The Merle Travis Story: 24 Greatest Hits

 (7 customer reviews)

Wednesday, September 23, 1998Merle Travis inspired Chet Atkins, Doc Watson, and hundreds of other guitar players and these guitar players often influenced thousands, or hundreds of thousands of the younger guitar players that are very popular today, and some that are just bar room guitarists. Before anyone else made the guitar popular as a solo instrument that could stand alone, Merle Travis popularized the wondeful instrument that is today the most popular of all musical instruments.Though Merle was a great solo guitarist, he was also a popular singer at one time. Around the end of world war two, Merle Travis had a string of hits that were in the top 40 country charts, if there were country charts in that time period. In this album most of Merle's popular vocals are present. I bought this album and near wore it out. Both the guitar playing and the singing are great. The songs on this album are what catapulted Merle Travis to National fame, though he was well...Read more

anyone seeking out early merle travis should note that these recordings, although fine in their own right, are later recordings and may want to check out "The Best of Merle Travis: Sweet Temptation 1946-53" instead.

This appears to be manna sent from heaven on the surface. But when you delve a little deeper into this cd, you discover it isn't manna, but more like a great big stack of juicy pancakes. These are not the original versions of the songs. These however, are fantastic re-recordings done in the late 1970's. Merle isn't in his finest voice here, but the vocals were never the best part of his songs. His guitar playing is top of the line here. The sound is crisp. Don't think to yourself that you don't need this because you have the original recordings of these songs, you need this too to get a rightful glimpse of what Merle Travis was all about.