Merle Travis

Merle Travis stood virtually unmatched in his dual mastery of guitar and songcraft. Renowned for a singular approach that inspired an entire picking technique dubbed “Travis picking,” he exerted a formative influence on country guitar playing that few approached, though Chet Atkins came nearest; indeed, RCA initially recruited Atkins precisely to fill the role of the label’s own Merle Travis. As a composer he proved nearly as consequential, penning originals such as “Sixteen Tons” that other performers transformed into enduring popular standards. Beyond these achievements, Travis contributed two significant if indirect impulses to the emergence of rock & roll while also enjoying his own string of chart successes and novelty recordings.

Born Merle Robert Travis on November 29, 1917, in Rosewood, Kentucky, he grew up amid the hardships of a coal-mining household whose precarious finances later informed the lyric of “Sixteen Tons,” a phrase his father had used to sum up their existence. His earliest instrument was a five-string banjo, yet at age twelve an older brother presented him with a homemade guitar. Fortunate to live near Ike Everly—father of Don and Phil—as well as Mose Rager, who employed a distinctive three-finger style indigenous to that part of Kentucky, Travis absorbed the technique during adolescence and attained remarkable command over a repertoire spanning blues, ragtime, and contemporary popular numbers. Still, such skill yielded little income, so he sustained himself through teenage employment in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Opportunity arrived in 1935 during a visit to his brother’s Evansville, Indiana, residence, when an impromptu performance at a local dance led to engagements with regional bands and airtime on a nearby radio outlet. By 1937 he had joined Clayton McMichen’s Georgia Wildcats; a year later he moved to the Drifting Pioneers, who secured steady broadcasts on Cincinnati’s WLW. The Boone County Jamboree kept the ensemble occupied until wartime exigencies dissolved the group. During his tenure with the Pioneers, Travis cultivated a nationwide audience and simultaneously performed gospel material alongside Grandpa Jones and the Delmore Brothers in the quartet known as the Brown’s Ferry Four. He subsequently partnered with Jones as the Shepherd Brothers, becoming the inaugural artists to record for the fledgling King Records imprint in 1943. The pair also swapped songs and unearthed sources together; one afternoon at a Black church in Cincinnati, Travis heard a sermon that supplied the basis for “That’s All.”

After a brief, curtailed stint in the Marines, he returned to Cincinnati and, late in the winter of 1944, relocated to Los Angeles. There he appeared in Charles Starrett Westerns and performed with Ray Whitley’s Western swing ensemble. Under the mentorship of Tex Ritter and bassist Cliffie Stone, Travis issued the topical 1946 single “No Vacancy,” which addressed the plight of returning veterans, coupled with “Cincinnati Lou,” yielding a double-sided hit. His subsequent venture was the concept album Folk Songs of the Hills, conceived to rival Burl Ives’s popular folk releases. Issued in 1947 as a four-disc 78-rpm set, the project met commercial indifference at the time—it remained unavailable on long-playing format for nearly a decade—yet it introduced several enduring Travis compositions, among them “Sixteen Tons,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” and “Over by Number Nine,” alongside the standard “Nine Pound Hammer.” The collection also stands as a singular recorded testament to the guitarist’s all-acoustic virtuosity.

Despite the folk album’s initial reception, 1947 inaugurated a period of heightened activity. Travis supplied the million-selling “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!” for Tex Williams while simultaneously placing half a dozen of his own singles in the Top Ten, including “Divorce Me C.O.D.,” “So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed,” and “Three Times Seven.” He also designed the prototype solid-body electric guitar, a model later refined by Leo Fender into an essential component of early rock & roll. Although the hit streak proved short-lived, Travis maintained an active presence on stage, television, and record.

From 1953 onward he secured a conspicuous screen role in From Here to Eternity, performing “Re-Enlistment Blues,” and began contributing to every session by his friend Hank Thompson. Tennessee Ernie Ford’s 1955 crossover success with “Sixteen Tons” coincided with mounting influence from Travis disciples such as Chet Atkins; Scotty Moore, who had first encountered Travis’s radio work, had become Elvis Presley’s lead guitarist, and a year after Presley’s national breakthrough the Everly Brothers—likewise Atkins protégés—topped the charts.

Though continually cited, musically or by name, by scores of prominent artists, Travis never regained personal chart momentum. Personal difficulties largely accounted for the lapse: despite his stature as one of country music’s premier instrumentalists, he acquired a parallel reputation for erratic conduct, particularly when drinking. Multiple arrests for public intoxication and motorcycle drunk-driving ensued, and a widely reported 1956 incident involved police surrounding his residence following an assault on his wife. Early in the 1960s he endured brief hospitalization after an arrest for driving under the influence of narcotics. By the mid-1960s he had stabilized sufficiently to record the new folk-styled Songs of the Coal Mines, which, like its predecessor, sold poorly upon release. His chiefly instrumental albums, however—Walkin’ the Strings among them—proved far more consequential, becoming standard acquisitions for developing guitarists.

Travis continued occasional performances and cultivated a following on the college folk circuit, collaborating with Atkins on the Grammy-winning Atkins-Travis Traveling Show in 1974. After marrying his fourth wife, Dorothy—formerly wed to Hank Thompson—he appeared to achieve greater stability and renewed focus on music, issuing tribute albums to the Georgia Wildcats and resuming work with longtime associates such as Grandpa Jones. Just as renewed acclaim seemed attainable, he suffered a fatal heart attack at age sixty-five.