on many country music television shows, co-hosting a show "Merle Travis and Company" with his wife Judy Hayden around 1953. He was a regular member of the Hollywood Barn dance broadcast over radio station KNX, Hollywood, and of the Town Hall Party, which was broadcast first as a radio show on KXLA out of Pasadena, California and later as a TV series in 1953–1961. However, his personal life became increasingly troubled. A heavy drinker and at times desperately insecure despite his multitude of talents (including prose writing, taxidermy, cartooning and watch repair), he was involved in various violent incidents in California, and he married several times in the course of his life. He suffered from serious stage fright, though amazed fellow performers added that once onstage, he was an effective and even charismatic performer. In spite of his problems he was respected and admired by his friends and fellow musicians. Longtime Travis fan Doc Watson named his son Merle Watson, and Travis admirer Chet Atkins named his daughter Merle Atkins, in Travis' honor. Travis' string of chart-topping honky-tonk hits in the 1940s did not continue into the 1950s, despite the reverence of friends like Grandpa Jones and Hank Thompson, with whom he toured and recorded as lead guitarist (Thompson, who could pick Travis-style, even had Gibson design him a Super 400 hollow body electric guitar identical to the one Travis began using in 1952.) Travis continued recording for Capitol in the 1950s, broadening his repertoire to include new guitar instrumentals, blues and boogie numbers. His uptempo single "Merle's Boogie Woogie" showed him working with multi-part disc recording at the same time as Les Paul. He found greater exposure after an appearance in the successful 1953 movie From Here to Eternity singing and playing "Reenlistment Blues", and following the success of his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford's million-selling rendition of "Sixteen Tons" in 1955. His reputation as a folk-inspired singer-composer and guitarist grew after the appearance of the album The Merle Travis Guitar in 1956, the reissue of Folk Songs of the Hills with four additional tracks under the title Back Home in 1957, and Walkin' the Strings in 1960, the latter two of which won 5-star ratings from Rolling Stone. His career acquired a second wind during the American folk music revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading to appearances at clubs, folk festivals and at Carnegie Hall as