Search - Merle Travis :: Very Best of

Informative collection of mid-50s live radio recordings

hyperbolium | Earth, USA | 11/06/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"These mid-50s live recordings, taken from appearances on Shasta label-owner (and fellow country-western star) Jimmy Wakely's radio show, provide a good look at Merle Travis as a stage performer. Though these are not the recordings on which Travis' fame was originally minted (collections of his '40s and '50s sides for Capitol, as well as earlier radio transcriptions, are readily available), the picking and singing shows that a good part of Travis' appeal was his relaxed live presentation, the charms of which are fully evident here.Three instrumentals, "Texas Tornado," "I'll See You in My Dreams," and "Bye, Bye Blues" (the last a 1976 recording) find Travis showing off his legendary guitar picking. Though not as flashy as flatpickers like Joe Maphis, Travis' combination of thumb-picked bass lines and forefinger-picked melodies creates a fullness that is hard to imagine coming from only one pair of hands. Those who grew up on Chet Atkins, Scotty Moore, The Everly Brothers, and George Harrison (to name just a very few), will recognize Travis as the headwaters of their style.There are several Travis originals among the dozen cuts, including "16 Tons," a hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford and "Guitar Rag." The closing medley combines four more, including second tastes of "16 Tons" and "I'll See You in My Dreams," along with "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke" (a hit for Tex Williams), and the post-WWII veteran's lament, "No Vacancy." Fine covers include Smiley Burnette's "Homny Grits" (on the original of which Travis also played), and Bert Williams and Alex Rogers' slyly funny "Nobody" (originally featured by Williams in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910, though Travis probably picked it up from the 1955 Bob Hope film, "Seven Little Foys").This is a fine addition to the Travis catalog, capturing his warm personality, fine playing and singing, and providing a fuller view of how audiences (rather than just record buyers) experienced Travis in the mid-50s."