Merle Travis was born 97 years ago today. Travis was a country and Western singer, songwriter and musician born in Rosewood, Kentucky. His lyrics often discussed the life and exploitation of coal miners. Among his many well-known songs are Sixteen Tons, Re-Enlistment Blues and Dark as a Dungeon. However, it is his masterly guitar playing and his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky for which he is best known today. Travis picking, a syncopated style of finger picking, is named after him. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977. Travis became interested in the guitar early in life and originally played one made by his brother. He reportedly saved his money to buy a guitar that he had window-shopped for some time. Merles guitar playing style was developed out of a native tradition of finger-picking in Western Kentucky. Among its early practitioners was the black country blues guitarist Arnold Shultz. Shultz taught his style to several local musicians, including Kennedy Jones, who passed it on to other guitarists, notably Mose Rager, a part-time barber and coal miner, and Ike Everly, the father of The Everly Brothers. Their thumb and index finger picking method created a solo style that blended lead lines picked by the finger and rhythmic bass patterns picked or strummed by the thumbpick. This technique captivated many guitarists in the region and provided the main inspiration to the young Travis. Travis acknowledged his debt to both Rager and Everly, and appears with Rager on the DVD Legends of Country Guitar (Vestapol, 2002). At the age of 18, Travis performed Tiger Rag on a local radio amateur show in Evansville, Indiana, leading to offers of work with local bands. In 1937, Travis was hired by fiddler Clayton McMichen as guitarist in his Georgia Wildcats. He later joined the Drifting Pioneers, a Chicago-area gospel quartet that moved to WLW radio in Cincinnati, the major country music station north of Nashville. Traviss style amazed everyone at WLW and he became a popular member of their barn dance radio show the Boone County Jamboree when it began in 1938. He performed on various weekday programs, often working with other WLW acts including Louis Marshall Grandpa Jones and the Delmore Brothers. In 1943, he and Grandpa Jones recorded for Cincinnati used-record dealer Syd Nathan, who had founded a new label, King Records. Because WLW barred their staff musicians from recording, Travis and Jones used the pseudonym The Sheppard Brothers. Their recording of Youll Be Lonesome Too was the first to be released by King Records, subsequently known for its country recordings by the Delmore Brothers and Stanley Brothers as well as R&B legends Hank Ballard, Wynonie Harris and most notably James Brown. Merle Travis is now acknowledged as one of the most influential American guitarists of the 20th century. His unique guitar style inspired many guitarists who followed, most notably Chet Atkins, who first heard Traviss radio broadcasts on Cincinnatis WLW Boone County Jamboree in 1939 while living with his father in rural Georgia. Among the many other guitarists influenced by Travis are Scotty Moore, Earl Hooker and Marcel Dadi. Today, his son Thom Bresh continues playing in Traviss style on a custom-made Langejans Dualette. Here, Travis performs “Cannonball Rag.”
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 11:24:03 +0000
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