Editing Merle Travis (section)

==Biography==
===Early years===
Merle Travis was born and raised in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, a place which inspired many of his original songs. (This is the same coal-mining county mentioned in [[John Prine]]'s song "Paradise".) He became interested in the guitar early in life, and first played one made by his brother. Travis reportedly saved his money to buy a guitar for which he had window-shopped for some time.

Merle developed his guitar-playing style out of the native, western Kentucky [[fingerpicking]] tradition. Among its early practitioners was Black country blues guitarist [[Arnold Shultz]].<ref>Lightfoot, William E. 1990. "A regional musical style: The legacy of Arnold Shultz," in ''Sense of place: American regional cultures'', edited by Barbara Allen and Thomas J. Schlereth, 120–137. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky; [http://www.debed.com/lanham/teocfp.htm Kienzle, Rich. "The evolution of country fingerpicking"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180930224258/http://www.debed.com/lanham/teocfp.htm |date=September 30, 2018 }}</ref> Shultz taught his style to several local musicians, including [[Kennedy Jones (musician)|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]].<ref name="Larkin"/> Their thumb and index fingerpicking method created a solo style that blended lead lines picked by the finger and rhythmic bass patterns picked or strummed by the thumb. This technique captivated many guitarists in the region and was the main inspiration to young Travis. Travis acknowledged his debt to both Rager and Everly,<ref name=pc9>{{Pop Chronicles |9|2}}</ref> and appears with Rager on the DVD ''Legends of Country Guitar'' (Vestapol, 2002).

At the age of 18, Travis performed "Tiger Rag" on a local radio amateur show in [[Evansville, Indiana]], leading to offers of work with local bands. In 1937, fiddler [[Clayton McMichen]] hired Travis to be the guitarist in his Georgia Wildcats. He later joined the Drifting Pioneers, a Chicago-area gospel quartet<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.hillbilly-music.com/groups/story/index.php?groupid=12159|title=Drifting Pioneers|website=Hillbilly-music.com}}</ref> that moved to WLW radio in Cincinnati, the major country music station north of Nashville. Travis' style amazed everyone at WLW, and he became a popular member of their barn dance radio show, the ''Boone County Jamboree'', when it began in 1938. He performed on various weekday programs, often working with other WLW acts, including [[Grandpa Jones|Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones]], the [[Delmore Brothers]], (in Alton Delmore's book ''Truth is Stranger Than Publicity'' on pages 274–275, Alton describes how he taught Merle Travis how to read and write music)<ref>''Truth is Stranger Than Publicity'', 1995 ed.</ref> [[Hank Penny]] and [[Joe Maphis]], all of whom became lifelong friends.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.countrymusichalloffame.com/site/inductees.aspx?cid=191|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070926232445/http://www.countrymusichalloffame.com/site/inductees.aspx?cid=191|url-status=dead|archive-date=September 26, 2007|title=MERLE TRAVIS &#124; Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum &#124; Nashville, Tennessee|date=September 26, 2007}}</ref>

In 1943, Grandpa Jones and he recorded for Cincinnati used-record dealer [[Syd Nathan]], who had founded a new label, [[King Records (USA)|King Records]].  Because WLW barred their staff musicians from recording, Travis and Jones used the pseudonym the Sheppard Brothers. Their recording of "You'll Be Lonesome Too" was the first to be released by King Records, which subsequently became known for its country recordings by the Delmore Brothers and Stanley Brothers, as well as R&B musicians [[Hank Ballard]], [[Wynonie Harris]], and most notably, [[James Brown]].

With the threat of being [[Conscription|drafted]] during [[World War II]], Travis enlisted in the [[US Marine Corps]]. His stint as a marine was very brief, and he returned to Cincinnati.<ref>An interview with Merle Travis {{citation|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVYHSaHcYco |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211222/SVYHSaHcYco |archive-date=2021-12-22 |url-status=live|title=Yesteryear in Nashville|access-date=July 10, 2010}}{{cbignore}}</ref> When the Drifting Pioneers left radio station WLW, leaving a half-hour hole in the schedule, Merle, Grandpa Jones, and the Delmore Brothers formed a gospel group called the Brown's Ferry Four. Performing a repertoire of traditional White and Black gospel songs, with Merle singing bass. They became one of the most popular country gospel groups of the time, recording nearly four dozen sides for the King label between 1946 and 1952. The Brown's Ferry Four have been called "possibly the best White gospel group ever."<ref>by William E. Lightfoot, 2003. The Three Doc(k)s: White Blues in Appalachia, ''Black Music Research Journal'', Vol. 23, No. 1/2, pp. 167–193; see also [https://web.archive.org/web/20050118014638/http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/brown_s_ferry_four/bio.jhtml "Brown's Ferry Four" by Bruce Eder, Allmusic]</ref>

During this period, Travis appeared in several [[soundies]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871419/|title=Merle Travis|website=IMDb}}</ref> an early form of music video intended for visual jukeboxes where customers could view and hear the popular performers of the day. His first soundie was "Night Train to Memphis" with the band [[Jimmy Wakely]] and his Oklahoma Cowboys and Girls, including [[Johnny Bond]] and Wesley Tuttle, along with Colleen Summers (who later married [[Les Paul]] and became [[Mary Ford]]). His performance of "Why'd I Fall for Abner" with [[Carolina Cotton]] was chosen for inclusion in the 2007 [[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]] documentary ''Soundies''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/music/news/e3i835a22449db56a47b99fe7e59191fa6e|title=Liberation sets 'Soundies' free|website=The Hollywood Reporter}}</ref> Several years later, he recorded a set of [[Snader Telescriptions]], short music videos intended for local television stations needing filler programming. His performances included playful duets with his then-wife, Judy Hayden, as well as several songs from his 1947 album ''Folk Songs from the Hills'' (see below).

===Career peak===
Travis performed in stage shows and landed bit parts and singing roles in several B Westerns. He recorded for small West Coast labels until 1946, when he signed with Hollywood-based [[Capitol Records]].<ref name="Larkin"/> Early hits such as "Cincinnati Lou", "[[No Vacancy (Merle Travis song)|No Vacancy]]", "[[Divorce Me C.O.D.]]", "Sweet Temptation", "[[So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed]]", and "Three Times Seven", all his own compositions, gave him national prominence,<ref name="Larkin"/> although they did not all showcase the guitar work for which Travis was renowned among his peers. His design for a solid-body electric guitar, built for him by [[Paul Bigsby]] with a single row of tuners, is thought to have inspired his longtime pal [[Leo Fender]]'s design of the famous [[Telecaster|Broadcaster]] in 1950.<ref name="Larkin"/> The Travis-Bigsby guitar now resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum in Nashville.

In 1946, Capitol asked him to record an album of folk songs.  Travis combined traditional songs and several original compositions recalling his family's days working in the mines. Capitol released the results as the four-disc, 78 rpm box set ''[[Folk Songs of the Hills]]''.<ref name="Larkin"/> The album, with Travis accompanied only by his guitar, contains his two most enduring songs, both centered on the lives of coal miners: "[[Sixteen Tons]]" and "[[Dark as a Dungeon]]".<ref name="Larkin"/>

"Sixteen Tons" became a number-one ''Billboard'' country hit for [[Tennessee Ernie Ford]] in 1955,<ref name=pc9/> and has been recorded many times over the years. Travis and [[Molly Bee]] appeared together as guests on November 24, 1960, on [[NBC]]'s ''[[The Ford Show|The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ernieford.com/FORDSHOW-SEASON5.html|title=The Ford Show. Season Five. 1960-'61|website=Ernieford.com|access-date=February 11, 2015}}</ref> The darkly philosophical "Dark As A Dungeon", although never a hit single, became a folk standard during the 1960s [[folk revival]], and has been covered by many artists, including [[Johnny Cash]] in his best-selling concert album ''[[At Folsom Prison]]'', by [[Dolly Parton]] on her ''[[9 to 5 and Odd Jobs]]'' album, and by Travis himself, along with the [[Nitty Gritty Dirt Band]] in the landmark 1972 album ''[[Will the Circle Be Unbroken]]''.<ref name="Larkin"/> In spite of its initial lack of commercial success, ''Folk Songs of the Hills'', with added tracks, has remained in print virtually ever since.

Travis was a popular radio performer throughout the 1940s and '50s. He appeared on many country music television shows, co-hosting a show ''Merle Travis and Company'' with his wife, Judy Hayden, around 1953. He was a regular member of the'' Hollywood Barn Dance'' broadcast over radio station KNX, Hollywood, and of the ''Town Hall Party'', which was broadcast first as a radio show on KXLA out of Pasadena, California, and later as a TV series from 1953 to 1961. Despite his successes, his personal life became increasingly troubled. A heavy drinker and at times desperately insecure despite a multitude of talents (including prose writing, taxidermy, cartooning, and watch repair), he was involved in a number of violent incidents in California, and he married several times in the course of his life. He suffered from serious stage fright, though amazed fellow performers added that once onstage, he was an effective and even charismatic performer. In spite of his problems, he was respected and admired by his friends and fellow musicians. Longtime Travis fan [[Doc Watson]] named his son Merle Watson, and Travis admirer [[Chet Atkins]] named his daughter Merle Atkins, in Travis' honor.<ref name="Larkin"/>

Travis' string of 1940s' chart-topping, [[honky tonk music|honky-tonk]] hits did not continue into the 1950s, despite the reverence of friends Grandpa Jones and [[Hank Thompson (music)|Hank Thompson]], with whom he toured and recorded.  He was lead guitarist in Thompson's Brazos Valley Boys during the time when'' Billboard ''rated them the number-one country-western band for 14 years in a row. (Thompson, who could pick Travis-style, even had [[Gibson Guitar Corporation|Gibson]] design him a Super 400 hollow-body electric guitar identical to the one Travis began using in 1952.) Travis continued recording for Capitol in the 1950s, broadening his repertoire to include new guitar instrumentals, blues, and boogie numbers. His up-tempo single "Merle's Boogie Woogie" showed him working with multitrack disc recording at the same time as Les Paul.

He found greater popularity after appearing in 1953's hugely popular and multiple Academy Award-winning movie ''[[From Here to Eternity]]'', singing and playing "Reenlistment Blues" and following the success of his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford's million-selling rendition of "Sixteen Tons" in 1955.<ref name="Larkin"/> His reputation as a folk-inspired singer-composer and guitarist grew after the release in 1956 of the album ''[[The Merle Travis Guitar]]'', the reissue of ''[[Folk Songs of the Hills]]'' with four additional tracks under the title ''[[Back Home (Merle Travis album)|Back Home]]'' in 1957, and ''[[Walkin' the Strings]]'' in 1960, the latter two of which won five-star ratings from ''[[Rolling Stone]]''. His career acquired a second wind during the [[American folk music revival]] in the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading to appearances at clubs, folk festivals, and [[Carnegie Hall]] as a guest of [[Flatt and Scruggs|Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs]] in 1962. In the mid-1960s, he moved to Nashville and joined the [[Grand Ole Opry]]. During this time, he became Johnny Cash's close friend and occasional hunting partner.

===Guitar style===
Merle Travis is now acknowledged as one of the most influential American guitarists of the 20th century. His unique guitar style inspired many guitarists who followed, most notably [[Chet Atkins]], who first heard Travis's radio broadcasts on Cincinnati's WLW ''Boone County Jamboree'' in 1939 while living with his father in rural Georgia. Among the many other guitarists influenced by Travis are [[Scotty Moore]], [[Earl Hooker]], [[Lonnie Mack]], [[Doc Watson]], and [[Marcel Dadi]]. His son, [[Thom Bresh]] (1948–2022), had continued playing in Travis's style on a custom-made Langejans Dualette.

Although his early tutors were among the first to use the thumb pick in guitar playing, freeing the fingers to pick melody, Travis' style, according to Chet Atkins, went on in musical directions "never dreamt about" by his predecessors.<ref name="ReferenceA">Chet Atkins, liner notes to 1996 reissue of the album ''Walkin' the Strings''</ref> His trademark mature style incorporated elements from [[ragtime]], [[blues]], [[boogie]], [[jazz]], and [[Western swing]], and was marked by rich [[chord progression]]s, [[harmonics]], [[slide (guitar technique)|slides]] and [[bend (guitar)|bends]], and rapid changes of [[key (music)|key]]. He could shift quickly from fingerpicking to [[flatpicking]] in the midst of a number by gripping his thumb pick like a flat pick. In his hands, the guitar resembled a full band. As his son Thom Bresh puts it, on first hearing his father as a child, "I thought it was just the coolest sound, because it sounded like a whole bunch of instruments coming from one guitar. In it, I heard rhythm parts, I heard melodies, I heard chords, and all this wrapped up in one."<ref>Gold 2006.</ref> Equally at home on acoustic and electric guitar, Travis was one of the first to exploit the full range of techniques and sonorities available on the electric guitar.

Though Chet Atkins was the most prominent guitarist to be inspired by Merle Travis, the two players' styles were significantly different. As Atkins explained, "While I play alternate bass strings, which sounds more like a stride piano style, Merle played two bass strings simultaneously on the one and three beats, producing a more exciting solo rhythm, in my opinion. It was somewhat reminiscent of the great old Black players."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> The resemblance was no coincidence; Travis himself acknowledged the influence of Black guitarists such as [[Blind Blake]], the foremost ragtime and blues guitarist of the late 1920s and early 1930s.<ref>Ferris, William R., Michael K. Honey and Pete Seeger,"Pete Seeger, San Francisco, 1989", ''Southern Cultures'' Volume 13.3, Fall 2007, pp. 5–38</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sOKZKESWys0C&q=%22is+acknowledged+by+Travis+himself%22&pg=PA14|title=Encyclopedia of the Blues-2nd (p)|first=Gérard|last=Herzhaft|date=September 29, 1992|publisher=[[University of Arkansas Press]]|page=14|isbn=9781610751391|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Guitarist [[Marcel Dadi]] explains and exemplifies Travis' style on his DVD ''The Guitar of Merle Travis'', which includes videos of Travis performing "John Henry" and "Nine Pound Hammer", and includes transcriptions of Travis solos in [[tablature]].<ref>Available from Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop GW 918, 1993</ref>

===Late career===
After a career dip during which he struggled to overcome alcohol and drug abuse,<ref name="Larkin"/> Travis put his career back on track in the 1970s. He appeared frequently on such country music TV shows as ''The Porter Wagoner Show'', ''The Johnny Cash Show'', ''Austin City Limits'', ''Grand Old Country'', and ''Nashville Swing'', and he was featured on the 1972 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album ''[[Will the Circle Be Unbroken]]'', which introduced him to a new generation of [[Americana (music)|roots music]] enthusiasts. His 1974 album of duets with Chet Atkins, ''[[The Atkins - Travis Traveling Show]]'', won a [[Grammy]] award in the category "Best Country Instrumental", and a later album ''Travis Pickin' '' received another nomination. In 1976, he contributed to the musical score of the [[Academy Award]]-winning documentary ''[[Harlan County, USA]]''. Toward the end of the 1970s, he signed a new contract with  Los-Angeles-based country music label [[CMH Records|CMH]], which launched one of the most prolific recording periods in his career. The many titles that followed included new guitar solo albums, duets with [[Joe Maphis]], a blues album, and a double album tribute to country fiddler [[Clayton McMichen]], with whom he had played in the 1930s.

In 1983, Travis died of a [[heart attack]] at his [[Tahlequah, Oklahoma]], home.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/22/obituaries/merle-travis-country-singer.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftl1y-la3HNDmwYiOMfApSd8l3MaLEkYtYp2zneWMVILr40Afd10-lDJV0oUAiurZae3pQZJiF_4aSCYlQL5bOfF7Yp7W2tKWCjNOZ0wLD470zXOjLoXvTA1X0mIxJi85VjaVGs3SAXz_2VQLR23dgpiPl1FYk6EWlbHFSCvPbvAhV-KY_GOkmasl9qLrkfDTLDntec6KYCdxFQDD_FS3B54WU66bBMKY9dffa_f1N7Jp2I0fhGAXdoLYypG5Q0W4HS8r1uurPOohGOo9Gk9HA1I7NlcDgG9w_XD96nVQ&smid=url-share|title=New York Times, October 22, 1983, Section 1, Page 28|website=[[The New York Times]]|date=October 22, 1983 |access-date=June 4, 2022}}</ref> His body was cremated and his ashes scattered around a memorial erected to him near [[Drakesboro, Kentucky]].