Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and guitarist born in Rosewood, Kentucky, United States.

However, it is his unique guitar style, still called Travis picking by guitarists, as well as his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, for which he is best known today.

He later joined the Drifting Pioneers, a Chicago-area gospel quartet[4] that moved to WLW radio in Cincinnati, the major country music station north of Nashville.

Travis' style amazed everyone at WLW and he became a popular member of their barn dance radio show the Boone County Jamboree when it began in 1938.

[7] When the Drifting Pioneers left radio station WLW, leaving a half-hour hole in the schedule, Merle, Grandpa Jones and the Delmore Brothers formed a gospel group called "The Brown's Ferry Four" .

"[8] During this period, Travis appeared in several soundies,[9] an early form of music video intended for visual jukeboxes where customers could view as well as hear the popular performers of the day.

His first soundie was "Night Train To Memphis" with the band Jimmy Wakely and his Oklahoma Cowboys and Girls, including Johnny Bond and Wesley Tuttle along with Colleen Summers (who later married Les Paul and became Mary Ford).

[10] Several years later, he recorded a set of Snader Telescriptions, short music videos intended for local television stations needing filler programming.

", "Sweet Temptation", "So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed", and "Three Times Seven", all his own compositions, gave him national prominence,[1] although they did not all showcase the guitar work that Travis was renowned for among his peers.

[1] The album, with Travis accompanied only by his guitar, contains his two most enduring songs, both centered on the lives of coal miners: "Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon".

[1] In spite of its initial lack of commercial success, Folk Songs of the Hills, with added tracks, has remained in print virtually ever since.

[1] Travis' string of 1940s' chart topping, honky tonk hits did not continue into the 1950s despite the reverence of friends like Grandpa Jones and Hank Thompson with whom he toured and recorded.

He was lead guitarist in Thompson's Brazos Valley Boys during the time when Billboard magazine rated them the number one Country Western band for 14 years in a row.

(Thompson, who could pick Travis-style, even had Gibson design him a Super 400 hollow body electric guitar identical to the one Travis began using in 1952.)

[1] His reputation as a folk-inspired singer-composer and guitarist grew after the release in 1956 of the album The Merle Travis Guitar, the reissue of Folk Songs of the Hills with four additional tracks under the title Back Home in 1957, and Walkin' the Strings in 1960, the latter two of which won five star ratings from Rolling Stone.

His unique guitar style inspired many guitarists who followed, most notably Chet Atkins, who first heard Travis's radio broadcasts on Cincinnati's WLW Boone County Jamboree in 1939 while living with his father in rural Georgia.

Although his early tutors were among the first to use the thumbpick in guitar playing, freeing the fingers to pick melody, Travis' style, according to Chet Atkins, went on in musical directions "never dreamt about" by his predecessors.

[12] His trademark mature style incorporated elements from ragtime, blues, boogie, jazz and Western swing, and was marked by rich chord progressions, harmonics, slides and bends, and rapid changes of key.

Many of his original LP albums are now available on CD and his posthumous discography continues to grow due in large part to the efforts of independent labels.

In 1994, Bear Family Records released a major retrospective of his work and career that includes much previously unreleased material, Guitar Rags and a Too Fast Past, a five CD box with an 80-page booklet authored by Rich Kienzle, who interviewed many of Travis' contemporaries.