Merle Travis

I have a new first song since "SF Bay Blues" will take some time to arrange. "Shady Grove," in a rather straight-forward "Travis-picking" style. There's poetic justice in this change since the legendary guitarist Merle Travis was, in a manner of speaking, an influential baby-sitter in my childhood.

It happened this way. My mom used to like to shop at Farmer's Market. What to do with me and my brother? There was a TV station near the market and in those early days of television each afternoon featured several hours of live country-western entertainment. A live audience was invited to watch -- and so the mothers of L.A. started dropping off their kids there while they shopped! The TV show became a kind of day-care center, so much so that kiddy activities were planned, sometimes even on camera.

Merle Travis was a regular on the show, and several times he took me under his wing. I even got to strum his guitar. Travis was known for his two-finger picking style, which later I picked up (to my detriment, I learned later, when I had to relearn the more popular three- and four-finger picking styles). It's amazing what Travis can do with two fingers! The great Doc Watson named his son after Merle Travis, and when the album "Doc Watson and Son" came out while I was at UCLA, all the folk world was abuzz with excitement. Merle Watson later died in a freak farming accident.

"Shady Grove," then, is executed in Travis style and just to be really traditional, I'm going to do it with only two fingers. This one ought to come together rather quickly.