Folk Songs of The Hills - History

History

In 1944, Merle Travis moved to Hollywood, California, where he made a living by performing minor roles in a Western films and playing with Ray Whitley's Western Swing Band. At the time, Capitol A & R man and producer Lee Gillette was looking for a way to enter the rising market for traditional American folk music created by singers and musicians such as John Jacob Niles, Burl Ives, Josh White, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and The Golden Gate Quartet. Travis was known for his broad repertoire of country standards and outstanding guitar playing. Gillette signed him to a recording contract in 1946 and asked him to record a series of folk and folk-inspired songs accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar (although he usually played a hollow-body electric). The recordings that resulted, taking place at two dates in August 1946, led to the eight titles that appeared in the original 78 rpm version of Folk Songs of the Hills, one of the earliest examples of a concept album. Though a commercial flop at the time, the album was widely admired by musicians, and Travis was invited to preserve some of his performances in a series of Snader Transcriptions, an early form of music video, which can be viewed today on several internet sites and DVDs. In 1955, one song from the album, "Sixteen Tons", was recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford and became a million-selling crosover hit. A number of other songs from the album, such as "Dark as a Dungeon", "John Henry" and "Nine-pound Hammer," entered Travis's regular repertoire and went on to become folk, country and bluegrass standards.

As the American folk music revival gathered steam in the 1950s, the album was reissued on LP with a new cover under the title Back Home (Capitol Records T-891, 1957), adding four more tracks from electrical transcriptions made earlier by Travis in the same style for radio broadcast. Its first appearance on CD was as a remastered reissue by Bear Family Records 1993, including all 12 songs in Back Home, where it was coupled with the thematically related 1963 Capitol LP Songs of the Coal Mines. The latest reissue to date is Capitol's own remastered CD of 1996 (Capitol Vintage 35810), reprising all songs of the previous reissues as well as a further track dating from the 1940s, "This World is Not My Home".