Country superstar Randy Travis was in Los Angeles last week promoting his new record and first for Dream Works, You and You Alone, as well as a new movie, Black Dog, costarring Patrick Swayze. His wife and longtime manager, Elizabeth Hatcher Travis, had compiled nine photographs of Travis tracing his development from boyhood to maturity, from starry-eyed kid to the professional hit maker. In each he's playing a Gibson acoustic guitar.

He sounded tired after four solid years of the road and movie making. But as he looked at the pictures, he began to sigh and laugh and recall those early days growing up in Marshallville, NC, his family, the music, his Dad, and his Mom, who had passed away only two weeks earlier.

• Randy in his boyhood home with a J-50 (a J-50 is the equivalent of a blond J-45):

  These bring back a lot of memories. I'm guessin' I'm no more than nine years old, maybe ten. That's back home in Marshallville, N.C. That old guitar (J-50), I wish I still had it but I don't. Believe it or not that guitar was broken because it was thrown at me by my brother Ricky (thirteen months older than Randy). It went to the shop. Somehow we never got it back. Yeah, my brother Ricky--I guess we were having some words. He broke that trying to hit me with it.

  They were nice old guitars. I started singing and playing at eight. That may have been the very first guitar I had that my Dad (Harold) bought me.

  Got a big old G chord in that picture. Ricky started at eight from a lady named Kate Mangum. Then I started the next year. He played lead and I played rhythm. I would sing and he wouldn't. A little harmony was all you could get out of him for several years. Then he finally got to the point that he would sing. He was more rock and roll. I stuck with the Jones, and the Haggard and the Hank and the Lefty and all that.

  My parents kind of like forced us to start playing. My Dad more so than Mom (Bobbie). He didn't play but he liked to sing and he liked to write songs. He wanted us in a bad way to do this. There were six kids and everyone was playing at one time. We had a band, no doubt. Everyone quit except Ricky and me.

  I'm glad he pushed. I'm really happy he did that.

  Unfortunately my Mom was just buried the first part of this week. It was a shocker. She was only sixty-one. You can't help but think about it. The best thing to do is keep working.

  My Dad took it harder than I thought he would. My Dad is a tough guy. It's hard for him to show any emotions. He broke down. It got to him. But he's 65 and he's still breaking horses. He's still training horse for folks. He'll be all right.

• Randy with a vintage Dove:

  I remember I was fourteen years old when my Dad bought that. And I still have it. In that particular shot I was seventeen and still living in Charlotte, North Carolina, and working at Country City USA. Trying of course to get in the music business. Even made records. Lib and I were driving from radio station to radio station handing them the record and asking them to play it.

  That's a great old guitar and I wouldn't take anything for it. I keep it in Nashville and have used it to write a lot of songs. It has such a wonderful bass, such warm sound. It's a great feeling neck. They're very comfortable to play. This one was made in the Sixties sometime.

  I've written many songs over the last ten or twenty years. Time goes quick doesn't it? I've written two, three, or four or five on every record except the new one on Dream Works. I was working so hard I didn't have time to write any. It's been unbelievable.

  I've been fortunate enough to write a few #1 records. Alan Jackson and I wrote "A Better Class of Losers" and "She's Got the Rhythm and I got the Blues". Don Schlitz and I wrote "Heroes and Friends" together. Had one that was nominated for song of the year, "I Told You So".

  I honestly have to say I've written more good songs with that old Dove than with any other guitar I have.

• An unknown concert with same Dove:

  We're looking back still at least eleven years ago. Early on when we first started touring I was still playing Gibsons. I can't really recognize where we were performing. We were playing so many gigs early on.

• On TNN's Nashville Now with Dove:

  There's the Dove again. That looks like the old Nashville Now backup singers. That would have been easily eleven years ago also. I stopped playing that guitar on the road pretty early because I didn't want anything to happen to that one. That would have been within the first single or two--either the single "1982" or "On the Other Hand."

• "An arena somewhere" with a J-45:

  That was a few years after the last one. Probably six years ago. A show in an arena somewhere. I've always enjoyed what I'm doing on stage. It doesn't have to be a big extravagant show.

• Somewhere with an ebony J-45:

  I don't recognize that one, frankly. It couldn't have been much more than five years ago. Just from looking at that J-200. Probably a publicity shot for the label.

• Looks like a star with a J-185 (The Original Everly Brothers Model, finally released in 1962, had the smaller body previously used for the J-185):

  The next one looks like only a few years ago. I played that blond J-200 for only a year before I switched over to that J-185. I continued to play that for many years on stage and I like it a lot. It's real comfortable. The jumbos (J-200) have a great sound and they're fun if you're sittin' down but they're a little much to play every night for me.

• Into the present with a newer J-50:

  That's what I'm playing right now. The J-50. Again looks like a stage show somewhere. I haven't done a show now for a couple of months so it's sittin' in a case. I have some Gibsons sitting at home and on the bus.

• End of Warner Bros. Records era with a J-200:

  The next one with the J-200 was for the last album with Warner Bros. Just a good couple of years ago.

  I've played a lot of Gibsons. Being a singer, my Dad knew something about guitars. One of the first guitars my Dad bought for Ricky was just like the one B.B. King plays (ES-335). Ricky's had that for quite a few years.

  Playing was something I had to work for. Singing was something that was really easy. I really didn't have to worry much about it. Just a God-given gift. Guitar playing is a lot like that. Either you have it or you don't. And I don't really have a gift for the guitar. I can think a lot more than my fingers can actually do. I play sometimes on stage. Sometimes I don't.

• With an EC-30 Blues King Electro on cover of You and You Alone:

  Dream Works has been great. The first single, "Out of My Bones" went #1. We'll release the second single, "The Hole," middle of June. Then we're back on the road and start another movie in July and August. A real quirky story with Bob Hoskins, Ellen Barkin and Antonio Banderas. It's called The White River Kid. Funny and quirky like Get Shorty. Then maybe we'll take a little break like we've been talking about the last four years.

For more information about Randy Travis check out www.Randy-Travis.com.