Stopped by Michael Graves’s studio today. He is a Grammy-winning audio restoration expert. I brought him two Merle Travis acetates that I got at Cliffie Stone’s garage sale thirty-plus years ago for restoration and preservation.
The first disc is an unreleased performance with Merle Travis and Cindy Walker doing a song demo of her composition, “Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me,” with Cindy singing and Merle playing guitar. The flip side is a radio performance of Merle playing an instrumental version of “Bye Bye Blues.”
The other acetate I brought to Michael today is a neat artifact, Merle voicing a radio commercial for “Cliffie Stone’s Record Corral,” a short-lived record store located at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
What’s interesting is that the other track on the same disc is another commercial for Cliffie’s record store, voiced by singer Eddie Kirk. At the time of this recording, around 1947, Eddie Kirk was married to June “Judy” Hayden. Within a year, she would be married to Merle Travis. Very interesting in hindsight!
Michael has a beautiful studio and explained to me his restoration process, which I found very interesting. It’s always a pleasure to meet these people who have done so much work and have so much knowledge and experience in their chosen field.
Hopefully these unreleased recordings will see the light of day soon!
Thanks to Scott B. Bomar for the hook-up with Michael!
