One look at this and you’ll know why Doc Watson and Chet Atkins both named their sons after Merle.

Here’s another great clip of Merle, this time playing acoustic guitar and singing the trad classic ‘John Henry’. While there are a lot of guitar players who use this fingerpicking style, with the thumb picking bass lines and the forefinger picking melody, few can match the fluid melodic lines and driving rhythms of Merle Travis’ playing. He chooses his chord voicings well — there are some nice 6th and 7th chords in here. This was recorded on an acoustic guitar Paul Bigsby built for Merle in the 1940s.