#merle travis

[burtlancster]

Montgomery Clift, Merle Travis, and Burt Lancaster on the set of From Here to Eternity, 1953.

[rockincountryblues]

Merle Travis, Hollywood, California, 1944

[kdo-three]

Tennessee Ernie Ford - Sixteen Tons (1955) with Jack Fascinato and His Orchestra Merle Travis from: "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry" / "Sixteen Tons" (Single) "'Tennessee' Ernie Ford: Sixteen Tons" (EP) (1956) "Tennessee Ernie Ford ‎Favorites" (1957 Compilation)

Country | Country Ballad | Merle Travis Cover

@Archive (left click = play) (320kbps)

Personnel: Tennessee Ernie Ford: Vocals / Finger Snaps Jack Fascinato Orchestra Personnel: Darol Rice: Bass Clarinet Red Mandel: Clarinet Bobby Gibbons: Guitar Charlie Parlato: Trumpet George Burns: Trombone Roll Bundock: Bass Roy Harte: Drums

Arranged and Produced by Jack Fascinato

Recorded: @ The Capitol Records Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California USA on September 20, 1955

Released: on October 17, 1955 Capitol Records

In 2014 "Sixteen Tons" was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.

"𝐒𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐧𝐬": 𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬'𝐬 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐏𝐃𝐅: https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/16Tons.pdf (clicking on the link downloads a PDF file.)

US Labor Day: Monday, September 1, 2025

[mahgnib]

Merle Travis

[countryhixes]

Merle Travis - Too Much Sugar For A Dime

https://youtu.be/DvkppduB5d0 '1951 "Soundie" of Merle Travis & His Westerners featuring Merle on Bigsby guitar with Judy Hayden (vocals), Speedy West (steel guitar) Eddie Kirk (guitar), Jack Rogers (bass), Harold Hensley (fiddle), and Alex Brashear or Danny Auguire (trumpet).'

[kuiperoid]

They say that a man is made out of mud. A poor man's made out of muscle and blood.

[mywifeleftme]

273: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band // Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Will the Circle Be Unbroken The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band 1972, United Artists

Who can endure a sentimentalist music critic? Still, this morning anyway, my heart’s fit to weep over a one-hundred-and-ten minutes of exultant roots music and a beautiful idea executed to perfection. The notion behind Will the Circle Be Unbroken was to use the Dirt Band, a crew of talented longhairs from California, as a bridge between the trendy country rock of the day and the genre’s pantheon of avuncularly voiced pioneers. (And I guess in Maybelle Carter’s case ‘aunticularly voiced.’) Many of these sorts of intergenerational tribute projects give me queasy tasting notes of hapless arts council funding or the rap number from Walk Hard, but somehow this triple LP from the heart of rock’s imperial phase manages to be both reverent of traditional country and bluegrass history and present these genres as living organisms.

The Dirt Band are joined by a Field of Dreams cast of legends, plus an adjunct wing of ace players like fiddle genius Vassar Clements, and while the Dirties sneak in one original the focus is squarely on the standards. None of these takes supplant the originals, but the recording fidelity, superlative playing, and warm communal energy make for lovely alternatives. Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon,” one of the greatest folk and country songs of the century, has never sounded more lovely or doomed; Doc Watson gives Jimmie Driftwood’s “Tennessee Stud” a broad-shouldered boisterousness; Earl Scruggs and the Dirt Band’s John McEuen present the classic fiddle reel “Soldier’s Joy” as an infectious banjo duel. 

Many of the songs include snatches of studio chatter between the band and their guests: Mother Maybelle sounds like the sweetest old thing imaginable; Roy Acuff comes off like as much of a pompous Haven Hamilton-type as I’d always heard he was; Jimmy Martin gives elderly prospector cricket. The tapes are even rolling for the first meeting of guitar legends Travis and Watson, who have an adorably awkward little chat before declaring themselves “buddies.” These peeks into the process are part of Circle’s artifice, but it feels like an honest attempt to capture the historic nature of the summit. The album rounds off with nods to the deep past in the form of a number of Carter family cuts, an homage to bluegrass father “Uncle” Dave Macon, and a group singalong of the spiritual “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” But then, right there at the end, we get 17-year-old Randy Scruggs performing a solo instrumental take on Joni Mitchell’s 1968 “Both Sides, Now.” The symbolism of the teenaged son of Earl Scruggs playing such a recent (and aptly-named) tune is clear, quietly closing the circle between past and present, a pact sealed.

273/365

[diet-poison]

Cyberfolkpunk, which is mostly listening to Sixteen Tons and imagining Merle Travis with a cybernetic arm and robo eye