Larry Sunbrock, Natchee The Indian & Mac- Part 3

Well that's show biz!

You can see from my last blog that Clayton "Mac" McMichen wasn't above having a little fun and making a little money. Same with Sunbrock. He staged a huge fiddle competition extravaganza in West Virgina with Clark Kessinger later that year (1937). Dubbed by True Magazine "the greatest cowboy conman," Sunbrock's ill-fated rodeo and swing concert at Municipal Stadium in 1939, with Benny Goodman and his Orchestra, was, no doubt, one of the most unusual jazz gigs in Cleveland history.

I asked Juanita McMichen Lynch if Sunbrock had ever scammed Mac. "Why heavens no," she replied. "Larry knew Mac would kill him. They were always straight with each other."

Larry continued promoting his circus and wild west thrill shows through the 1940s and 50s, offering his "rubes" a thousand dollars if they could stay on a Brahma bull named "Big Sid" for ten seconds.

In the 60s Sunbrock turned again to music promotion, sponsoring shows with the Dick Clark Unit, which featured leading artists like Bobby Vee. He even held a rock n'roll extravaganza with rock bands sandwiched around a 20 minute poetry recitation by Cassius "I Am the Greatest" Clay (Muhammed Ali). Clay traded "good-natured banter and insults" with the sold-out audience. Of course his all-time great promotion occured in 1965 (see first Sunbrock blog), when he promoted an all-star country music show in Birmingham, Alabama, faked a heart attack, fled with the proceeds in a hired ambulance, and never paid the artists, including country music legend Red Foley.

Was Natchee a real Apache Indian? Larry Sunbrock would never confess. You can read his newspaper article in the last blog. Perhaps I should shed some light on this mystery man.

Natchee the Indian was born Lester Vernon Storer around 1913 in Peebles, Ohio. He was an old-time musician whose tricks included loosening the bowstrings and playing with the bow on back side of the fiddle and the strings against the fiddle strings. The trick fiddler was popular in West Virginia and southern Ohio in the early 1930s before being hired by Sunbrock to play against the top fiddlers including McMichen, Curly Fox and Clark Kessinger.

In the mid-1930's Natchee and guitarist Lloyd "Cowboy" Copas traveled with promoter Larry Sunbrock, whose staged fiddle contests were fixed (most of the fiddlers were paid a flat fee by Sunbrock regardless whether they won or lost. Curly Fox was paid a fee of $250). There is some doubt that Natchee, who dressed as an indian, was even an Indian; he was rumored to be either Italian or Greek.

To add to the confusion, he worked on radio with "Indian Bill and Little Montana" (Bill and Evalina Stallard). He also worked around Dayton and Cincinnati with Emory Martin and with Jimmie Skinner. Aside from all rumors, people who saw Natchee remembered him for his showmanship. By the 1950s was found living in Chicago.

Juanita McMichen Lynch, Clayton's daughter knew him. When I asked her about Natchee she handed me a photo of him (see last blog) and related how Natchee turned up broke and dirty at Bert Layne's door. Dooley (Bert's wife, who was her mother's sister) let him in- he hadn't eaten or bathed in days. After he showered and ate they turned him loose, never to see or hear from him again.

It was a far cry from his hey-day in the 1930s when thousands and thousands of admiring fans cried his name...

All the good times are passed and gone,
All the good time are o'er.

Larry Sunbrock, Natchee the Indian & Mac- Part 2

What do you mean we, Kemosabe?

If you look at the photo on the left you will see Cowboy Copas, Natchee the Indian and an unidentified bassist. (Click to enlarge)

According to Merle Travis, Natchee the Indian did not talk so he couldn't have utter the immortal line above- it must have been Tonto.

If you got to know Natchee The Indian you could just call him by his nickname, The Indian.

Here's how promoter Larry Sunbrock presented Natchee. This is from an actual newspaper article circa 1936:

Times were hard in the 1930s. Sometimes performers had to play anywhere just to survive. Maybe we should just let Merle Travis tell the story of McMichen and Natchee, after all he was there in 1937, playing with the Georgia Wildcats.

According to Travis in his The Clayton McMichen Story 1982: "We played lots and lots of major theaters, the biggest halls in many towns. A man named Larry Sunbrock was doing the bookings. They called them "Fiddlin' Contests" but they were nothing more than today's country Music Spectaculars.

They had worlds of people who were famous on the radio. Records didn't mean alot they couldn't be played on the radio. Records were something you did now and then. We would go to one big city, say Cleveland- Larry Sunbrock would buy an hour each day on two different radio stations.

One hour was taken by Clayton McMichen and his Georgia Wildcats. The other was taken by Natchee The Indian and his band which was fronted by a young feller who called himself Cowboy Copas.

"We were all friends but you'd never know it by listening to our radio programs. We'd play our show and all week this is the way things would go. McMichen would say in his nasal Georgian accent: Howdy, howdy howdy. I hear there's an Indian in town playing on another station that thinks he can beat me fiddlin'. If that indian Natchee beats me Sunday, I'll eat my fiddle on the stage."

"On the other show Cowboy Copas, doing the talking for Natchee the Indian (Natchee never talked on the radio) would say: I'm just a country boy from Oklahoma. This Indian Natchee is my friend. There's a man named Clayton Mcmichen that says he can beat my Indian friend fiddlin' but come down Sunday afternoon and we'll send this braggin' Georgian back down south were he belongs."

"This was the way Larry Sunbrock wanted things to go. There'd be arguments, fist fights and hair pullin' to show faith in their favorite fiddler. Pepole would line up for blocks, they wanted to get in and root for their fiddler to win. The way of judging was to hold a hand over each fiddler's head and judge from the applause. McMichen got a nice response but when the hand went over Natchee the Indian they almost tore the house down- Natchee was the winner.

Clayton McMichen went to the microphone and delivered this classic speech: Ladies and gentlemen, all of you who applauded for me, much obliged.. and the rest of you can just go to hell."

Larry Sunbrock, Natchee the Indian, & Mac- Part 1

Hi,

The circus is in town! Two if the most colorful and bizarre characters to ever invade old-time hillbilly music are here: promoter Larry Sunbrock and Natchee the Indian.

What does this have to do with Mac? You say Clayton McMichen wouldn't stand for this foolishness...

Don't tell me Merle Travis is involved, what! Clark Kessinger you say...noooooo. Curly Fox was there, I don't believe it! Red Foley, nah. Even Hank Jr. and Tammy Wynette, no way.

It's true- I swear, and if you don't believe me ask Larry, he will tell you the truth...

Well, let the show begin!!! Here's an article about Larry, somehow still alive in '65. Who'd o' thunk it:

Sting of Stings? By David Vest

This is the story as I watched it unfold, and as those who could get into rooms I couldn't enter shared it with me. Most of it I know to be true, the rest I have on good authority.

The year was about 1965. It was the biggest country music show to hit Birmingham in many years. As a matter of fact, it was so big it made no sense. All over town, music professionals were shaking their heads. Even if he sold out the Municipal Auditorium, filling every seat, how was the promoter, a man named Larry Sunbrock, planning to cover his expenses and pay all the high-priced talent he had booked?

Surely Sunbrock knew what he was doing. He had been a successful promoter at least since the 1930s, when he used to stage wildly popular fiddling contests. But if you did the math, multiplied the ticket price ($3 or $4) by the number of seats in the old Albert Boutwell Municipal Auditorium (well under 5,000), you couldn't see how Sunbrock was going to break even, much less make a profit.

The legendary Red Foley topped the bill. Then came Sonny James, followed by The Wilburn Brothers (Teddy and Doyle) and young Hank Williams, Jr., plus a busload of veteran Nashville musicians including Don Helms on pedal steel guitar, and a special appearance by the reigning Miss World.

As if this weren't enough, local musicians' union rules required Sunbrock to hire a local back-up band on top of everything else. The best-known local outfit was the Country Boy Eddie Show Band, which featured Wynette Byrd (later known as Tammy Wynette) on vocals and yours truly on piano.

The show had everything but fire-eaters, so Country Boy Eddie brought one along. The thing to consider is that in those days any one of these major acts might have filled the hall unaided. Red Foley, famous for songs like "Smoke on the Water," "This Old House" and "Old Shep," was something like the Bing Crosby of country music, not to mention Pat Boone's father-in-law. Sonny James was a local favorite and major crossover artist with a string of pop hits. The Wilburn Brothers had their own syndicated television show out of Nashville. Hank Williams, Jr. was only 14 or 15 but had his first hit record on the charts ("Long Gone Lonesome Blues") plus his famous father's name and his mother's road managing skills (yes, Audrey Williams was on the show, too).

No doubt about it, Birmingham was excited. Country Boy Eddie had Sunbrock on his program all week, giving him free air time for promotion. Homer Milam gave him the run of his recording studio to tape radio spots, feeling it was good for business just to be associated with an event of this magnitude. Milam later said that Sunbrock ran up a sizable long distance bill on the studio phone.

As the Country Boy Eddie band took the stage, just before the curtain opened, Hank Williams, Jr. appeared at the piano with a guitar and said, "Gimme an E." I had barely played the note for him when his mother appeared, glaring at me and telling Hank, Jr., "Don't be talking to him!" as she pulled him away. I have no idea what that was about. I asked Red Foley about it and he said she was keeping the boy on a tight leash and not letting him out of her sight.

The people in the audience probably had no idea that the opening act included someone who would become one of the greatest stars in country music history. The artist not yet known as Tammy Wynette sang her number and joined in background vocals. It was a strange assembly. The band included Whitey Puckett, an Albino clarinet player (not every country and western act had one of those); Butterbean Flippo, who painted speckles on his face with a magic marker and played electric bass; Johnny Gore, a lady's man who played hot electric guitar but tended to solo all the way through every song; Mickey, the fire-eater; Mason "Tex" Dixon, Lee Hood and Bill Compton on acoustic guitars; a steel player whose name I don't recall; me on piano; and Country Boy Eddie on fiddle and spontaneous (and highly realistic) mule noises.

We played our tunes and got offstage, returning later to help back up The Wilburns and Red Foley. At one point Miss World came out and I was asked to dance with her while the band played "The Twist."

I walked out into the audience to watch Hank, Jr. Everyone in the business had been talking about him. In those days he sang nothing but his father's material, but he was damned effective in doing it. You could feel the goosebumps rising in the crowd. Hank, Sr. had been dead only about 13 or 14 years, and many of the audience had seen him perform.

Shortly before Red Foley was to go on, there was a commotion backstage. A stretcher appeared, and the promoter, Sunbrock, was on it. Someone whispered that he had suffered a heart attack. I got close enough to see that his usually pink skin was pale. There was a white line around his mouth.

Red Foley leaned over to him and said, "Larry, this is awful. I'm so sorry. Obviously we'll send everyone home right now and attend to you."

"No," said Sunbrock, "no, never mind me." And, painfully trying to lift himself, he said, "the show must go on."

"I can't go out there now, under these conditions," said Foley. "I couldn't live with myself, and you like this."

"Please, Red," said the man on the stretcher. "Please. For me."

"All right, Larry, all right." You could practically feel the lump in Foley's throat as he promised the fallen promoter that he'd say nothing to the audience and fulfill the commitment.
So we went back onstage and played "Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy" and "Old Shep" and the other favorites. The crowd roared its approval.

Later someone came backstage and announced that the gate receipts were missing. It was rumored that a satchel of money had been carried out on the stretcher, under the sheet. Calls were made. None of the local hospitals had admitted a Larry Sunbrock. Someone claimed to have seen Sunbrock's assistant driving the ambulance, heading out of town.

A few months later I visited Red Foley in his office, in Nashville. He told me that none of the artists had been paid for the Birmingham show. "I understand that Sunbrock put on a rock and roll show the next night in Mississippi," he said. And a gospel show in Louisiana soon after.

I thought it best not to mention that, unlike the famous people, and unlike Homer Milam, I had been paid for my night's work. Musicians Local #256 had required the money up front for the local players' services.

Whether it was the sting of stings or just a bizarre misunderstanding, it was one hell of an experience.

Jimmie Rodgers and Clayton McMichen

Hi,

Here's a photo (Click to enlarge) of Jimmie Rodgers and Clayton McMichen in Tupelo, Mississippi, in December 1929 that's displayed in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

By 1929, Jimmie Rodgers had experienced a meteoric rise from obscurity to stardom similar in many ways to the later experiences of Hank Williams and Elvis Presley. By summer he was making in excess of $1,000 a week in royalties.

On top of this, according to Rodgers, he made "$1,500 a week" playing the R-K-O’s Interstate Circuit tour and Loew’s vaudeville circuit. By 1929 he was a millionaire; he built a house in Kerrville Texas, bought a fancy new Buick, new clothes and had all the trappings of success.

So Jimmie was planning a some concerts during the winter of 1929. Who did he select to play fiddle? One of the best: Clayton McMichen.

"Everybody knows McMichen" said a concert poster advertising a concert featuring Jimmie Rodgers and McMichen in Chattanooga which was part of Rodger's tour across the south and southwest. Rodgers considered Mac his "good pal" and in 1932 would call on Mac to help him with his recordings.

Cccording to the 1977 book, Jimmie The Kid: "Clayton McMichen, the Georgia fiddler, with whom Rodgers later recorded, claimed he introduced Rodgers to Ralph Peer in Atlanta in 1926 or 1927."

This claim seems unlikely for many reasons. We know from the two photographs of McMichen and Rodgers (the above dated Dec. 1929 and another dated 1930 that's clearly early in the year) and the Chattanooga concert poster that Mac was part of the winter tour. When they met is uncertain. According to the book Jimmie The Kid, Gid Tanner met Rodgers in Atlanta so it could be assumed Rodgers met Mac in Atlanta as well.

More on Jimmie and Mac later,

Richard

Clayton McMichen Story- Cont'd

Hi,

For all you music triva buffs: Who was Clayton McMichen's first fiddle teacher? If you look on the web you'll probably see that his father and several uncles who played fiddle taught the youngster fiddle tunes.

The photo (click to enlarge) is a PR photo for WLS in 1933. From left to right, Bert Layne, Clayton McMichen, Jack Dunnigan and Slim Bryant.

When Clayton was a young boy he did learn to play the fiddle from his uncles and his father, a trained violinist. His father Mitchell played Viennese waltzes at the uptown hotel "crinoline" dances. But his father wasn't his first teacher!

According to Juanita McMichen Lynch. "Mitchell was a concert violinist and wouldn't let my dad touch his violin. So Mitchell hid the fiddle under his bed so no one could mess with it. When he would go out my Dad would take it out from under the bed and sneak out to Mitchell's saw mill."

Clayton befriended an old black gentleman who the family fondly called, "Uncle." Clayton loved Uncle and spent as much time as he could with him. Whenever Clayton disappeared, they knew to go to Uncle's house first. Uncle encouraged Clayton to play the fiddle and taught him his first song, Sally Goodin. Young Clayton played it "over and over" until he almost drove his sisters and mother crazy "see-sawing back and forth." [The McMichen Family by Joann T. Allen]

Clayton took his father's fiddle everyday when he went to work and put it back when he heard him coming home. One day his father came home and heard young Clayton playing by accident. When asked what he thought he was doing the 6 year old Clayton replied "Trying to play this durn thing." When Bertha, his oldest sister, asked if he could play Sally Goodin, he tuned his fiddle and rendered the tune perfectly. Grandpa was so amazed at how well the boy could play he got him his own fiddle and told him he'd help him any way he could." [Unpublished Manuscript on her father by Juanita McMichen Lynch]

That's all for now,

Richard

Who Yer Daddy? Part 2 Clayton McMichen Story

Hi,

Here's the only photo I have of Clayton McMichen's Georgia Wildcats with then 18 year-old Merle Travis. (Click To Enlarge)

Clayton has arm around Merle, after all he was Merle's mentor and briefly his father, at least for one day!

That one day, according to Travis was in March 1937. Merle told Clayton he and his fiance were under age and couldn't get married and Clayton replied:

"The hell you are, son. Right now I'm your pappy. I'll tell the justice of peace I'm your father."

So it came to pass that Clayton McMichen and Bert Layne (who posed as the girl's father), former members of Skillet Lickers and two of the most famous fiddler's in the world married off Merle and Mary Elizabeth Johnson.

At the time Juanita McMichen Lynch, Mac's daughter who lived in an old house in Covington with Mac and the Wildcats added, "We had a honeymoon from Merle back at the house."

According to legend Juanita added, "The preacher that married them recognized Mac and turned to him and asked, 'Do you expect me to believe that you are this boy's father?' Mac reassured the preacher and the ceremony went on."

In 1982 at the end of his life Merle did a tribute to Mac, a recording titled "The Clayton McMichen story." Mac died in 1970 but Merle wrote Juanita:

"I only wish we could have made this album half as great as your Dad was-

Your friend,

Merle Travis 1982"

Merle died later that year. His tribute to his mentor was the final musical act of his great career.

Who's Yer Daddy?

Hi,

Here's a photo (click to enlarge) of one of the all-time great country guitarists, Merle Travis. I never got to meet Merle but I did meet Thom Bresh, Merle's son. Bresh is an outstanding thumbpicker/fingerpicker like his dad.

Not everyone knows that Merle got his start in the big time with fiddler Clayton McMichen. One of the last albums Merle made was "The Clayton McMichen Story" in 1982, which was a tribute to his mentor McMichen.

Was Clayton McMichen Merle's daddy? He sure was...at least for one day! And Uncle Bert Layne was Merle's wife-to-be's daddy? Alton Delmore is right: truth is stranger than fiction.

Merle tells the story best and when I have time, I'll include here. Juanita McMichen Lynch has a good version. It's also told in the following from an interview in 1960 by Ed Kahn (it's at the end of the excerpt). Ed gets most of the info right but-

Merle's birthdate is Nov. 29, 1917

Both Doc Watson and Chet Atkins named children after Merle but Chet named his daughter Merle.

Merle claims he played guitar, his first recording, on Clayton McMichen's Decca session in NYC. Tony Russell credits Slim Bryant, who was in Pittsburgh in early 1937. Did Slim come back by the summer? Rich Kienzle said he did. I called Slim today and told him the songs and he assured me he was there. Was Merle there? Not according to Slim who said he only met Merle once. This is mystery to me.

Did Merle meet Mac three times before he started playing with him. Maybe so, but I know of two... and the third?

Merle Travis (1917-1983) occupies a unique position in the history of country music. In a career that spanned nearly a half acentury, he participated in the transformation of country music from a regional to a national style and introduced his Western Kentucky style of guitar playing to the whole world. He made a mark for himself as a singer, guitar stylist, song writer, performer,and actor. He also pioneered the design of the solid body guitar, now widely used by electric guitar players of every genre. Few musicians have been so influential.

Both Doc Watson and Chet Atkins credit Merle as their inspiration. *Both men named their sons after Travis. Today, Merle’s style shows up as a main ingredient in pop, rock, and country music. Attesting to his greatness, countless musicians who have never heard of Merle Travis have unknowingly incorporated his influence into their music. His influence has become mainstream. In recognition of his contributionto country music, Merle was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1978. But his influence was considerably wider than just country music.

The earliest days of country music were dominated by performers who, for the most part, took their home grown music into the recording studio. They were simply performing into a microphone rather than before a live audience. These musicians provided the foundation upon which a second generation of musicians built their careers. Merle was part of this next generation. He consciously entered into the music business. While there was little precedent for people making their living in this area, Merle never doubted that he could. Merle Travis was born on November 17, 1917.

“I was born in Rosewood, Kentucky, which is...in Muhlenberg County. They raise tobaccer up there. My dad raised tobacco and my older brother, Taylor, he moved to Muhlenberg County and got a job in the mines, so he went back to Rosewood and told dad, said,‘Pappy, you’re crazy raising this tobacco,’ said ‘you could godown to the mines and really make some money.’ So Dad spent the rest of his days after going to the mines in Browder, Kentucky,and then of course eventually to Beach Creek where heworked sixteen years. Dad always said, I wish I’d a stayed on the farm,’ you know, but I think he kind of liked coal mining.”

Merle was the youngest of four children. His father worked outside the mines, never venturing underground. In time, Merle’s next oldest brother, John, took a job in the mine. Merle knewbefore the end of the eighth grade, his last year of school, that he had no intention of working in the mines. Rather, he reasoned,he could make a living with his guitar.

Merle lumped all musical things together: “I was always fascinatedby things about music...our talkin’ machine and...the fiddle and the guitars and things, had a smell all its own—smelled so musical, you know...now we had a neighbor, his name was Maynard Matterley, and they had a guitar hanging on the wall, and I remember that somebody, and I don’t know, maybe Mr. or Mrs. Matterley played the guitar and it smelled so good. You know, it had the round hole and it had a musty sort of smell.”

As a kid, he absorbed the rich musical culture of his region. “There was music in the home, of course...then there was a fellow named Colie Addison who played the fiddle and he played the guitar and the old ‘tater bug’ mandolin, and that just sounded the purtiest that I ever heard, to me. And of course in home, whymy dad was a five string banjer picker. But he didn’t have a banjer and he talked about the old time banjer players...I remember he used to talk about a guy named Jim Winders who was a great banjo player. So finally my dad’s brother, named John, Uncle Johnny Travis, he got a five string banjo and Dad traded him outof it and brought it home and Dad, he’d play... pick it, you know, had two different ways, he called it knockin’ the banjer and then pickin’ the banjer. He’d sing songs...he’d sing ‘Jenny Weaver,’and a song about Jeff Davis swore when the cruel war begun,

I wouldn’t be the Union man and carry the Union gun,
But I’d rather be the Union man and carry the Union gun
than to be the rebel, the rebel had to run.

“That was the words to the song he sung. And of course he sung some little old verses to ‘Ida Red’ and a bunch of stuff. Just a world of things he’d pick on the banjer and sing ‘em. And evenmy mother played a little bit. She played what they call...we call it ‘Hot corn.’ Now you’ve heard ‘Green Corn?’ ‘Green Corn,’Hot Corn,’ I’ve heard it called two or three different things sinceI’ve growed up, but she called it ‘Hot Corn.’ And that’s the first thing I ever learned to play was ‘Hot Corn’ on the banjo.

And of course all kids make instruments. I used to make banjers out of carbide cans, you know, just cut the bottom of the round can off and put a neck on it and strip a screen wire..that’s where I got my strings and oh, I’d just pick it. I wish I had an instrument that would sound as good today...My dad always talked about the banjos without a fret...he lived until the early forties and he always talked about the banjers, you know, he saw some awfully good ones, because I was working on a radio station at the time he passed on, but until his dyin’ day he said ‘No banjer sounds as good as the kind that Jim Winders used to play made out of a hickory rim, and a groundhog hide for the head, and they didn’t have no frets on them.’ Dad said they’d gotten away.”The Travis family had a phonograph in their home. His father loved to order records from the Sears catalog. Each time they put in an order from the catalog, his father would add a record or two to the order. He especially liked Vernon Dalhart’s ballads. In addition to Dalhart’s music, his dad loved to listen to the string band music of Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers and of Clayton McMichen and his groups.

“And ninetime out of ten, it would be a song that, in the case of my dad, he’d say, ‘I’ve knowed that song all my life.’ So he was meetin’an old friend as well as hearing some awful good fiddlin’ andbanjo pickin’, you know. So that, no doubt, was the appeal.”

At an early age, Merle’s musical interests focused on the guitar. There were lots of excellent guitar pickers in his area. Histwo favorite musicians, however, were Ike Everly — father of the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil — and Mose Rager. These men were strongly influenced by the guitar style of Arnold Shultz, a black itinerant musician from Ohio County, Kentucky. Shultz,who died in 1931, traveled the area and worked along the Green River, which separates Muhlenberg County from Ohio Countyand flows on to the Ohio River. [Paradise by John Prine] Just where he got the style is unclear, but his influence extended not only to these Muhlenberg County musicians, but also to Bill Monroe who recalls seeing Shultz and credits him as being a major influence on his music.

By the time Merle Travis was a teenager, he was already awhiz on the guitar. He hung around all the musicians of his area and credits a number of the young men with influencing the Travissound. Kennedy Jones, Raymond McClellan, and Lester“Plucker” English were names that Travis often mentioned. Traviswas like a sponge. Mose Rager affectionately recalled that wheneverhe would play, young Travis would get up as close as he could and before Mose knew it, Travis would have stolen a chordor lick.

One of the things that set these Muhlenberg County musiciansapart was their interest in a wide range of music. They were fascinated by harmonies and chords. Arnold Shultz not only played blues, but jazz and popular tunes of the day. These Muhlenberg County musicians all loved musical complexity. Merle once commented that he was more interested in learning new chords than new songs.

By the time Merle was fifteen, he was on his way out of town. His first journey away from home was to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. The arrangement was that part of the money earned was given to the youngster and the rest was sent home to the parents. Shortly after his time in the CCC, Merle rode a freight train to Evansville, Indiana, where his brother, John, had gone towork in the Servel Refrigerator plant. Merle asked his mother for the $65 that he had earned in the CCC. He promised that he was going to buy clothing with the money.

John Travis recalls Merle’s trip to Evansville. Merle slipped out on the first day and bought a new guitar. When John questioned Merle about this, Merle replied that he was going to enter a talent contest and win prize money that would pay for the clothing. Merle reasoned that he could make money with the guitar, but not with clothing. Merle entered the contest that night and came in third, behind a little girl who did an acrobatic dance, and a dog who walked a tightrope. When John challenged Merle that he had not won, Merle replied that he had. When John pointed out that the little girl had won, Merle replied that he was the highest ranking musician! Merle recalled another early trip and contest, saying that he had stepped up to the microphone and played “Tiger Rag” as much like Mose Rager as he could.

Merle soon left home for good. He teamed up with a bunch of young musicians and played the local area. Next, he teamed up with the Walt and Bill Brown and Sleepy Marlin to form the Drifting Pioneers, a group that he worked with off and on for years. [fiddler Morris "Sleepy" Marlin still lives in the Louisville area.]

In the middle of his Drifting Pioneers years, in late 1936 or early ’37, old time fiddler Clayton McMichen invited him to join his band. Merle met McMichen three times before he was asked to become a member of the group. He recalls getting a letter from his mother saying that he had a telegram from Clayton McMichen: “I quit the Drifting Pioneers and took off and found a way of catchin’ the boat across the Ohio River at one of themost flooded parts down there and then I caught a freight train down through Kentucky and got home, which is some hundred miles or so and there was the telegram, which said ‘Meet me in Columbus,’ which was about four days from then, so I started gathering up money, you know,...friends that had a dollar or two...and I bought a railroad ticket to Cincinnati and when I got to Cincinnati, why, they hadn’t left yet, so I went on to Columbus, Ohio, and that’s when I joined Clayton McMichen and his Georgia Wildcats. And boy I was in hog heaven then. And we allwore yellow checkered shirts and everything... and that was a great experience, you know, because we had records at home and I’d look at McMichen and think. ‘There is a man who actually made a talking machine record.’ And he sold ‘em too in his day, you know. So I was with them some eight months or something and finally we...the band sort of starved out, you know, and I went back to Evansville and got my job back with the Drifting Pioneers.”

In any case, he joined the band and says that his first recording session was playing guitar on McMichen’s recording of “Farewell Blues.” McMichen named Travis Ridge Runner. Clayton McMichen’s daughter, Juanita, recalled to me that during the time Merle was with McMichen, she would always see him in his room playing the guitar. He practiced constantly. During his stint with McMichen, he married for the first time. His bride was Mary Elizabeth Johnson, his teenage sweetheart. Because neither Merle nor Mary were yet 21 and didn’t havetheir parents’ consent, McMichen posed as Merle’s father while old time fiddler, Bert Layne, posed as Mary’s dad so the young couple could get married.