Merle Travis & Ronnie Prophet "Shiek of Araby"

[MikeMandaville]

Shiek starts at 3:28

[treetoptop]

What Merle could do with one thumb and one finger would confound most players using all five digits!

[clydehrichards]

yep

[PeterPug007]

I didn't have a computer growing up...I still suck. :)

[8sotgun]

this cool good job

[guitarcoyote1]

that's my guitar hero right there !!! and you can play that stuff on a "strat"....but I still love my old Gretsch !! R.I.P. Merle...Chet...Jerry...your music is forever !!

[steeletara01]

2:39!

[NeitherTime]

Amazing

[danyel19090]

ben platte !!!!

[PeterPug007]

Wow, I had no idea Ronnie Prophet was such a kick-ass guitarist?? What is with these country dudes...are they all born with incredible technique or what?? :)

[franksinbeans]

@PeterPug007 they didnt have computers so they played guitar instead

[scd574]

Awesome Picking! Thanks For Posting!

[Vermillion2176]

Those big archtops, primarily Gibsons, really ruled back then. They still have bucketloads of tone, when all the other guitars try to make up with electronics.

Big Ron

(love my L5)

[pwea1]

Merl's huge smile at the end is so great .... I love the way he plays so well in his usual perfect "Trav " form as Ronnie plays his heart out , and Ronnie so proud to be on stage with the Grand Master . Merle being his usual verbal humble self , yet tearing it up on the fretts and still leaving the host shine in the audiences eyes ... Merle Travis , the ultimate showman !

[alexdroogie100]

Wow... I would NOT try to do that on a Strat...maybe on my SG...

[EddieVanhangover]

fantastic

[Balikote]

Everytime Merle smiles when playing . i do smile too...nice man ,hot picker ,very cool music writer.

[cavaliererosanero]

amo questa canzone.bellissima

[rleary1]

frickin awesome playing. Merle rulez

[ThePumalives]

I love his famous smile at 1:20

[tatsandteles]

Wow. This is so cool. Love the vibrato bends. Way ahead of his time. True innovation. Could listen to this all day long. A true entertainer. Thanks for posting this!

[ernlay]

Merle started it all, as far as that kind of playing. Chet even said so. He would still be considered very good today. Others have certainly added greatly to his style. So much so, it's another style entirely. There is a lot more who play worse than there is that play better than Merle.

[wladeslaw]

Th e Ronnie Prophet show is the earliest memory I have of guitar playing! He looks identical to my earliest memory, brings a sentimental tear to my eye!

[striae]

good strumming, kiddos!

[djmoore20041]

Cool beyond words! Nobody was better than Merle, nobody!

[MarijnvdZaag]

WAS is probably the right word. He's very very good with two fingers, but (at least technically) players like Tommy Emmanuel can do so much more with all five fingers.

[KapnKoolio]

djmoore, maybe there's some sentimental reason that makes you say nobody is better than Travis, and that's OK, but it doesn't take too much listening to admit that Chet Atkins and others can play circles around him.

[zen234]

Oh no they can't!

[Okieone77]

What you have to remember is, Merel Travis INVENTED that style of "boom-chuck" picking. Chet learned and copied, (and yes, improved) the style, and many others have in turn copied (and improved?) chet's picking.

But Merle gets very high marks for being the ORIGINAL. He was great.

[guillone]

Not when Merle was young. Nobody plays like Tommy Emmanuel so to make the comparison is ludicrous. Who cares anyway. Merle was a legend of country music and the first one to admire and complement other talented musicians. I've met him several times and got to play bass for him one night at McCabes on Pico Blvd. It was my brother and I and Joe and Rose Lee Maphis and Merle; and Patsy Montana who was really old and still a hoot! I never met a more humble, nicer man than Merle Travis!

[hornedtoadjon1]

that was when musicians could and would play!!!

[DrClawizdead]

Nice shout out to Ernie for making the song so famous :)

[rossfletcher22]

Merle's the best! and how about that suit!!

[JAGU54]

Classics! Wonderful!

John.

[ladyblue614]

WOW! GREAT!!

[girlitheglen]

I was raised on Merle Travis music. The first time I heard the Beatles, it was George Harrison's Travis/Atkins style of playing that struck me and made me a fan.

[blue454nova]

How frickin small was Merle Travis? He looks like a little boy holding that guitar...

[rotolo]

that guitar is huge!!

[club349]

is it a super 400 customized? If so its like 18" at the lower bout

[BluesGuy101]

@rotolo

Gibson Super 400

[rockinredneck57]

I remember Ronnie Prophet in Nashville in the early 70's playing at the Carousel Club in Printers Alley. I went to school with his son for a while.

[HungarianGuitarist]

amazing

[newriko2]

"I'll see you in my dreams" is the bomb! whoa, amazing.

[alliecat1941]

He sounds alot like Chet Atkins

[dziegele]

It's more the other way around. Merle was such a hero of Chet's that Chet named his daughter Merle! (and Doc Watson named his son Merle for the same reason)

[rotolo]

chet idolized merle..

[rll1954]

The Strat has to be the most versatile guitar ever made. Leo Fender was a genius.

[whitt702]

Made a typing error, in was 1957 when Merle Was on the Town Hall Party with the Standel.

[whitt702]

Merle's Super 400 Special sounded different on different shows. My favorite sound was on the b/w Cannonball Rag about 1967. He got a much deeper and "chunkier" tone from the Standel amp than from the Peavey or other amps. thanks.

[bluegrasscannuk]

Anybody out there old enough( mature enough) to remember Ronnie Prophet in the mid 1960s when he was the featured single at The Monterey Club in Montreal , billed as their "Boy Wonder"? He and Marty Reno would switch as singles between the Monterey and The Blue Angel on Drummond Street.

[dannyknapp]

good joke, but Merle don't owe his soul to nobody. his name is in every guitar magazine, not Tennessee Ernie Ford or anybody else !

[Rootsguitar]

What is the nanme of the first song ?

[bennylesbonstuyaux]

Sixteen Tons

[guitaneman]

didnt he own the orange gretsch 6120 eddie cochran used to play before he had his custom merle travis fretboard guitar made.

[kattsas]

It is in fact a Gibson Super 400 not a Bigsby the Bigsby guitar was not his workhorse as the 400's were, his Bigsby tremalo's were all fitted with the long handle seen. Bigsby did do the neck on Merle's D-28 Martin. Guild made a Travis model arch top for him.

[kissmybuttdimple]

super 400 you say.... my god.. he lit that big monster up.... great style...

[backstageblues]

No, it was actually an early Bigsby guitar that was customized to look like a Super 400 and it had that kind of tailpiece until Merle put on a Bigsby tailpiece. That was his main guitar eer since.

[texastruett]

hes my great grandfather

[dreadnought45]

To legalrule: His electric guitar is a Gibson Super 400. His acoustics are various Martin D-28's.

[legalrule]

Great stuff, what kind of guitar was Merle using? was it a guild, gibson or gretch?

[CosmicTraveler]

The great Barry Keane on drums!

[hanker95]

haanker95........ I hope Muriel, Chet akins are picking together now.

[elletsco]

fine stuff. don't forget where we are now comes from where they were then. hat's off to the old masters.

[assfax]

Sounds as good as he ever did. "Smartass!"

[merletravis]

thanx for merle ;)

[jazzbass0321]

But meaning in 400 of being super!

With that, the tone of the jazz base, I am stunning.

[billga2007]

Ronnie had good taste in who he had on the show. Thanks for this video . As a fan of Merle , I live for this .