In his notes accompanying the Vestapol video, Legends of Country Guitar, Cary Ginell—talking about Travis’ four-pocket, 78 RPM album Folk Songs from the Hills—says it “…included some of Merle Travis’ best-loved compositions: ‘Sixteen Tons,’ ‘Dark as A Dungeon,’ and ‘I Am A Pilgrim’ in addition to a few trditional tunes Travis had learned in Kentucky.”

The video begins with a film (ca. 1962¹) of Mose Rager playing I Am A Pilgrim as an instrumental for folklorist D.K. Wilgus. Ginell writes “One illuminating segment leads off our retrospective featuring Rager, in prime form, playing Merle Travis’ ‘I Am A Pilgrim.’”

However, in the video clip itself, Wilgus presses Rager on the origin of “that Pilgrim song” and Rager replies

That old song I Am A Pilgrim? We sang that old song around here years ago—seem like to me about thirty years ago. [laughs] It’s just an old brush arbor song. Everybody sang it; Merle Travis ’n’ my two brothers we’d all get together out here—out here on the—out t’ the edge of town an’ just set out there till about twelve o’clock an’ sing old hymns an’ we’d sing I Am A Pilgrim. So as far as I Am A Pilgrim, it’s just an old brush arbor song.

This would have been many years (16 years?) after Merle Travis had already recorded I Am A Pilgrim, so it’s not clear whether Rager’s comment has been influenced by Travis’ spoken intro to the recording in which Travis also claims I Am A Pilgrim is an old brush arbor song. It’s possible Rager’s memory has been corrupted by the legend already grown up around Travis.

      - Mark

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¹The clip is undated but a later note of Ginell’s says it was made thirteen years prior to another clip of Rager known to have been made in 1975.