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Merle Travis
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. His songs' lyrics often discussed both the lives and the economic exploitation of American coal miners. Among his many well-known songs and recordings are " Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues", " I am a Pilgrim" and " Dark as a Dungeon". 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. Travis picking is a syncopated style of guitar fingerpicking rooted in ragtime music in which alternating chords and bass notes are plucked by the thumb while melodies are simultaneously plucked by the index finger. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977. Biography Ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Five Minutes To Live
''Five Minutes to Live'' is a 1961 American neo-noir crime film directed by Bill Karn. It was re-titled ''Door-to-Door Maniac'' for an American International Pictures re-release in 1966. The film stars Johnny Cash, who wrote and sang the title song, and Cay Forrester, who wrote the screenplay and whose husband, Ludlow Flower, produced. ''Five Minutes to Live'' was one of only two theatrical film roles in which Cash performed on-screen in his career (while he appeared in ''The Road to Nashville'' six years later, it was as himself in a musical; '' A Gunfight'', ten years later, was the other); he would appear in several made-for- television films and do some voice-over work in film later in his career. Plot Fred sits in a dark room, detailing his most recent bank robbery. He talks about how he teamed up with hardened criminal Johnny Cabot to execute his plan. Cabot is about to take the wife of the bank's vice president hostage. He holds her until he receives a call from Fred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark As A Dungeon
"Dark as a Dungeon" is a song written by singer-songwriter Merle Travis. It is a lament about the danger and drudgery of being a coal miner in a shaft mine. It has become a rallying song among miners seeking improved working conditions. The song achieved much of its fame when it was performed by Johnny Cash in his Folsom Prison concert ('' At Folsom Prison''). During this live performance, one of the prisoners in the background was laughing, and Cash started to chuckle. He gently admonished the man, "No laughing during the song, please!" The man yelled something about "Hell!" and Cash answered, "I know, 'hell'!" When he finished the song, Cash made a comment that was largely repeated, somewhat out of context, by Joaquin Phoenix in the 2005 film '' Walk the Line'': "I just wanted to tell you that this show is being recorded for an album released on Columbia Records, so you can't say 'hell' or 'shit' or anything like that." Recorded versions * Merle Travis on ''Folk Songs of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ike Everly
The Everly Brothers were an American rock duo, known for steel-string acoustic guitar playing and close harmony singing. Consisting of Isaac Donald "Don" Everly (February 1, 1937 – August 21, 2021) and Phillip "Phil" Everly (January 19, 1939 – January 3, 2014), the duo combined elements of rock and roll, country, and pop, becoming pioneers of country rock. The duo was raised in a musical family, first appearing on radio singing along with their father Ike Everly and mother Margaret Everly as "The Everly Family" in the 1940s. When the brothers were still in high school, they gained the attention of prominent Nashville musicians like Chet Atkins, who began to promote them for national attention. They began writing and recording their own music in 1956, and their first hit song came in 1957, with " Bye Bye Love", written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The song hit No. 1 in the spring of 1957, and additional hits would follow through 1958, many of them written by the Brya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mose Rager
Moses Rager (April 2, 1911 – May 14, 1986) was a guitar player from Kentucky. He is credited with creating the thumb-picking style of guitar playing - which he taught to Merle Travis. Laverda Rager was the daughter of Mose Rager. She was interviewed by musicologist Erika Brady Erika Brady is an American anthropologist, writer, speaker, and radio show host. She is a past-president of the Kentucky Folklore Society Fellows and editor of the journal ''Southern Folklore''. Career Brady studied at Harvard University, Univer ... in 2000. References External links Darrel McClellan's Mose Rager Page 1911 births 1986 deaths Guitarists from Kentucky 20th-century American guitarists {{Kentucky-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kennedy Jones (musician)
Kennedy Jones or Jonesey (1 August 1900 – 6 September 1990) was an American guitarist and music writer. He was born on a farm in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. He received his inspiration from his mother Alice who played several instruments. He married Irene Hicks, a pianist, and they performed together early in his career. He claimed to be the first guitarist to play using a thumbpick - at a square dance in 1918. Previously thumbpicks had been used only for the banjo or Hawaiian guitar. He also played the fiddle and declined to join Merle Travis's band ''The Drifting Pioneers.'' Jones composed the thumbpickers anthem "Cannonball Rag," but when Travis recorded the tune in the 1940s, the latter received the credit. In 1939 Jones moved to Chicago. He played in several bands, one which included his sons, Donald and Kennedy Jr. His daughter Farre Lee too was an accomplished guitarist/singer, who regularly performed on radio station WLW. In the 1950s Jones moved to Cincin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnold Shultz
Arnold Shultz (1886–1931) was an American fiddler and guitarist who is noted as a major influence in the development of the "thumb-style," or "Travis picking" method of playing guitar. Biography Shultz, the son of a former Slavery in the United States, slave, was born into a family of touring musicians in Ohio County, Kentucky, Ohio County, Kentucky, in 1886.Cantwell, 31. In 1900, Shultz began studying guitar under his uncle, developing a jazzy "thumb-style" method of playing guitar that eventually evolved into the Kentucky style for which such musicians as Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and Merle Travis would be known. Professionally, Shultz was a laborer, traveling from Kentucky through Mississippi and New Orleans, working with coal or as a deck hand. In the early 1920s, he played fiddle in the otherwise white hillbilly music, hillbilly and Dixieland band of Forest "Boots" Faught. To the occasional complaints this brought (objections like "You've got a colored fiddle. We don't wan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fingerpicking
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (plucking individual notes with a single plectrum, commonly called a "pick"). The term "fingerstyle" is something of a misnomer, since it is present in several different genres and styles of music—but mostly, because it involves a completely different technique, not just a "style" of playing, especially for the guitarist's picking/plucking hand. The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking except in classical guitar circles, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the US. The terms "fingerstyle" and "fingerpicking" also applied to similar string instruments such as the banjo. Music arranged for fingerstyle playing can include chords, arpeggios (the notes of a chord played one after the other, as opposed t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Prine
John Edward Prine (; October 10, 1946 – April 7, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter of country-folk music. He was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death. He was known for an often humorous style of original music that has elements of protest and social commentary. Born and raised in Maywood, Illinois, Prine learned to play the guitar at age 14. He attended classes at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. After serving in West Germany with the U.S. Army, he returned to Chicago in the late 1960s, where he worked as a mailman, writing and singing songs first as a hobby and then as a club performer. A member of Chicago's folk revival, a laudatory review by critic Roger Ebert built Prine's popularity. Singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson heard Prine at Steve Goodman's insistence, and Kristofferson invited Prine to be his opening act, leading to Prine's eponymous debut album with Atlantic Re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muhlenberg County
Muhlenberg County () is a county in the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 30,928. Its county seat is Greenville. History Muhlenberg County was formed in 1798 from the areas known as Logan and Christian counties. Muhlenberg was the 34th county to be founded in Kentucky. Muhlenberg was named after General Peter Muhlenberg, who was a colonial general during the American Revolutionary War. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has an area of , of which is land and (2.6%) is water. Features The two primary aquatic features of Muhlenberg County are the Green River and Lake Malone. The northern area of the county's geography includes gently rolling hills, river flatlands, and some sizeable bald cypress swamps along Cypress Creek and its tributaries. The southern portion consists of rolling hills with higher relief. The southern part of the county is dotted with deep gorges. This area is known for many sandstone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Country Music Hall Of Fame
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, is one of the world's largest museums and research centers dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of American vernacular music. Chartered in 1964, the museum has amassed one of the world's most extensive musical collections. History of the museum The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is the world's largest repository of country music artifacts. Early in the 1960s, as the Country Music Association's (CMA) campaign to publicize country music was accelerating, CMA leaders determined that a new organization was needed to operate a country music museum and related activities beyond CMA's scope as a simply a trade organization. Toward this end, the nonprofit Country Music Foundation (CMF) was chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964 to collect, preserve, and publicize information and artifacts relating to the history of country music. Through CMF, industry leaders raised money with the effort of CMA ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame
The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame was established in 1970 by the Nashville Songwriters Foundation, Inc. in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. A non-profit organization, its objective is to honor and preserve the songwriting legacy that is uniquely associated with the music community in the city of Nashville. The Foundation's stated purpose is to educate, archive, and celebrate the contributions of the members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame to the world of music. The Nashville Songwriters Foundation, Inc., is governed by a board of directors, currently consisting of thirteen members. Annually, three songwriters are inducted into the Hall of Fame. Inductees 1970s ;1970 *Gene Autry * Johnny Bond * Albert E. Brumley * A.P. Carter * Ted Daffan * Vernon Dalhart * Rex Griffin * Stuart Hamblen * Pee Wee King * Vic McAlpin * Bob Miller * Leon Payne * Jimmie Rodgers * Fred Rose * Redd Stewart * Floyd Tillman * Merle Travis * Ernest Tubb * Cindy Walker * Hank ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb. Ragtime pieces (often called "rags") are typically composed for and performed on piano, though the genre has been adapted for a variety of instruments and styles. "Maple Leaf Rag", " The Entertainer", "Fig Leaf Rag", " Frog Legs Rag", and "Sensation Rag" are among the most popular songs of the genre. The genre emerged from African American communities in the Southern and Midwestern United States, evolving from folk and minstrel styles and popular dances such as the cakewalk and combining with elements of classical and march music. Ragtime significantly influenced the development of jazz. In the 1960's, the genre had began to be revived with the publication '' The All Played Ragtime'' and artists rec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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