From the Archive: Gamble Rogers’ Lost Interview with Merle Travis

Don’t Call Me Mister

Gamble Rogers’ lost interview with Merle Travis

By Harold Fethe, courtesy of the Gamble Rogers Memorial Foundation

This article originally appeared in the Fretboard Journal's 34th issue 

If you’ve played guitar in this century--or in the last two-thirds of the prior one--you’ve likely heard of an early innovator whose restless energy, multiple aptitudes and voracious appetites for invention fueled an enduring legend: Merle Robert Travis. 

In the U.S. Bicentennial year of 1976, when troubadour Gamble Rogers was a favorite at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, he interviewed Travis. Recorded for National Public Radio, where Rogers was a frequent commentator and instrumentalist, the interview never aired. The tapes sat in the archives of Rogers’ manager, Charles Steadham, until they were made available to Fretboard Journal here. 

Meeting a personal hero, Rogers was respectful, even indulgent in his interview style. Travis took the opportunity to tee off on a few favorite subjects: his role innovating electric guitar design; his take on the practical craft of songwriting; his own Quixotic life story; his pique at a famous Rolling Stone reporter, who’d recently treated him as if he was a washed-up character who was fortunate to be remembered at all. 

We have not altered Travis’ dialect or colloquial speech patterns, and in places, we have—respectfully--presented Travis’ colorful storytelling in phonetic dialect. The goal of this treatment is to help transport the mind back to a time when folk-pop songs like “Sixteen Tons” and guitars with solid bodies, cutaways, inline tuners and whammy bars were only a gleam in the eye of their creator.

Gamble Rogers: My name is Gamble Rogers. I’m a person who makes his living playing [guitar] and singing. I suppose it is every guitarist’s dream that he meet up with Merle Travis. Here I am to chat with Mr. Travis, and I’d just like to reach over and shake hands.

Merle Travis: Please don’t call me mister. I’ve worked for 40 years to be Merle Travis, and if I turn out to be Mr. Travis now, I’ve blowed the whole mess. 

GR: A great deal has been said about the antecedents of your music, specifically that you are a Kentuckian who has lived in California, and that you were a vital part of the music and motion picture industries: a songwriter, a creator of folk music, a writer of hit songs, the man who wrote the first million-seller on Capitol Records, a man influential in the design and development of the modern guitar as we know it. I’m trying to move over these things that have been written about previously. I’d like to go back to some of the early days, maybe back to Renfro Valley. Renfro Valley is one of the first barn dance programs I heard as a boy. I understand you were involved in this program. Could you tell us a little about Renfro Valley?

MT: Yeah, Gamble, I was on the first Renfro Valley Barn Dance ever broadcast. But it wasn’t in Renfro Valley. Renfro Valley was a little creek down in Rockcastle County in Kentucky, all growed up in briars and brambles, a few torn-down houses. The musical director at WLS in Chicago—he was musical director of National Barn Dance, John Laird--picked out a bunch of his favorite musicians and brought them down to a radio station. I started out with Clayton McMichen. He come down with Red Foley, the Girls of the Golden West, Slim Miller, Lulu Belle and Scotty, with the thought in mind of building up a show called Renfro Valley Barn Dance, and some day going back to his home country in Renfro Valley, Kentucky, clearing it out, building a barn, and calling it the Renfro Valley Barn, and having a Renfro Valley Barn Dance. 

GR: I’m trying to proceed chronologically. Clayton McMichen and the Georgia Wildcats was first band you played with, wasn’t it?

MT: The first major band. I played with some other bands in Evansville, Indiana. They all seemed to have cat names—Georgia Wildcats, Tennessee Tomcats. My brother took me to a marathon dance. Local talent would get up and perform. They had an announcer named Guy Creselius. My brother took me down and said, “Why don’t you put my little brother on, he plays the guitar.” First time I was ever on radio, WGBF in Evansville. That must have been in 1935, I had just gotten out of the CCC camp--Civilian Conservation Corps.

GR: I’ve read about your first guitar being one that your brother Taylor made—a Taylor-made guitar. 

MT: Taylor built my first guitar. It wasn’t the greatest instrument, but I thought it was a little gem.

GR: What sort of guitar did you get after the CCC days?

MT: We made $30 a month, and we was allowed to keep five, and send $25 home. I stayed in long enough to get a guitar that cost me $30. It was a Gretsch, an archtop Gretsch with f-soundholes, and oh, I thought it was most beautiful instrument in the world. 

GR: How long at this time had you been playing your self-accompanied style, the Travis-style picking, which even Andrés Segovia has called the one indigenous American guitar style?

MT: I guess I picked that up when I was about 12 years old. A couple coal miners in Drakesboro, Kentucky, Mose Rager and Ike Everly, father of the famous Everly Brothers. We was all raised together. Mose was some eight years older than I am, and Ike was, too. When I was about twelve, I’d go watch ’em. Then I’d go home and do my best to play like they did. I guess when I was 15, I was a fairly good thumb picker—fairly good, which is a little better than I am now.

GR: Good enough to get a job with bands. You’ve played music 40 years—a 40-year career of nothing but music, and a short stint in the Marines.

MT: Next year, 1977, will be my 40th anniversary in the music business.

GR: Merle, you were staff guitarist at WLW in Cincinnati, were you not?

MT: “Staff guitarist” makes it sound like I was on the staff and would play the soap operas and so on. They had a staff guitarist, one named Chick Gatewood, who would read music. In those days, they didn’t have recorded music, they had live studio orchestras. I was on with the hillbilly musicians. We’d start at 4:45 in the morning, a show called Top of the Morning. Pa and Ma McCormick, Brown County Revelers, Drifting Pioneers, Curly Fox, Texas Ruby, the Delmore Brothers, Grandpa Jones, Bradley Kincaid and of course, Red Foley and Lulu Belle and Scotty. 

GR: That’s a veritable who’s-who of American country music—these people all just young pickers who probably were playing for the love of it and very little money, is that right? It’s my understanding that players would get up and do these early shows, generate goodwill in the communities, and follow this up with show dates within driving distance. Is that about right?

MT: When I first went there, the station was 500,000 watts, and it reached around the world. We got letters from Australia, the Philippines, everywhere. Shortly after that, the FCC made stations in the United States cut down to 50,000 watts. 

GR: Cincinnati had a corner on those stations. I used to listen to WLW and WCKY, both clear channel stations, [with] Wayne Rainey, Lonnie Glossen, the Talking Harmonicas. You and the Delmore Brothers formed a group called Brown’s Ferry Four, kind of gospel music.

MT: The way that come about, I was singing with a group called the Drifting Pioneers. We had fiddle, mandolin, bass and guitar. Sleepy Martin played fiddle, Walt Brown played mandolin, Bill Brown played bass. We had a girl singer and a comedian. You had to have that combination to do a two-hour show. All over the country, people were playing for no money, just to advertise their show dates. [But] we was on salary, and a nice salary at that.

GR: Were you a single performer, did you play some of the old folk songs: “That’s All,” “John Henry,” “Over by Number Nine,” “Nine Pound Hammer,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Dark as a Dungeon”? Did you start developing the approach of the bard or the storyteller in these radio shows?

MT: I done that through the suggestion of Cliffie Stone, who was artist and repertoire man at Capitol Records. He said, “We need an album from you, a folk song album.” 

I said, “Burl Ives and Bradley Kincaid done sung all the folk songs.”

 He said, “Make up some!”

I said, “You don’t write folk songs.” 

He said, “Make up something that sounds like folk songs. So I made up a few things: “Running Out of Time,” “Over by Number Nine.” 

GR: In those days, folks were considerably more honest. I remember seeing “adapted and arranged by Merle Travis.” Later on, in the ’60s, when folk music got to be in vogue, folks were putting their names on traditional material, and you and Capitol never did that.

MT: I’m afraid I’m guilty. Without knowing too much about copyright--all I wanted to do was to pick ’em and go flirt with the girls--I recorded “John Henry.” My publisher put out sheet music: “John Henry,” by Merle Travis. People will look at that and say “That guy’s crazy, I heard that before he was born.” Then they’ll see something like “Sixteen Tons” and think, “He didn’t no more write that than he wrote ‘John Henry’!”

GR: Two of the members of the Brown’s Ferry Four were the Delmore Brothers. They’re the men that came up with “Deep River Blues,” which became a signature song for Doc Watson. About the time you were broadcasting on WLW, Chet Atkins was listening on a crystal radio, studying your guitar style, learning to fingerpick, unknowingly developing a multifinger style, not knowing that you play with just the thumb and first finger. I’d like to throw these things in as little touchstones to try to tie your contributions in as we go along. Let’s go back to Brown’s Ferry Four. How long did you work with those folks?

MT: About three years. This Drifting Pioneer group—every morning we’d have a 15-minute gospel program. The war come along, people went away, and I was left there as just a guitar player. Grandpa Jones was on the station in Cincinnati, and so was the Delmore Brothers. Alton Delmore was once a teacher of shaped notes. Ever’ note has a shape, you know? Me and Grandpa Jones, Alton and Rabon, the Delmore Brothers were standing out in the hall singing gospel songs. One of the wheels at the station said, “Since the Drifting Pioneers split up, why don’t you four boys do a 15-minute program?”

He left, and we said, “What will we call ourselves?” Just as a gag, Alton had wrote a song, “Brown’s Ferry Blues”—“Two old maids, layin’ in the sand, each one wishin’ that the other was a man.” Just joking, we said, “Brown’s Ferry Four.” We went on next day, me and Grandpa Jones and Alton and Rabon Delmore, and cut loose with some gospel songs. That was about ’41. 

GR: What year did you go with Clayton McMichen and the Georgia Wildcats?

MT: ’37

GR: How much time did you have to put in, your direct involvement with the radio station?

MT: We’d go on at 4:45, followed by an act called the Novelty Aces. The war busted them up, and there was an act, the Williams Brothers, one of them was called Andy Williams. He and his brothers would come, and that was the end of the hillbilly stuff. They was sponsored by Griffin Shoe Polish. They had an artist bureau, and they would book us out, we played county fairs, auditoriums, theaters.

GR: Store openings?

MT: I have done them, but not in Cincinnati. Country music was a little more dignified in them days than it is now. We didn’t play store openings, beer joints where people was hollerin’ and whoopin’, things like that. We played theaters, auditoriums. Our program director, George Bigger, said, “The one thing I ask of you is to dress well, have your hair cut neat, look clean and conduct yourselves as ladies and gentlemen, and give dignity to the music you play.” 

GR: The language that’s used on stage today reflects the language of the street. You can always tell a veteran performer in country music by his aura of dignity. How many of these show dates a week did you play? 

MT: It would vary. Through the summertimes, we would play county fairs, all through Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin. We’d play little county fairs, state fairs. I have a picture in my scrapbook--there was 10,000 people waiting two hours before the show, and that picture was took in 1938. When I hear people say, “Country music is really growing, it’s getting to be a big thing,” I think, “They ought to see that 10,000 people [were] gathering two hours before show time.” Clayton McMichen, the first job I ever played with him, there was 20,000 people. 

GR: You played these with unamplified instruments. Did you play directly into a vocal microphone, how’d you do that? 

MT: We had one great big microphone. I think they called it the RCA 44, or the Crosley microphone. They’d set one microphone on the stage, and we’d gather around it.

GR: You would mix the music as you sang and played it. I think Flatt & Scruggs recorded like that, and were mixed as perfectly, more perfectly than an audio engineer could do it in a 24-track studio. Someone told me that Roy Acuff brought a show through Cincinnati and hired a lot of people in Cincinnati, and a young comedian named Tennessee Ford and you got acquainted. Is there any truth in that? 

MT: That’s Greek to me. We was doing a noonday show and a Saturday night dance from radio station KXLA, Pasadena, California. Cliffie Stone was the emcee, the girl singer was Polly Bergen--ended up in movies—Speedy West playin’ steel guitar, Billy Lubert playing accordion, Cliffie’s dad--they called him Herman the Hermit, because a beard was uncommon and he wore a beard—played banjo. 

GR: What did you sing on your first session at Capitol?

MT: I sang a song called “No Vacancy.”

GR: You wrote a song called “Divorce Me COD.” Was that your first commercial success? 

MT: No, “No Vacancy” was before that. We speak of charts, trade magazines. My first records, “No Vacancy,” “Cincinnati Lou,” “So Round,” they all made the charts.

GR: When did you go to California?

MT: 1944

GR: This was a turning point in your career, wasn’t it? 

MT: It was different working in California, altogether different. In Cincinnati we was playing auditoriums, the nicest of theaters, fairs, picnics. When I got to California, I was shocked—people was playing for dances, they had what they called Western swing. There was Spade Cooley, Bob Wills, Foreman Phillips.

GR: When did you go with Capitol?

MT: Something like ’46.

GR: You recorded your songs, many of which were strong country hits. Did you have these songs under your belt before you did the folk song album?

MT: No. Johnny Mercer, he was second only to Irving Berlin as a writer. He owned part of Capitol, was a dear friend of mine. He talked to me for hours about songwriting. He said a song written from inspiration—“My dear old mother died Friday, and I’m so sad and blue”—they’re not worth a dime. “I’ve had people bring me movie scripts with a blue mark with a pencil, ‘song here.’” And, he’d write a song.

He was like the people around Nashville, like Harlan Howard, Cindy Walker, Dallas Frazier. They’re like a plumber, they don’t wait for inspiration. It’d be like calling a plumber and saying, “I have a leak under the sink there,” and he’d say, “I have to wait for inspiration, I can only weld when I’m inspired.” There’s dozens of songwriters like that, and Johnny Mercer was that kind of songwriter, and I tried to be the same.

The main thing is to have a title—then you’ve got something to work on. Take for instance, “No Vacancy.” Cliffie Stone and Sylvester Cross took their wives and went on a vacation to a place called Big Bear. It was during a time that you couldn’t find a place to stay to save your life. They went to see if they could find a place. They slept in their car and nearly froze to death. Cliffie come into the radio station, all red-eyed and tired, and said, “If you’re going to record a song, I’ve got a title for you: ‘No Vacancy.’” I sat down and I patterned it after the old Albert E. Brumley gospel songs. Like Johnny Mercer said, I wrote my last line first—“And my heart beats slower when I read on the door, ‘No Vacancy.’” Johnny Mercer said, “Always repeat that title over and over so people will know what they’ve heard.”

GR: People these days call that “the hook.” I think of your work, it has to be broken down. First of all, there’s your guitar instrumental contribution. It probably says enough to point out that both Chet Atkins and Doc Watson both named their firstborn after Merle Travis. I think of your songwriting in terms of the folk song contributions on one hand, and then the more commercial country and western songs. They have a pop flavor that has been captured by very few American songwriters. Two that come to mind are Hoagy Carmichael and Roger Miller. 

MT: I never have figured out what the heck I am. One place I’ll go, they’ll introduce me as Merle Travis, the guitar player. I’ll think maybe I’m a guitar player. Then I’ll go to some festival, and they’ll say I want you to sing “Dark as a Dungeon,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Lost John” and “John Henry,” and I think maybe I’m a folksinger. Then maybe I get thirsty and get a beer, and somebody in there’ll say, “Hey, I’ve heard your records on jukeboxes. You’ve cost me a lot of money, listening to them records and buyin’ that beer.” Then I think maybe I’m like Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams, maybe I’m a honky-tonk singer. I ain’t figured out what I am yet. Maybe I ain’t nothin’!

GR: There’s good reason to believe you’re all of these things. “Sixteen Tons,” which Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded, is a folk song, and it sold two million copies in 1956. You wrote a folk song which focused the attention of the nation on folk music two to three years before the Kingston Trio emerged and the whole folk music thing came into being. On the pop music side, you wrote “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke (that Cigarette),” which was the first million-seller on Capitol. I’ve read that Chet Atkins was getting started under the aegis of Steven Sholes. The people at RCA came to Chet Atkins and said, “Merle Travis is out in California selling instrumental records. You can play this fingerpicking style. Why don’t you start covering that, and do it for RCA Victor?” There’s very strong evidence that you are a Renaissance man of American music.

MT: I want to tell you a little story about Chet Atkins. I’d rather Chet tell you, because he’s funny. We love each other like brothers, we’re like two old maids, we call each other every week. We talk about everything but git-tars. Chet went from this station to that station. He’d be on a while, and they’d let him go and tell him, “You just are not commercial enough.”

He had a half-brother, Jimmy Atkins, who was a program director at KOA in Denver. I was selling pretty good on Capitol, singing and picking the thumbpick style. Steve Sholes said, “This Travis guy, he’s doing Capitol a lot of good, we’ve got to find somebody who can cover him.” He heard a transcription, a tune called “Canned Heat.” I play the same tune, call it “White Heat.” It’s just a fast blues. Steve Sholes heard that and said, “There’s the guy!”

Steve looked for him everywhere, finally found him in Denver. Steve said, “I heard you play guitar. You play a lot like Merle Travis. Would you like to record for RCA Victor? Do you sing?”

Chet said, “No, I don’t sing.” Steve said, “I’m sorry to hear that. We’re trying to get somebody to cover Merle Travis on Capitol.”

Chet said, “Oh! Well--I can sing that good!”

GR: My favorite Chet and Merle story concerns a country music group. After the show, the musicians all got to imbibing and talking and arguing about who could play better, Chet or Merle. They argued all night, and as the sun was coming up, they said, “We’re going to find out who plays better, we’ll ask Merle and we’ll ask Chet.”

They couldn’t run you down, but they reached Chet at breakfast in Nashville. They’re all crowded around the telephone and they’re all very agitated about this. The spokesman said, “Chet, you’ve got to settle this argument. We’ve been talking about who’s the best country guitar player.” 

And Mr. Atkins said, “Well, Mother Maybelle.”

MT: Yep, that story’s true.

GR: You also made very strong contributions in the development of the modern electric guitar as we know it. I’ve been playing for 28 years, and very early on, I began hearing that you and your friend Paul Bigsby, who was a tool and die maker, developed certain accessories: the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece, and the guitar headstock with the tuners all on one side. That was something you designed early on, wasn’t it, and had Mr. Bigsby build [it]?

MT: I’ll say it this way, and I’m sure that Mr. Fender wouldn’t mind—I designed the Fender guitar, and I have a bunch of stuff laying over here to prove it. I’m sure that Mr. Fender, who is a very dear friend of mind, wouldn’t mind me telling you that I was fortunate enough--I designed the Fender guitar, which was first built by Paul Bigbsy. I have a bunch of pictures here that we’ll talk about.

GR: I have seen this guitar that Mr. Bigsby built, in the Country Music Hall of Fame. It’s quite an item and was certainly very far ahead of its time. 

MT: I think it was 1946 or ’47. I had always had the idea, when you change strings on a guitar, you lay the guitar down in your lap, and to change the first three, you have to reach over, like this--reach over. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if all them keys were in a row?” As a kid in school, I used to draw pictures of a neck like that. A steel guitar is made out of a solidbody. I thought, if you had you a solidbody guitar, there wouldn’t be no use of it being so thick, you know?

I had an idea for a guitar, and Paul Bigsby was a tool and die maker, a pattern maker, and he also announced the motor-sickle races, and I was a motor-sickle enthusiast and I rode motor-sickles a lot, so we got acquainted that way. I’d go to the races with Paul Bigsby and set up and watch him announce the motor-sickle races. I said, “Could you build me a guitar if I draw you a picture of one like I’d like it?” He was really a character, he was a loud-talking fellow with bushy white hair. He said, “I can build anything!” 

I said, “I want you to build me a guitar like this.” I took a piece of script from KXLA and I drawed a picture of a guitar--cutaway and everything--and I drawed the neck, with the keys all on one side, and I said, “I want this to be about an inch thick, solidbody.”

Because a steel guitar, when you hit it, it’ll keep ringing, whereas a hollowbody will sound just so long and quit. Sustainability--you know? I want a solidbody guitar with all the keys on one side. I thought it’d be fancy to put a diamond, a heart, a spade and a club for position dots on the neck. So I dolled it up and drawed a fancy bridge, I have some pictures of it here. Well, he built it, and he built it out of birdesye maple—you say you’ve seen the instrument, well, it was a fine instrument, it had the finest neck I’ve ever seen on a guitar. Then I asked him to put a neck on my Martin guitar, my acoustic guitar, and he put a Bigsby neck on it. 

GR: He did a tremendous job; you still play that guitar today. 

MT: I sure do. As I mentioned earlier, we was playing a Saturday night dance at a place called Placentia, California, four miles from Fullerton, California. One night, Leo Fender come out with a friend of his. He said, “How do you like that guitar you’ve got there?” I said “Oh, I like it.”

He said, “Would you mind if I took it and built one like it, and see how you like it?” I said, “Sure, take it.” So he borrowed it for a week. The next Saturday night he brought my guitar back with one just like it.

He said, “Would you mind getting up and playing some on mine, see how it sounds?” I said, “Of course not.”

So I got up, and as far as I know, I’m the first guy that ever played a Fender guitar. The name Fender wasn’t on the guitar. It was built like the Bigsby.

GR: Was Leo Fender a guitar player, was that his personal instrument?

MT: No, he built mostly steel guitars. Now, Paul Bigsby was his name, but everybody called him P.A., P.A. Bigsby. Somebody seen my guitar, I believe it was Grady Martin or somebody like that, and they went to P.A. Bigsby and said, “I want one them funny-lookin’ solid, flat, stupid-looking guitars like Travis has got, with all keys lined up on one side and about a inch thick.” 

GR: I’ll have to admit, I saw you play that on a jamboree back in the early ’50s I thought was the strangest thing I’d ever seen, but it sounded awfully good.            

MT: Well it played easy and it was nice. First this one, and that one, and about 12 people went to P.A. Bigsby and said, “I want one of them guitars like Travis has got.”

About the 12th one, he said, “I ain’t got time to mess with them things! I work in a factory all day and I announce these motor-sickle races every Saturday night. I ain’t got time to spend making them stupid guitars! Go out to Fullerton! Leo Fender’ll build you one just like it.”

So they’d get his address, and they’d go out to Fullerton, California. Leo Fender would build them a guitar, and it’d be fine. He built one, he built two, he built 200, he built 300, a thousand…he built a factory, he built an empire, then he sold it for $13 million to CBS, Incorporated. Today when I see some young feller playing a Fender guitar, I ask him, “How do you like that guitar?” He’ll say, “Oh, I like it. You can’t beat a Fender guitar.” 

I say, “By the way, I designed that guitar.” You should see ’em. They’ll look at you, they’ll glance at each other and they’ll say, “That old coot, what’s the matter with him?” You’ll see ’em ease off like I got the leprosy.

 GR: If it isn’t indiscreet, how much did you pay for that first guitar?

MT: The one that Bigsby built? Nothing at all. Paul Bigsby was a wonderful man, and I hated to see his passing. He done it more as a challenge than anything else, because of one thing—the Vibrola. You’ve seen the things that you get, a vibrato that you work up and down.

GR: The first ones I saw operated in the direction of the pick stroke.

MT: I had one on my guitar and Chet Atkins had one on his guitar. But you would pull it up and when you let it back down, the strings would be out of tune. Chet and me got together and said, “The thing is a good idea, but it just don’t work. It pulls your guitar out of tune when you use it.” 

I told Bigsby, “I wish these things would work.” He said, “I can fix it. I can fix that thing to where it’ll work perfect.” I said, “Well, take it and fix it.” So he took it and kept it a couple days and brought it back and said, “Now put it back on the guitar and see if it don’t work.” I put it back on the guitar, hit a lick and pulled it up and went errr-nnn-errr, back down, and the guitar was out of tune. 

I said, “Bigsby, you failed! You didn’t do it. Bigsby,” I said, “you say you can do anything, why don’t you build a Vibrola? Why don’t you build one to work?”

He said, “I’ll build one, I’ll put needle points, I’ll build it to where it’ll work perfectly.”

I said, “I just don’t believe you can do it.” 

In about a week, he come bringing over a box, and here was a little square thing, and it said on there, “Bigsby.” 

I’d drawed him a picture, not of the design of the Vibrola itself, but of the handle that went on it. I said, “I want it to go around in a circle to where if I want to play with my hands, it won’t get in the way, but if I want to put my little finger in a little round hook, I can do that and then play with my thumb and move my hand.

So he come up, and he brought this and said, “Now, here’s one. Put this on there and see if it pulls your guitar out of tune.” So we got our screwdrivers out and we took the strings off and we put my new Bigsby Vibrola on the guitar. He said, “Now try it.”

I tuned up real good, and I hit a chord, and I pulled up and down, not the way you pull your pick. Then I pulled it and it went weeee—ooo—weee. When I turned it loose, it come back, and it was perfectly in tune. 

He said, “There, now. I can build anything!” 

I’ve still got the first one he ever built. And he built quite a few of them, and then he sold out to Gibson, for enough money to—for quite a sum, enough that when Paul Bigsby died, why, he was a fairly wealthy man. And I’m very proud to still have the original.

GR: There’s something very American in this, the way things get done. You perceived a need, scratched something out on a piece of script paper or the back of an envelope and gave it to a young man who just had the determination to make the thing work. That’s the way these things get done—the solidbody guitar, the Bigsby Vibrato, the Fender headstock.

MT: Let me say one thing about this, because I would hate for my friend Les Paul to hear me saying that I’m the first fellow that ever had a solidbody guitar, because he had the idea for a solidbody guitar along about the same time I did. And we both had this sped-up recording idea about the same time. He went to putting pickups on railroad ties, and he had a two-by-four with pickups on it.

GR: He is a great innovator.

MT: He designed a guitar called the Les Paul model, that Gibson built, but mine was a little ahead of his. 

GR: Just to summarize, I just wanted to throw a few names at you. Seems to me I’ve heard your work in not only the folksingers and thousands of youngsters who are Travis-picking these days. It seems to me that you directly influenced people like Scotty Moore, who sold a lot of Elvis Presley’s early records. He was Elvis’s accompanist and a very fine musician. He stood strongly behind the tradition of rockabilly music, that Memphis sound that Sam Phillips captured on Sun Records. I heard a lot of your playing in Scotty Moore’s work. I heard a lot of your style in the work of the man who accompanied Martha Carson, Joe Edwards. All of these men owe you a debt of gratitude. It’s been a tremendous honor for me to sit here and talk to you, and meet a man who is in every way bigger and warmer than his legend.

MT: Gamble, let me say this: If I’ve influenced anybody or I’ve ever done anything that’s made anybody any happier, then my 40 years have not been wasted. 

I want to say something about my opinion of Chet Atkins. I believe it will be another century before there will ever be a man who can play guitar like Chet Atkins. Not because he’s a personal friend, but because he can do things with a guitar that nobody else has ever done. I don’t believe anybody will top him in the next hundred years. I’m at the bottom of the heap of thumbpickers. I was early on the radio with it, and somehow the name Travis-picking, my name, got connected with it.

I look up to the young men that I see today, that can outplay me ten to one, and [they] say, “Hey, you’re my idol, I’ve been listening to you since I was so high.” And then they start playing, and play things that I would give anything if I could play. 

GR: I think it was Segovia who said that the two men who were the preeminent American guitarists were Merle Travis and Chet Atkins. And it was Sir Isaac Newton who said, “If I’ve seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” And these young men that are kicking up such a ruckus with their guitars today learned from listening to your records, and Chet’s.

MT: I want to become more acquainted. Let’s not let the path between our houses go too long without treading, lest they grow up with weeds. 

GR: I’ll settle for that.