Fastest thumb in the US -Merle Travis

[Spudman]

For those of you who know little or nothing about Merle Travis...join the club. I don't either, but the boy sure do know how ta play. Watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtJhnExStaw

Those of you who know of Travis maybe you can shed some light. He's quite the picker.

 

[tot_Ou_tard]

That's why they call that style of playing "Travis Picking".

Notice that he only uses his thumb and index finger.

But other than that, I don't know anything about him.

 

[t_ross33]

Merle Travis had a huge influence on the "Nashville" sound, and wrote a number of hits. Here's a bio.

 

[jpfeifer]

Spudman,

That was a great find on Youtube. I've only known of Merle Travis from reading about Chet Atkins. It seems that they had a similar style although Chet Atkins took it a little further. It's really cool to see this video and notice the he only used two fingers of his right hand to pick with. That's a lot of sound that he is getting from only those two fingers.

Thanks for sending this link.

-- Jim

 

[Spudman]

The reason I even looked for him on youtube was because as I was learning to play guitar it was the thumb and forefinger that I was using on my picking hand too. A friend saw it and said "hey, that is the Merle Travis style of finger picking."

I was thinking about that yesterday and just thought I would check the tube. Glad you liked it. He's pretty cool.

 

[Robert]

Absolutely awesome! That stuff is so cool, yet so hard to master.

 

[SuperSwede]

Very cool.. was that guitar a Country Gentleman?