ive never listened to all of it, so I dont know exactly what I said to Doc. But anyway, I walked back into the control room and Earl Scruggs said, Do you know they were recording you guys? I said, What? He said, They had the tape running when you were talking. I walked over to the engineer and he said, Ah, we might not use it. And later somebody came up to me and asked me about that conversation: Was that real or a put-on? So Ill have to dig that out and listen to it sometime.
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It was great to hear the two of you together at Winfield. We laughed about that later. Three polar bears got up and left, said, Im going back to the North Pole where its a little warmer. Me and Doc Watson were sitting there just about to freeze. Remember how cold it was? Stuart Mossman took me out to his guitar factory while I was there and gave me that beautiful guitar there. Its a shame that hes not selling them on every street corner because its one of the finest guitars Ive ever seen. Theyre dandies. The best part of the performance to my ears was when the two of you were trading off licks during Milkcow Blues. Then you started playing some beautiful sock chord rhythm behind Doc which was a great surprise, because Id never heard you play that style before. I never really got to do the stuff that I wanted to do with the guitar on Capitol. I did one album in Nashville called Strictly Guitar that I was very disappointed in. That albums terrible. One, a very brilliant engineer in Hollywood twisted the knobs and thats called The Merle Travis Guitar. That one Im not too ashamed of. The rest of the stuff sort of embarrasses me. Most people in this business have copies of everything theyve ever recorded. I dont have any of mine. But Martin Haerle, president of CMH Records, has given me a free hand in the recordings Im doing now. Hes said, Whatever you want to record, record it, and record it your way. Ive recorded 30 tunes with Joe Maphis. The album should be out any day. The cover-picture was taken on a mountain top in New Mexico, with snow-topped mountains in the background. So the scenerys pretty, whether me and Joe are or not (laughs). The album with Joe is all instrumental. (This was the set Country Music Giants (CMH9017) referred to earlier.) And I have another album coming out where I do some songs (The Merle Travis Story (CMH-9018)). Ive re-recorded a bunch of the old tunes. Alex Brashear, who played trumpet with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, was on that session. Alex sent me a card saying Thank you for having me on your session. Thats the first time any musician has done that. Another former Playboy, Johnny Gimble, was on there, too. He called the man who owns the record company and said, Hey, when are we going to do another session? We had a big time, you know. Steel guitarist Herb Remington was on there also. Curley Hollingsworth was the piano player, and two super pickers from Nashville, Buddy Harmon played drums and Billy Linneman played bass. The album with Maphis is done on electric guitars. On the other one I play some acoustic guitar. I did I Am A Pilgrim and Bluebell, Re-Enlistment Blues and a bunch of stuff on acoustic. How long does it take to make an album like that?
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When I worked with other record companies, they would say, Were going to do a session, and it will be three hours. We expect you to do four tunes in three hours. And most of the recordings Ive done have been hurry up affairs, because wed have three hours and the union says that in that period were allowed to do four sides. I dont care if the image in Nashville is that they take it easy back there. My foot, they dont! When you listen to a playback and its a take, every musician will run to the telephone to call and see where his next session is. Thats all right, but its not easy-going. The only easy-going recording Ive ever done was with Hank Thompson, who produced his own records. He put up the money. His albums were fun to do. But outside of that, Ive never enjoyed recording except for some of the early stuff with the boys at Capitol, Cliffie Stone and Lee Gillette. But working with Martin Haerle at CMH has been enjoyable, because we were able to take our time. Human nature being what it is, when they told us Take all the time in the world and do it the

Joe Maphis & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)

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way you want it done, me and Joe Maphis cut 30 tunes in about 2 1/2 days, which is unheard of. But thats the way we wanted them to sound. When I went down to cut these vocals So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed, Sweet Temptation and some of the other old songs I recorded 24 sides in two days, which you could never believe could be done. But they suit me. "So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed" was that an expression before you wrote the song? That was the trademark for Lucky Strike cigarettes. They sponsored a lot of radio shows and their slogan was Buy Lucky Strikes. Theyre so round, so firm, so fully packed. Cliffie Stone came to me and said, Eddie Kirks been trying to write a song. Hes got a great idea, hes going to write a song, So round, so firm, so fully packed, thats my gal. I said, Wait a minute, whats that cigarette company going to say? He said, They cant copyright that. He said, Write a song. So on the sheet music it says by Cliffie Stone, Eddie Kirk, and Merle Travis. Every songwriter in Nashville, including me, is waiting for somebody to sneeze and theyll write a song called Gesundheit! Fifteen of em will have a song called Gesundheit! that theyre peddling the next day. I was with a music publisher, and I lived way out past Madison in the suburbs of Nashville. There was a church that had a marquee, and they always had some sage saying on it. I left Nashville one day, I passed the church, and up there on the marquee it said Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Wow, I said, what a great song title! Man, I went home and started writing last lines (laughs). So I came up with a song called Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life. And the next morning early I rushed down to my publisher, Tree Publishing Company. I said, Ive got a terrific idea for a song! Its all written here it is. Now a lot of hillbillies lived out in that section besides me, and the guy said, Yeah, about 15 songs have come in this morning titled Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life, So after I fainted, I walked on out. Let me bring your career up to date. You moved to Nashville in 1966, and among other things you were a scriptwriter for the Johnny Cash TV series there. Then you moved back to the West Coast for a while, and then came here to eastern Oklahoma. Thats right. How have your audiences changed? Youve played concerts all over the world. I would guess that one difference would be that you were playing a lot of dances in the 40s. In the 40s, yes. With the Tennessee Tomcats and the Knox County Knockabouts, the first groups I played with, we played very few dances because we didnt have amplified instruments. But from
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then on 'till after World War II, man, we wouldnt think about playing dances or honkytonks. Oh, no! Thats for the guy who cant get a job on the radio. And I was always lucky enough to have a job on the radio. I wasnt used to that. But after the War, in order to eat, I learned that people liked to get together and dance and hear upbeat tunes that got tagged Western Swing. But I havent found a heck of a lot of difference in the reaction of the audiences at all. The first date I ever played with Clayton McMichen, they were lined up for blocks to get into the biggest auditorium in Columbus, Ohio. They were lined up like that for two shows. It was a country show, with Clayton McMichen, the Delmore Brothers, Cowboy Copas, Natchez the Indian and a few others. Working with Clayton McMichen, Ive found that his pet gripe has become one of mine. And Mark, I want you to remember this. A reporter would come up after the show and say, Mr. McMichen, may I have an interview? Why, sure. The reporter would ask, Why do you think country music is getting so popular? And McMichen would hit the ceiling. Because, by God, me and Gid Tanner and the Skillet-Lickers sold a million records of Corn Licker Still In Georgia is one reason. Another reason is that all over the United States are hillbillies and country acts on radio, and people are listening to it. They sell a lot more overalls than they do tuxedos, and thats another reason. McMichen was Irish, and hed get real mad. Now maybe tomorrow Ill go out and some fellow will come up and say, Mr. Travis, may I have an interview? Yes. And theyll ask, Why do you think country music has suddenly gotten so popular? And Ill think back to 40 years ago when Clayton McMichen got so mad about that. There has never been a time when country music was not popular. Today there are more people, more auditoriums, more places to play, and television, but it hasnt become any more popular. People still like to wear denims, checkered shirts, comfortable shoes, and listen to things that they dont have to wear a tuxedo to hear. Only stuffed shirts would do that. And even the folks who go to the tuxedo concerts probably laugh about it when they get home, change their clothes and go down to the honky-tonk to hear Arkansas Joe & His Hog Scrapers. One thing saddens me a little bit. A lot of people who claim to be playing country music are really not. I dont know what country some of thats from. Theyll say, Im going to sing you a song, and heres 25 fiddlers, four cello players, five bass players, 14 French horn players and a whole section of reeds. I dont think thats country music. I dont hardly believe that exists in any country. Would you have any words of advice for young musicians trying to start in the business? I think Id just say, keep pickin, and if you have it, somebodys
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going to discover it. Youre not going to wind up working down at the corner shoe store if you have the talent of a Les Paul or a Chet Atkins or Barbara Mandrell or Larry Gatlin. I mention these two young people because theyre very much on the scene today. I listen to the old Sons of the Pioneers and I listen to the beautiful voice of Bob Nolan who sang so true and right on the key, and I wonder, Why arent there more singers like that around today? There are Marty Robbins is one of them. Of course, hes in between the generations. And now young Larry Gatlin maybe he doesnt sing the same songs, but he has the same voice control and can sing just as well as anybody. And Barbara Mandrell has all the spark, spunk and personality of a Cousin Emmy or Minnie Pearl or any of the oldtimers had. So young people who look and say, I wonder why Larry Gatlin and Barbara Mandrell are doing so well? one reason is because theyre super-talented. In your song "Three Times Seven" you say, I just wont tame, Im gonna be the same till Im three times 21. Now that you are almost three times 21, would you care to make any comments summing up your career? Im just about there! (laughs) I also wrote something that was in a national magazine some time. I said that when Im 90 years old (and) some young fellow is playing the Galaxy Theater on the planet Mars, I hope Im the old guy sitting back there watching the door and listening to the show. Thats how much I love the business.

Our deepest thanks to Merlene and Cindy Travis for making this project possible. And to Archive Films, Wild Oak Pictures, The Country Music Foundation, Austin City Limits, and William F. Cooke Television for permission to use their material.

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MERLE TRAVIS
THE VIDEO COLLECTION / RARE PERFORMANCES 1946-1981
1. NO VACANCY Merle Travis & His Bronco Busters and Betty Devere (Soundies, 1946) 2. NINE POUND HAMMER Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Snader Transcription, 1951) 3. MUSRAT Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Snader Transcription, 1951) 4. IM A NATURAL BORN GAMBLIN MAN Merle Travis & His Westerners: Merle Travis, electric Bigsby guitar and vocals; Eddie Kirk, guitar; Speedy West, steel guitar; Jack Rogers, bass; Harold Hensley, fiddle; Alex Brashear or Danny Auguire, trumpet; Hank and Dorothy Thompson, card players. (Snader Transcription, 1951) 5. TOO MUCH SUGAR FOR A DIME Merle Travis & His Westerners. Vocal duet with Judy Hayden. Personnel same as track #4. (Snader Transcription, 1951) 6. SPOONIN MOON Merle Travis & His Westerners. Vocal duet with Judy Hayden. Personnel same as track #4 (Snader Transcription, 1951) 7. LOST JOHN Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Snader Transcription, 1951) 8. DARK AS A DUNGEON Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Snader Transcription, 1951) 9. PETTICOAT FEVER Merle Travis & His Westerners. Personnel same as track #4). (Snader Transcription, 1951) 10. SWEET TEMPTATION Merle Travis & His Westerners. Personnel same as track #4). (Snader Transcription, 1951) 11. JOHN HENRY Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Snader Transcription, 1951) 12. ILL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS Merle Travis, acoustic guitar (Ozark Jubilee, 1960) 13. MIDNIGHT SPECIAL Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Porter Wagoner Show, 1968) 14. CANNONBALL RAG Merle Travis, acoustic guitar (Porter Wagoner Show, 1970) 15. I AM A PILGRIM Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Porter Wagoner Show, 1971) 16. SIXTEEN TONS Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Austin City Limits, 1977) 17, SMOKE, SMOKE THAT CIGARETTE Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Austin City Limits, 1977) 18. BARBECUE RAG Merle Travis and Tom Bresh, acoustic guitars (Nashville Swing, 1981) 19. ILL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS Merle Travis and Tom Bresh, acoustic guitars (Nashville Swing, 1981)
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DISCOGRAPHY
The Best Of Merle Travis Rhino R2 70993 The Merle Travis Story CMH 9018 Merle Travis / Unreleased Radio Transcriptions 1944-1949 Country Routes RFD CD09 Merle Travis Collection Bear Records

Photo by David Gahr

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T HE G UITAR O F

M ERLE T RAVIS
Taught by Marcel Dadi
The guitar playing of Merle Travis has been a great influence on generations of guitarists. His playing combined blues, jazz ragtime and country music into a unique style that defined Country Fingerstyle Guitar and has become the standard for guitarists of yesterday and today. His playing featured an alternating bass technique with a strong melodic sense and a sophisticated feel for complex chord voicings. In this unique video lesson Marcel Dadi teaches seven of Merle's greatest instrumentals: F ULLER ' S B LUES , C ANE B REAK B LUES , B LUE B ELLS , S ATURDAY N IGHT S HUFFLE , M EM PHIS B LUES , C ANNON B ALL R AG and W ALKIN ' T HE S TRINGS . Also featured are five performances by Merle Travis from 1951 of N INE P OUND H AMMER , L OST J OHN , J OHN H ENRY , M US ' RAT and T OO M UCH S UGAR F OR A D IME . All the tunes are transcribed in a 60 page tab/music booklet which is included FREE. My first knowledge of Marcel Dadi came around 1973. Here was a guitarist who had figured out what it was all about. - Chet Atkins
GW V IDEO 918 $39.95 To order or to receive a free 64 page catalog, write: S TEFAN G ROSSMAN ' S G UITAR W ORKSHOP PO B OX 802, S PARTA , NJ 07871
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Merle Travis could write you a hit song and sing it; he could draw you a cartoon; he could play you a great guitar solo; or he could fix your watch... I'd probably be looking at the rear end of a mule if it weren't for Merle Travis... If you can say there is a certain style to my way of playing, then you have to recognize it as the influence of the guitar pickin' of Merle Travis. CHET ATKINS

This video captures 35 years of rare film and television performances by one of the all-time great American musicians. The music and guitar playing of Merle Travis has been a seminal influence on the American musical scene. There is not a fingerstyle guitarist whose playing has not been touched by Merle's style and technique. He wrote over 900 songs and some such as Sixteen Tons and Dark As A Dungeon are so familiar that today, they are thought of as "folk songs." A 36 page booklet is included with this video featuring an interview and biographical essay as well as many rare photographs of Merle Travis. TITLES INCLUDE: 1. NO VACANCY, 1946 2. NINE POUND HAMMER, 1951 3. MUS'RAT, 1951 4. I'M A NATURAL BORN GAMBLIN' MAN, 1951 5. TOO MUCH SUGAR FOR A DIME, 1951 6. SPOONIN' MOON, 1951 7. LOST JOHN, 1951 8. DARK AS A DUNGEON, 1951 9. PETTICOAT FEVER, 1951 10. SWEET TEMPTATION, 1951 11. JOHN HENRY, 1951 12. I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS, 1960 13. MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, 1968 14. CANNONBALL RAG, 1970 15. I AM A PILGRIM, 1971 16. SIXTEEN TONS, 1977 17, SMOKE, SMOKE THAT CIGARETTE, 1977 18. BARBECUE RAG, 1981 19. I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS, 1981
Back Photograph by David Gahr Duplicated in SP Mode/Real Time Duplication Running Time: 60 minutes Color and B&W Nationally distributed by Rounder Records, One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 2001 Vestapol Productions / A division of Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop Inc.

ISBN: 1-57940-902-4

VESTAPOL 13012

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