Merle Travis

Now, the article here doesn't say specifically what he is selling, but it does tick off some of the stuff in, in his collection.

Uh, uh, for the gearheads out there, we have two '58 Gibson Explorers, a 1963 Guild Merle Travis, one of only three ever made.

Uh, he also owns three of those custom five-neck guitars, including the stage-played 2004 Hamer five-neck Karina, which...

And that one will be in the auction, it does say specifically.

If you think about some of the songs that were of that period, they were either created at the time or they were popular at the time.

But I'm thinking of the likes of "16 Tons" by, it was actually written by a, a guy called Merle Travis, and he was writing about the experiences of, uh, coal miners in Britain.

"16 Tons": You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

So it's a song about being a miner, owing your soul to the company store.

is a song written

by Merle Travis.

Okay.

All right.

Stop.

All right.

So Merle Travis wrote this, I think in 1946 in the 1940s anyway.

Uh, and he sang it and recorded it and it It became a little local thing.

And this is what kept people on the down and out in similar conditions.

In 1947, Merle Travis launched into one of his folk songs about coal miners and company towns.

His finger style work is so distinctive that most people now call it Travis picking.

Probably the most significant of the folk songs is Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl ballads.

And to win your love, I never will stop trying.

Two gambling dudes, first Merle Travis, informed us that he's a natural-born gambling man, whereupon Buzz Butler confessed to being a gambling fool.

We're here on location at Donnie's Den, a disreputable and dangerous-looking casino.

Twin brothers Red and Fred got a gift from Grandma out of nowhere.

I can think of one.

Merle Travis? Well, I guess he uses one.

Did Don Rich use it? I was thinking Freddie King.

Freddie King used one?