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Merle Travis The Merle Travis Guitar - Walkin' The Strings...Plus (CD)

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(Raven Records) 39 tracks Two original classics: The Merle Travis Guitar and Walkin' the... more

Merle Travis: The Merle Travis Guitar - Walkin' The Strings...Plus (CD)

(Raven Records) 39 tracks

Two original classics: The Merle Travis Guitar and Walkin' the Strings. Travis, one of the greatest versatile artists in the history of country and western, was born in Kentucky in 1917 and began recording for Capitol in the 1940s. He was an important singer and songwriter (“Sixteen Tons”, “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke”, “No Vacancy”, “Cincinnati Lou”) and a guitarist of enormous influence (on Chet Atkins, among others). His guitar playing, with its sophisticated and complex fingerpicking style and rich, expressive tone, became known as the “Travis style”. The “Travis style” combined country, folk, blues and jazz elements and its impact should not be underestimated.

Article properties: Merle Travis: The Merle Travis Guitar - Walkin' The Strings...Plus (CD)

  • Interpret: Merle Travis

  • Album titlle: The Merle Travis Guitar - Walkin' The Strings...Plus (CD)

  • Genre Country

  • Artikelart CD

  • Label Raven Records

  • EAN: 0612657029923

  • weight in Kg 0.1
Travis, Merle - The Merle Travis Guitar - Walkin' The Strings...Plus (CD) CD 1
01 Blue Smoke Merle Travis
02 Black Diamond Blues Merle Travis
03 On A Bicycle Built For Two Merle Travis
04 Saturday Night Shuffle Merle Travis
05 Bugle Call Rag Merle Travis
06 Tuck Me To Sleep In My Old Tucky Home Merle Travis
07 Walkin The Strings Merle Travis
08 The Memphis Blues Merle Travis
09 The Sheik Of Araby Merle Travis
10 Blue Bell Merle Travis
11 The Waltz You Saved For Me Merle Travis
12 Rockabye Rag Merle Travis
13 Walking The Strings Merle Travis
14 Little Davis Play On Your Harp Merle Travis
15 Saturday Night Shuffle Merle Travis
16 Thumbing The Bass Merle Travis
17 Cane Break Blues Merle Travis
18 Darby's Rag Merle Travis
19 Everly Rag Merle Travis
20 Rose Time Merle Travis
21 Old Aunt Dinah Merle Travis
22 My Old Kentucky Home Merle Travis
23 Pigmeat Stomp Merle Travis
24 Blue Smoke Merle Travis
25 Dry Bread Merle Travis
26 Louisville Clog Merle Travis
27 On A Bicycle Built For Two Merle Travis
28 Green Bay polka Merle Travis
29 Jordan Am A Hard Road To Travel Merle Travis
30 Travis Trot Merle Travis
31 Cannon Ball Stomp Merle Travis
32 Fuller Blues Merle Travis
33 Blue Bell Merle Travis
34 Take My Hand, Precious Lord Merle Travis
35 Turn My Pictures Upside Down Merle Travis
36 I'm Knee Deep In Trouble Merle Travis
37 A Too Fast Past Merle Travis
38 Louisiana Boogie Merle Travis
39 So Round, So Firm, SO Fully Packed Merle Travis
Merle Travis Since Merle Travis became a professional musician in 1936, he'd spent a good... more
"Merle Travis"

Merle Travis

Since Merle Travis became a professional musician in 1936, he'd spent a good bit of his time on the air. 'Town Hall Party'was just one more gig.

Travis, born in 1917 in Muhlenberg County, in Kentucky’s coalmining country, grew up in the small town of Ebenezer. He played banjo first, but soon learned that region's trademark guitar fingerpicking style, which used a thumbpick to pick bass accompaniment while simultaneously playing lead and rhythm on the guitar's treble strings with the index finger. Travis's teachers were local miners and guitar masters Ike Everly (Don and Phil's dad) and Mose Rager. The style was adaptable to nearly any type of music: traditional favorites, blues, country or pop.

Determined that the guitar would help him avoid a life of mining, he turned professional in 1936 in Indiana, and briefly joined fiddler Clayton McMichen's Georgia Wildcats in 1937. As a member of the Drifting Pioneers, he joined Cincinnati's WLW in 1939.  When the station began their weekly 'Boone County Jamboree' barn dance broadcast, Travis, now performing solo, was part of it. He worked with the Delmore Brothers, Grandpa Jones, Hank Penny, and Joe Maphis at WLW, all of whom became close friends. A young Chet Atkins heard Travis on a WLW broadcast. Duly inspired, Atkins created his own picking style.

California became Travis's home in March, 1944. Radio and recording session work took up much of his time at first. Stardom came in 1946 after he signed with Capitol and launched a string of hits beginning with Cincinnati Lou, Divorce Me C.O.D, followed by So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed, a vocal version of Steel Guitar Rag, Three Times Seven, Fat Gal and Merle's Boogie Woogie.

His composition Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette), a 1947 hit for Tex Williams, gave Capitol its first million-seller. Few noted Merle's newly-issued acoustic 78 rpm album 'Folk Songs Of The Hills,' which mixed traditional songs with folk-flavored Travis originals, including his impressionistic coal mining tune Sixteen Tons. He was also a regular on Cliffie Stone's KXLA 'Dinner Bell Round-Up'radio show.

In 1949 Travis briefly worked at the 'WRVA Old Dominion Barn Dance' in Richmond Virginia with Joe Maphis and his future wife/performing partner Rose Lee Schetrompf. After returning to L.A., at some point in 1950-51 Travis joined Foreman Phillips's 'B-K Ranch,' a local live TV program that ran six hours daily in TV's pre-network days.  He convinced Philips to bring Joe and Rosie in from Richmond. Soon the three of them were working Hollywood area clubs together.

After 'Town Hall Party' began in 1952, Travis was a frequent guest. The Maphises joined the show's cast and Joe eventually became the show's bandleader. Playing a guitar-picking soldier in the classic 1953 movie set in World War II, 'From Here To Eternity,' Travis's performance of Re-Enlistment Blues became a unifying thread through the entire film which starred Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra and Deborah Kerr.

Stardom and fame aggravated Travis's deep-seated personal demons. Gentle and modest when sober, renowned for his cartooning and watch repair skills, he also battled stage fright, anxiety and depression. His drinking binges sometimes turned violent. "Every time Merle was about to make a breakthrough to mass acceptance, a near-tragedy occurred,"  Hank Penny remembered. "He was bent on self-destruction," said friend Wesley Tuttle. "He couldn't stand success."

He underscored that point in January, 1956. As Tennessee Ernie Ford's multi-million selling version of Sixteen Tons brought Travis widespread media attention, he got drunk and shot a clock off the wall at his home, sending third wife Bettie and her stepson fleeing to the street. The LAPD surrounded the house until Joe Maphis and his teenage guitar protégé, Town Hall's Larry Collins, arrived, entered and talked the now-calm Travis into coming out. Later that year, Travis's friends and family erected a granite monument in Ebenezer honoring both Travis and Sixteen Tons. He later wound up in California's Camarillo State Hospital for pill abuse. Hunting buddy Johnny Cash, himself a master pill-popper, visited regularly.

Still a Capitol artist when he made these 1958-59 THP appearances, he hadn't recorded for them since 1955, although he played on old pal Hank Thompson's Capitol recordings and toured with Thompson. These 25 THP performances mix hits, Muhlenberg fingerpicking favorites, and tunes he recorded for Capitol, as well as his protégé Chet Atkins's Main Street Breakdown.

Merle Travis Guitar Rags And A Too Fast Past (5-CD)
Read more at: https://www.bear-family.com/travis-merle-guitar-rags-and-a-too-fast-past-5-cd.html
Copyright © Bear Family Records

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Tracklist
Travis, Merle - The Merle Travis Guitar - Walkin' The Strings...Plus (CD) CD 1
01 Blue Smoke
02 Black Diamond Blues
03 On A Bicycle Built For Two
04 Saturday Night Shuffle
05 Bugle Call Rag
06 Tuck Me To Sleep In My Old Tucky Home
07 Walkin The Strings
08 The Memphis Blues
09 The Sheik Of Araby
10 Blue Bell
11 The Waltz You Saved For Me
12 Rockabye Rag
13 Walking The Strings
14 Little Davis Play On Your Harp
15 Saturday Night Shuffle
16 Thumbing The Bass
17 Cane Break Blues
18 Darby's Rag
19 Everly Rag
20 Rose Time
21 Old Aunt Dinah
22 My Old Kentucky Home
23 Pigmeat Stomp
24 Blue Smoke
25 Dry Bread
26 Louisville Clog
27 On A Bicycle Built For Two
28 Green Bay polka
29 Jordan Am A Hard Road To Travel
30 Travis Trot
31 Cannon Ball Stomp
32 Fuller Blues
33 Blue Bell
34 Take My Hand, Precious Lord
35 Turn My Pictures Upside Down
36 I'm Knee Deep In Trouble
37 A Too Fast Past
38 Louisiana Boogie
39 So Round, So Firm, SO Fully Packed