PDF Booklet - Stefan Grossman`s Guitar Workshop

M ERLE T RAVIS
T HE M AN W HO N AMED
THE
S TYLE
by Mark Humphrey
“I’d probably be looking at the rear end of a mule if
it weren’t for Merle Travis.” —Chet Atkins
“Well, we liked good whiskey and we loved the pretty girls
And we loved them guitars—me and Ol’ Merle.”
—Joe Maphis, “Me and Ol’ Merle,” Silverhill Music (BMI)
Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis
“Now here’s Kentucky’s pride and joy, Mrs. Travis’s 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 (“There’s 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 music—what we’ve 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 country’s
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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banjo in Bill Monroe’s 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 Wills’s 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. We’ve 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, it’s 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 master’s. But even
those who share Travis’s self-deprecating assessment acknowledge that it was Travis who was the seminal catalyst for one of
the American guitar’s 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 must’ve 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 didn’t 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, we’d say, ‘Can’t that feller play? Wow!’ Me and
my brother, John, we’d play it over and over again. We also had one
by Chris Bouchillon, you ever hear of him? He was a comedian and
he’d talk, and man, if he hadn’t been talking people would’ve said
what a great guitar player he was! He’d 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 don’t 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
there’d be a bunch as big as this and you’d 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
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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 can’t 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 Travis’s 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 it’d
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, “I’d 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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Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis
down the thumbed bass and melodic syncopation, demonstrating the clear bass-treble register separation which is a signature
of ‘Travis picking’. It’s 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 d’etre” 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, Don’t 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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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. Travis’s 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. Cincinnati’s 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
Travis’s 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.”
Travis’s 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, Everybody’s 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 they’d 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 Travis’s 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 didn’t 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, we’d do our country programs, and then I’d slip in to
where the big orchestras were playing and I’d 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 everyone’s 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 Brown’s 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. We’d 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
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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 don’t you boys make your own
records?’ We said, ‘Well, there ain’t nobody asked us.’ He said,
‘Well, I’m asking you. I’m 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 “You’ll Be Lonesome,
Too” and “The Steppin’ Out Kind.” The record (King 500) went
nowhere, but is significant as the first release on Nathan’s King
label, which figured prominently in the R&B, bluegrass, and
country of the 1950s. Travis’s 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 I’d 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 wasn’t
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
screen’s variously-talented crooning cowpokes and may have
figured he could do that too.
Travis did not star in any of the Forties ‘oaters’ Hollywood’s
second-string studios delivered en masse, but he did whoop,
shoot, ride down hills, and deliver the occasional line: “Let’s see
what Nevada’s 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 shows—Harmony
Homestead, Dinner Bell Round Up, Hollywood Barn Dance, etc.
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He also apprised Capitol A&R man Lee Gillette of Travis’s
talents, and Capitol signed him as an artist in 1946. Travis’s 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 didn’t 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 don’t 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 Green’s Only a
Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1972).
While his first album bombed, Travis’s singles (especially
“So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed”) were among the most
popular country records of 1947, the same year Travis wrote
Capitol’s first million seller, “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That
Cigarette),” for Tex Williams. He was 30 and in his creative
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Frank Sinatra & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)
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, I’ve 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 Nashville’s 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. I’d take the thing that turned the turntable off and that
would make it turn slow. I’d 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 ‘Merle’s 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
she’s 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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Ernie Ford & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)
American Jubilee”and “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 lion’s
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 television’s here, folks will want to see the people who make
records as well as hear them. He reasoned that a day would come
when there’d be some sort of ‘jockey’ on TV playing music but they
wouldn’t call him a disc jockey. He’d 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 I’d
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
[Travis’s 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, Ford’s
face was familiar
across America
from his week-day
half-hour show on
NBC. It was there
he introduced Jack
Fas-cinato’s arrangement of “Sixteen Tons,” and
when he recorded
it in September, he
e f f e c t i v e l y
changed Travis’s life. (“I owe my soul to Tennessee Ernie Ford,”
Travis ruefully sang in later years.) Ford’s “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 hit—it was a sensation, and its author became a folk hero.
Back home they dedicated a monument to Travis in
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Ebenezer, Kentucky in 1956, engraved with the chorus of
“Sixteen Tons” and an image of Travis with a guitar to his left
and a miner’s 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 Trio’s “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. Kingsley’s 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. That’s 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 Travis’s 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’). Nashville’s 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 Travis’s 23-year-stint with Capitol are available on CD. Let’s hope that changes. Meanwhile, guitarists
needn’t hesitate to apply the pause and rewind button when
viewing this video. There’s a heap of hot licks here. And nonplayers can simply enjoy the avuncular personality of a multitalented Kentuckian who gifted Muhlenberg County’s 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 that’s the man who puts
up the money and the director’s the guy who tells you what to do.
So Cliffie Stone was directing the session. He’d say, “Play something
that lasts 30 seconds.” OK; when the clock went straight up I’d just
begin picking something, and when the 30 seconds was up I’d 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
Everly’s 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 don’t know. This was in the ’40s when I recorded it, I’m not
sure when they released it.
And this is the album called “Walkin’ the Strings.” Capitol, 1960 French
Reissue, Pathé Marconi 1550801 1984
Yeah
And that’s kind of a rarity, isn’t it?
16
Well, it should be. (laughs) I didn’t 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
don’t believe I’ve ever heard of it.” He said, “Well you should, you
recorded it!” I said, “Well, you’re thinking of someone else. Maybe
Chet Atkins, although I’ve never heard Chet play it, and I’m sure I
never recorded “Pigmeat Stomp.” He said, “You sure did!” And I
said, “Well, now buddy, I’d like to see a record of it.” He said, “I’ve
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.
I’ll 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.”
That’s a new one on me. Did he record “Louisville Clog?”
I don’t think he did. Was this on electric guitar or acoustic guitar?
That’s 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 I’d
done in the 1940s. This was in the 1960s. The title of the album
was “Travis.” I didn’t 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 I’d
made an album with me playing the clarinet, they’d have had me
on the cover with a dulcimer.
That’s 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 Cash’s 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 wouldn’t 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)
17
is exactly how they should make an amplifier. They put the controls
down below so that when you need to adjust your amplifier you’ve
got to squat down and stick your rear end right towards the
audience. They should put them on top. But I’ve 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. He’d built
Joaquin Murphy, who played with Spade Cooley, a steel guitar. I
said, ‘Could you build me a guitar if I’d 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 it’s 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 haven’t got all that bulk, you haven’t got so
much to carry, when you want to tune it all the keys are right there
handy, you don’t 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
18
as good, although mine was built out of Bird’s Eye Maple, and he
hadn’t 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 ain’t 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 I’ve 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 — they’re fine precision
built instruments, and I love ‘em. They’re great. I’ve learned not to
do this, but I have walked up to some young fellow and said, “How
do you like your Fender guitar?” He’d say, “Oh, I like it.” I’d say, “I
don’t blame you, it’s good. By the way, I designed that guitar.” And
they’ll 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 he’d designed the Fender guitar.” I
guess they think it grew out of the ground that way. I don’t think
they think anybody designed it.
You didn’t try to patent it or do anything like that at the time?
There’s nothing to patent. You couldn’t patent a design. Like
that drinking glass that you have there. You can make a glass any
way you want to; it’s 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 don’t they build regular
guitars solid?’ And the keys all on one side because I was lazy. I
think it’s unhandy to have to reach under here.
This would’ve 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 (there’s 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 won’t 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 thing’s designed,
you can’t fix it to where it won’t pull the strings out of tune.” I said,
“Why don’t you build one?” He said, “I could build one that would
never pull the strings out of tune.” I said, “You can’t do it.” He said,
“By George, I’ll 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 one’s got an armrest and a
tailpiece.
I admire people who stick by their principles, and I’ve heard
people say, “I would never play an electric instrument. I play an
acoustic guitar because I don’t 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? It’s exactly the same thing. If you make a record,
the man in the control room turns the controls up to make the
guitarist’s instrument sound big and pretty and loud. That’s 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 haven’t stopped to think, “Now wait
— this is a guitar with the microphone under the strings instead of
out in front of it.”
So you don’t change your style at all playing acoustic or electric guitar?
No.
20
Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis
I wanted to ask you about that beautiful Guild hanging on the wall. I’ve
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 I’d started out playing a Gibson as
soon as I had enough money to get one. I said, “if you’ll build me
a Super-400 the way I design it, I’ll play it.” They said, “We’ll 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 it’s worked pretty well. I’ve 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, “I’ll
do it if you’ll build one
exactly as I draw it.” I
had some ideas, and it’s
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
it’s 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 don’t 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 it’s like a ukulele neck.
(laughs)
Would you tell me about your acoustic guitar?
It’s 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
21
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. That’s
not a regular Gibson neck. It’s smaller and thinner.
So you’ve 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 haven’t.
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 don’t bother about light gauge or medium gauge.
No, I don’t.
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 they’d just go, ‘thump, thump.’
Maybe they’ve improved, I haven’t tried them in a long time.
Do you change your strings very often?
Not very often. If I’m recording a guitar solo I like to have
strings that are fairly new because you get a better ring from them.
Otherwise, I don’t 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. You’ll find
me awfully dumb when you ask me what gauge these guitar strings
are. I use a Music Man amplifier, and I’ll 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 don’t know what to say.
I say, ‘You know, I never have counted them.’ They’ll say, “Well,
how many watts does it have?” I say, ‘I don’t 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, that’s 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?
22
Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis
Mose Rager played like that. (Demonstrates with a blues.) On
the album I did with Joe Maphis for CMH, we recorded “Ike Everly’s
Rag.” We told the company president that the song is owned by
Margaret Everly, Ike’s widow. We also recorded one called “Mose
Rager’s Blues,” and the royalties will go to Mose. That’s 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, I’ve played
some in open G. That’s a
good tuning for blues.
When I was a kid I used to
pick some in that tuning,
fretting with a bottle.
That’s no big deal.
Everybody’s done that.
Then there’s 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 would’ve 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 I’ve 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.
23
I’d take the thing that turned the turntable off and would make it
turn slow. I’d 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
“Merle’s Boogie Woogie” where I did that.
Let me say this about Les Paul. I don’t 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 don’t play
barre chords.
Oh, sure, (Proceeds to play some complex barre chords.) But
mostly I don’t. 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 there’s one where you use three
fingers. “Cannonball Rag” is a round robin tune. There’s 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.) That’s a round robin.
You’ve been using a fingerpick on the index finger some while
demonstrating this. I haven’t 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 can’t play anything at all. Not
that I pick with the fingernail, but I use it as a brace. So Shot Jackson
said, ‘Why don’t you try a steel pick?’ I put it on and said “Good
Lord, I couldn’t play with one of those things if it was to save my
life.” He said, “If you practised you probably could. Then you
wouldn’t have to worry about your fingernails.” So we called and
cancelled the session, because I couldn’t play without that fingernail. But Shot said, “Take that pick anyhow.” I’ve been messing with
it, and you get real good sound out of it. (Plays.) It’s much softer
without the pick. For playing some tunes it’s a lot better. I never
used one in my life till Shot Jackson gave me this one last fall. It’s
the only one I’ve ever owned.
On some of your tunes you play a lot with the top E string open, and this
24
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, ‘You’ll find out.’
Do you have any favorite solos among your instrumentals?
No, I don’t. 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 you’ll play it different. I do that as a
pastime a lot.
What about practice? I’m sure through the years you’ve been so busy
working that you haven’t had to worry about it, but I guess at some point
you did.
I don’t think I ever said, “I think I’ll sit down and practice”,
because if I wasn’t in the mood there wouldn’t be a bit of use in
practicing. Now since I’ve been talking to you I’ve been sitting here
picking on the guitar because I’m a fidgety person. I’m like Johnny
Cash, I’m not a person that can sit down and sit still and stare. If you
weren’t here I’d be out there cutting grass or in there helping
Dorothy can beans. I’m always busy. So when I’m doing nothing
else I play. When I’m 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. That’s 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
doesn’t matter what key you’re in. The Sons of the Pioneers, when
they’re talking about harmony, will say, ‘You’re supposed to hit a La
there.’ Which is a lot easier than going to a piano or guitar and
finding out what key it’s 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 you’ve brought up something. I don’t 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 don’t think there
will ever be anyone greater. And that’s 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
25
26
Chet Atkins & Merle Travis (Photo courtesy of Cindy Travis)
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. I’d 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
we’ll 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, there’s 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
you’d both planned to do for a long time?
We’d talked about it for many years, and I’d been tied up with
Capitol and of course Chet’s a big man at RCA. We’d talk about how
much fun it would be to make an album together. When we finally
made it, I think both of us could’ve 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 weren’t 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
(imitates Atkins’ voice), “OK, son, I’ll 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, he’s got the world skinned on that. He can hit a
chord that’s half harmonics. “Bicycle Built For Two” was a multitrack recording.
What’s the trick to harmonics?
Well, you pick with the thumb and damp with the first finger
12 frets below the note you’re 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, you’ll
get to thinking you’re a pretty good guitar picker, and then somebody like Jerry Reed will come into town and cut you to ribbons.”
That’s 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 that’s what he told me.
Jerry’s fantastic.
Have you worked with Doc Watson since you played at Winfield, Kansas
in 1976?
I worked with him in Santa Barbara, California. I’m 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. I’ve got a gold record over there of “Will The Circle Be
Unbroken?” I’ve got six gold records upstairs. I hope William
McEuen doesn’t read this, but I’ve got two copies of the album, and
I’ve never listened to all of it, so I don’t 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 I’ll have to dig
that out and listen to it sometime.
27
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, “I’m going back to the North Pole where it’s 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. It’s
a shame that he’s not selling them on every street corner because it’s
one of the finest guitars I’ve ever seen. They’re 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 I’d 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 album’s terrible. One,
a very brilliant engineer in Hollywood twisted the knobs and that’s
called “The Merle Travis Guitar.” That one I’m not too ashamed of.
The rest of the stuff sort of embarrasses me. Most people in this
business have copies of everything they’ve ever recorded. I don’t
have any of mine.
But Martin Haerle, president of CMH Records, has given me a
free hand in the recordings I’m doing now. He’s said, ‘Whatever you
want to record, record it, and record it your way.’ I’ve 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 scenery’s 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)). I’ve
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.’ That’s 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?
28
When I worked with other record companies, they would say,
“We’re 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 I’ve
done have been hurry up affairs, because we’d have three hours and
the union says that in that period we’re allowed to do four sides. I
don’t care if the image in Nashville is that they take it easy back
there. My foot, they don’t! When you listen to a playback and it’s a
take, every musician will run to the telephone to call and see where
his next session is. That’s all right, but it’s not easy-going. The only
easy-going recording I’ve 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, I’ve 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)
29
way you want it done,” me and Joe Maphis cut 30 tunes in about 2
1/2 days, which is unheard of. But that’s 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. They’re so round, so firm, so fully packed.” Cliffie Stone
came to me and said, “Eddie Kirk’s been trying to write a song. He’s
got a great idea, he’s going to write a song, ‘So round, so firm, so
fully packed, that’s my gal’.” I said, “Wait a minute, what’s that
cigarette company going to say?” He said, “They can’t 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 they’ll write a song called Gesundheit!
Fifteen of ‘em will have a song called Gesundheit! that they’re
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, “I’ve got a terrific idea
for a song! It’s 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.
That’s right.
How have your audiences changed? You’ve 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 didn’t have amplified instruments. But from
30
then on 'till after World War II, man, we wouldn’t think about
playing dances or honkytonks. Oh, no! That’s for the guy who can’t
get a job on the radio. And I was always lucky enough to have a job
on the radio. I wasn’t 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 haven’t 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, I’ve 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 that’s another reason.” McMichen was Irish, and he’d
get real mad.
Now maybe tomorrow I’ll go out and some fellow will come up
and say, “Mr. Travis, may I have an interview?” “Yes.” And they’ll
ask, “Why do you think country music has suddenly gotten so
popular?” And I’ll 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 hasn’t become any
more popular. People still like to wear denims, checkered shirts,
comfortable shoes, and listen to things that they don’t 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 don’t know what country
some of that’s from. They’ll say, “I’m going to sing you a song,” and
here’s 25 fiddlers, four cello players, five bass players, 14 French
horn players and a whole section of reeds. I don’t think that’s
country music. I don’t 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 I’d just say, keep pickin’, and if you have it, somebody’s
31
going to discover it. You’re 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 they’re 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 aren’t there more singers like that around today?’ There are —
Marty Robbins is one of them. Of course, he’s in between the
generations. And now young Larry Gatlin — maybe he doesn’t 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 they’re super-talented.
In your song "Three Times Seven" you say, “I just won’t tame, I’m gonna
be the same till I’m three times 21.” Now that you are almost three times
21, would you care to make any comments summing up your career?
I’m just about there! (laughs) I also wrote something that was
in a national magazine some time. I said that when I’m 90 years old
(and) some young fellow is playing the Galaxy Theater on the planet
Mars, I hope I’m the old guy sitting back there watching the door
and listening to the show. That’s 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.
32
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. MUS’RAT
Merle Travis, vocal and acoustic guitar (Snader Transcription, 1951)
4. I’M 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. I’LL 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. I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS
Merle Travis and Tom Bresh, acoustic guitars (Nashville Swing, 1981)
33
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
34
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
35
“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
ISBN: 1-57940-902-4
Nationally distributed by Rounder Records,
One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140
® 2001 Vestapol Productions / A division of
Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop Inc.
VESTAPOL 13012
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