Re: MERLE TRAVIS-Musician/ Songwriter
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In reply to:
MERLE TRAVIS
Terry Longpre 7/07/01
http://www.bellenet.com/travis.htmlhttp://www.bellenet.com/travis.html
Merle Travis
Profile: Musician/ Songwriter
Birthdate: November 29, 1917
Died: October 20, 1983
Birthplace: Rosewood, Ky (Muhlenberg Co.)
Credits:(See Below)
Biographical Notes
Travis was the son of a tobacco farmer, but by the time he was
four-years-old the family had moved to Ebenezer, Kentucky, and his father
was working in the mines. Travis's father often remarked, 'Another day older
and deeper in debt', a phrase his son used in Sixteen Tons. His father
played the banjo, but Travis preferred the guitar. He befriended two
coal-miners, Mose Rager, and Ike Everly(father of the The Everly Brothers)
who demonstrated how to use the thumb for the bass strings while playing the
melody on treble strings. Travis hitched around the country, busking where
he could, and in 1935, he joined the Tennessee Tomcats and from there to a
better-known country group, Clayton McMichen's Georgia Wildcats.
In 1937 he became a member of the Drifting Pioneers, who performed on WLW
Cincinnati. In 1943 he recorded for the local King label, recording a solo
as Bob McCarthy and a duet with Grandpa Jones as the Shepherd Brothers. He
and Jones did many radio shows together and many years later, re-created
that atmosphere for an album. Travis, Jones and the Delmore Brothers also
worked as a gospel quartet, the Browns Ferry Four. After war service in the
marines, he settled in California and worked with artists such as Tex
Ritter. Travis' arrangement of Muskrat for Ritter was later developed into a
hit single for the The Everly Brothers.
He played with several bands, becoming one of the first to appreciate that a
guitar could be a lead instrument, and he had success as a solo artist for
the newly-formed Capitol Records with Cincinnati Lou, No Vacancy, Divorce Me
C.O.D., Missouri and a US country number 1, So Round, So Firm, So Fully
Packed. He co-wrote Capitol's first million-seller, Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That
Cigarette with Tex Williams, who recorded it. Burl Ives and Josh White were
spearheading a craze for folk music, so Capitol producer, Lee Gillette,
asked Travis for a 78 rpm album set of Kentucky folk songs. 'I don't know
any' said Travis. 'Then write some' was the reply. His eight-song FOLK SONGS
OF OUR HILLS, included Nine Pound Hammer (a rewritten folk song), Dark As A
Dungeon and Sixteen Tons with spoken introductions about the coal-mining
locale. Although Travis maintained that Sixteen Tons was a 'fun song', it
dealt with the exploitation of miners in the company store. It won a gold
record for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955 and was parodied by Spike Jones as
Sixteen Tacos and by Max Bygraves as Seventeen Tons.
Travis himself was also enjoying a country hit with a revival of Wildwood
Flower with Hank Thompson, and he won acclaim for his portrayal of a young
GI in the 1954 film FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, in which he sang Re-enlistment
Blues. Travis's WALKIN' THE STRINGS is a highly-regarded album of acoustic
guitar solos. His style influenced Doc Watson, who called his son after him,
and Chet Atkins, who did the same with his daughter.
In 1948 he devised a solid-body electric guitar, which was built for him by
Paul Bigsby and developed by Leo Fender. 'I got the idea from a steel guitar
' he said, 'I wanted the same sustainability of notes, and I came up with a
solid-body electric guitar with the keys all on one side.' Travis had an
entertaining stage act in which he would mimic animals on his guitars. He
was a good cartoonist and he worked as a scriptwriter on Johnny Cash's
television shows. He took part in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's tribute to
country music, WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN?, and was one of the Texas
Playboys in the Clint Eastwood film, HONKYTONK MAN.
Travis was elected to the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1977 but his drug
addiction and alcoholism made him unreliable and wrecked his private life.
Says Tennessee Ernie Ford, 'Merle Travis was one of the most talented men I
ever met. He could write songs that would knock your hat off, but he was a
chronic alcoholic and when those binges would come, there was nothing we
could do about it.' Travis died in October 1983. A posthumous album of blues
songs played on 12-string guitar, ROUGH, ROWDY AND BLUE, included a tune
from his mentor, Mose Rager, Merry Christmas, Pretty Baby. His friend and
fellow guitarist, Joe Maphis, wrote a tribute Me And Ol Merle', which
concluded, 'We liked good whiskey and we loved the pretty girls, And we
loved them guitars-Me and Ol' Merle.'
Information from Microsoft Music Central 96
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