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Chet Atkins Bio PDF
Chet Atkins Bio PDF
Chet Atkins & Merle Travis Photo courtesy Merle Travis Estate
heard him really
turn loose was in
about 1945,” Merle
recalled in 1979. “I’d
been in the Marine
Corps a short while
and I was going
back to Cincinnati to
visit friends. It was
a cold morning....
Well, Chet Atkins
was on the radio at
the time on WLW in
Cincinnati, and I
was listening to the
radio and the an-
nouncer said, ‘Now we’ll have a guitar solo from Chet
Atkins.’ He started playing, and I pulled the car over—it
7
was snowing like everything—and sat there and listened
to him, and I thought, ‘Wow!’”
In his autobiography, Chet remembered Merle com-
ing to the station at this time and saying things like: “I can’t
play the guitar. Not like you can, Chester.” And while the
man for whom ‘Travis picking’ was named might have
jealously guarded his primacy in the field, Merle was
always effusive in his praise of Chet. “I don’t think that
there will ever be a chance for another guitar player to be
as great as Chet,” Merle once told this writer. “He was born
at a time when turn-of-the-century music, the songs of the
1920s and big bands, were still around and not laughed at.
He knows it all, from that music...to what was recorded
this afternoon in Nashville. He is the greatest guitar player
that has ever been on this earth, in my opinion. I don’t
think there will ever be anyone greater. And that’s what I
think of Chet Atkins.”
Despite Travis’s admiration, Chet was fired from his
WLW job on Christmas Eve, 1945. He worked a couple of
months early in 1946 for Johnnie Wright and Jack Anglin
on WPTF in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was billed
on shows as ‘Chester Atkins and His Talking Electric
Guitar.’ But a long-shot at the big-time soon beckoned:
Chet had heard that Red Foley would be replacing Roy
Acuff on the Opry’s immensely popular Prince Albert
Tobacco segment. Chet, emboldened both by Travis’s en-
couragement and his ardor for Leona Johnson, the woman
he would wed, (one of a pair of singing twins on WLW),
struck out for Chicago to audition for Foley. And when the
WLS National Barn Dance veteran debuted on the Opry on
April 13, 1946, Chet (or ‘Ches,’ as Foley called him) was
with him.
Chet was two months shy of his 22nd birthday, earn-
ing $50 a week and enjoying a solo spot on the show. His
glory, however, was short-lived: the ad agency sponsoring
the Opry segment ordered Foley to drop his guitar solo.
Chet could have continued as Foley’s Opry sideman, but
chose not to. In four years of radio experience, Chet had
worked his way to country’s top show, only to walk away
from it.
8
Photo courtesy Chet Atkins Collection
9
After a brief stint at
Richmond, Virginia’s
WRVA’s Old Dominion
Barn Dance, Chet went
to Springfield, Miss-
ouri’s KW-TO (Keep
Watching The Ozarks),
where booking agent Si
Siman reportedly be-
came the first person to
call Chester Atkins
Chet. Siman saw great
promise in the shy gui-
tarist and recorded him
on station transcription
discs. He sent them as
Photo courtesy Chet Atkins Collection
who had spent the better part of the 1940s chasing radio
jobs from the Great Smokies to the Rocky Mountains. Fred
Rose promised Chet session work (he was on many of
Hank Williams‘s later recordings and the early ones of the
Louvin Brothers), and there were the Opry broadcasts,
where he worked with the Carters.
Chet quickly involved himself not only with perform-
ing and recording but with rounding up musicians and
organizing sessions for Steve Sholes, Fred Rose, and Decca’s
Paul Cohen. In 1952, Chet officially became A&R assistant
to RCA’s Sholes, a capacity which linked him to the earliest
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(1955) RCA recordings of Elvis Presley. Chet was increas-
ingly active as producer – he was promoted to RCA’s
Manager of Operations in Nashville in 1957 – but he also
recorded many of his best guitar sides during this time.
The 10-inch LP, Gallopin’ Guitar, appeared in 1954, the first
of dozens of albums Chet waxed for RCA. Chet’s reputa-
tion as a guitarist was going national, and Gretsch repre-
sentative Jimmy Webster convinced him to design and
endorse an electric guitar, the Gretsch CA 6120. It debuted
in 1954, and was the first of many models Chet endorsed
for Gretsch through 1979.
1955 is the point at which our video collection begins.
Chet Atkins, a curious mixture of insecurity, tenacity and
talent, was fast becoming a major player in country music
on several levels. In subsequent decades he would be both
praised and blamed for the ‘countrypolitan’ blend heard
on records he produced for Don Gibson and Floyd Cramer,
among many others. But few people outside Music City
then knew or cared about the production phase of his
career. Chet was Mr. Guitar, a talent Minnie Pearl ac-
knowledged when he first played the Opry in 1946 with a
peck on the cheek and the encouraging words: “You’re a
great musician and you’re just what we’ve been needing
around here.” In time, even Chet Atkins had a hard time
living up to his own reputation. One of his favorite anec-
dotes involves an impromptu performance he once gave
aboard a cruise ship. Picking informally in the bar while
the lounge guitarist took a break, Chet’s anonymous solo
act was given this critique by one of the passengers: “You’re
good, but you’re no Chet Atkins!”
13
THE PERFORMANCES
17
For all the neo-classicism of this performance, Chet isn’t
above nailing a bass note on the sixth string with his thumb
if need be. Segovia would be shocked, but such country
pragmatism was endorsed by Merle Travis, who likened
his approach to a guitar neck to “grabbing a hoe handle.”
From the sublime to the ridiculous, Chet enlists his band
to vocalize on “The Peanut Vendor,” a 1932 vintage pseudo-
Latin tune once performed, strange as it seems, by Judy
Garland in A Star Is Born. Chet hints at, among others, Bo
Diddley in his bag of licks here.
When Chet introduces “Tiger Rag” as an old New
Orleans tune, he’s not kidding. This goes back to 1917 and
the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. As an encore, Chet’s
performance is aptly hot.
A decade later, Mr. Guitar returned to the Land of the
Midnight Sun to perform on Norway’s Nashville Cavalcade
program. The opening classical guitar piece, “Alhambra,”
shows Chet’s stylistic range. His interest in classical gui-
tar, ironically, dates to the time he was accompanying
Maybelle Carter and her daughters. “Ezra Carter, the
Carter Sisters’ father, gave me three volumes by Pascual
Roch, Modern Method for Guitar, around 1949 or 1950,”
Chet told Don Menn. (Roch was a student of Francisco
Tarrega.) “He [Carter] was into all kinds of things. I don’t
know how he became interested in classical guitar...But he
had those books, and he gave them to me.” Chet made
good use of them. However, Segovia would hardly ap-
prove of Chet’s thumbpick!
“Black Mountain Rag” is best known today as a
flatpicker’s favorite, thanks to Doc Watson, but Chet re-
corded the driving fingerstyle rendition he performs here
for RCA in 1952. Atypically, he plays this in open G (D-G-
D-G-B-D) tuning. Fiddler Curly Fox had enjoyed a hit with
the tune in 1947, and his accompanist was pioneering
Kentucky fingerpicker Mose Rager, one of Merle Travis’s
boyhood inspirations.
The first of two medleys from this Norwegian outing
opens with “Windy and Warm,” a tune John D. Loudermilk
wrote for Chet which had become a folk fingerpicker’s
favorite in the 1960s, thanks in part to Doc Watson’s
18
recording of it. “Back
Home in Indiana” is the
sort of pop chestnut for
Chet Atkins & Maybelle Carter. Photo courtesy Chet Atkins Collection
which Chet has always
had a soft spot and
which he always in-
vested with a warm
glow. “Country Gentle-
man” is his sprightly
1953 original, co-written
with Boudleaux Bryant,
which became Chet’s
theme. “Mister Sand-
man” is, of course, the
1955 Chordettes’ hit
which, as an instrumen-
tal, also became Chet’s
first chart hit that year:
it made it to #13 on
Billboard’s country
chart. We hear another “Wildwood Flower” and, finally,
Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train” closes this medley of
‘picker’s delights.’
The second medley reflects the successes of Chet
Atkins, producer. RCA made him a vice president in 1968,
the year a Harper’s Magazine piece said of Chet: “Though
Chet Atkins calls himself ‘just another hunched-over gui-
tar player,’ this 44-year-old native of rural Tennessee is
probably the most influential music man in Music City.”
Atlanta journalist Paul Hemphill visited the busy execu-
tive and wrote in The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and
Country Music (Simon and Schuster, 1970, New York) of
“Atkins’s office, which is highlighted by a boomerang-
shaped velvet sofa and a nude statue carved from rare
Philippine wood and an ashtray engraved TO CHET—
THANKS – TRINI (Trini Lopez had been in town to record
an album, ‘Welcome to Trini Country’).” None of this was
evident in Norway, naturally, but the fruits of Chet’s
production labors inspired a medley of songs he pro-
duced.
19
The first tune in
the medley is “The
Three Bells,” a phe-
nomenal hit for the
Browns in 1959.
Their recording
was ten weeks at
#1 on Billboard’s
country chart and
four weeks # 1 on
the pop chart!
(They don’t make
hits like that any-
more.) Edith Piaf
popularized the
song in the 1940s,
though the Browns
Photo courtesy Chet Atkins Collection
learned it from a
recording by Les
Compagnons de la
Chanson. Chet re-
portedly believed
so strongly in the
version he pro-
duced for the
Browns that he
flew to New York and offered RCA an ultimatum: “Either
you promote this song or you lose Chet Atkins.” Happily,
everyone came out a winner.
“I Can’t Stop Loving You” may be best remembered
for Ray Charles’s 1962 version, but Chet produced the
original for Don Gibson, the tortured genius singer-
songwriter who credits Chet with saving his career. Thanks
to Chet’s production, Gibson was one of the first exem-
plars of a new ‘countrypolitan’ sound which became
Nashville’s alternative to the rock ‘n roll scourge. After
some initial hard country failures, Gibson told journalist
Dale Vinicur: “Chet said, ‘Don, there’s nothing else we can
do unless you want to do it a little more modern, take out
the steel completely and add voices and do it like that.’”
20
Photo courtesy Chet Atkins Collection
Jim Reeves, Anita Kerr & Chet Atkins
21
just sell records. I realized at that time you had to surprise
the public and give them something a little different.” He
succeeded with “Four Walls,” which offered an intimate
vocal sound from Reeves and a prominent choral presence
by the Jordanaires. A perfectionist, Reeves made Chet do
double duty. “It was a lot of stress on me,” Chet told
Bussey, “because I had to run back and forth to the control
room, but Jim liked my guitar sound and wanted me to
play the introduction and the bridge.”
“When You’re Hot You’re Hot” was a 1971 #1 hit for
Chet’s longtime pickin’ partner, singer-guitarist Jerry Reed,
who affectionately calls Chet the Chief. Finally, Chet
closes this medley of songs he produced with the Don
Gibson classic, “Oh Lonesome Me.”
Prone to dismiss his production skills, Chet told John
Schroeter that his success as producer comes in part from
his common background with his audience. “I’ve always
been kind of square,” he said. “If I like a song, the public
will usually like it, too. That was a great advantage. If I had
been a jazz player and detested everything but jazz, I’d
have been a flop. When you hear something and think,
‘That’s clever. I wish I’d written that,’ that means it’s good.
I never second guessed things.”
Following the ‘producer’s medley,’ we hear the
sprightly “Just Another Rag,” which suggests the influ-
ence on the Chief of protégé Jerry Reed. “Missionera,”
with its hints of “Malaguena,” is a composition by South
American guitarist Jorge Morel. It’s a fine example of
Chet’s formidable right hand in action. Finally, Chet’s
second Norwegian interlude closes with “Wheels,” a buoy-
ant country fingerpicker’s favorite which made the pop
Top Ten in 1961 in a recording by The String-A-Longs.
Now Chet returns to Nashville for the last two perfor-
mances. Having seen him in action with various Gretsch
Chet Atkins models and classical guitars, it’s interesting to
see him deliver “Muskrat Ramble,” a 1926 tune popular-
ized by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, with a Martin
Dreadnought. Despite the legendary stiffness of such
instruments, Chet manages to elicit a signature vibrato
tone (sans Bigsby bar) in this 1973 performance. Closing
22
this collection is a 1975 rendition of Don McLean’s wistful
1972 hit, “Vincent.” The neo-classical voicings again dem-
onstrate Chet’s knack for harmonically rich arrangements.
And subtly, he shows off a new technique here, a
downstroke brush with the back of his nails. On second
thought, it isn’t new at all: isn’t that a sophisticated varia-
tion of the old Maybelle Carter ‘thumb-brush stroke’ lick?
Yes, put to fresh use showing Chet as master of reinven-
tion, an artist who lets nothing good go to waste from his
rich life of passionate engagement with the guitar. “The
thumbpick made me what I am today,” Chet told Kevin
Ransom (Guitar Player, October 1994). “It’s taken me all
over the world and made me a wonderful living. I never
thought that would happen to a guy like me, because I
come from so far out in the sticks you wouldn’t believe it.”
— Mark Humphrey
23
Few names are as syn-
onymous with the guitar as
that of Chet Atkins. He set
the standard by which gen-
erations of country finger-
style guitarists have been
measured. But his influence
transcends regions and
genres. The sound of 20th
century guitar would not be
the same without the impact
of this gentle genius, who
was at the height of his
influence and creative pow-
ers when the performances
presented in this video were
captured.
The much traveled “Mr. Guitar” is seen playing in this video
collection everywhere from Nashville to Norway. His signature Gretsch
Tennessean guitar, on which Chet made exquisitely effective use of its
Bigsby vibrato bar, is heard in all its sweet, reverb-laden glory on
many of these clips. But Chet, whose versatility embraces all styles of
guitar, is also seen playing a classical guitar and a Martin dreadnaught.
No matter what he plays, the sound produced becomes a distinct
auditory fingerprint of the man known in Nashville as C.G.P. (Certified
Guitar Player). The relaxed mastery evident in this video explains why
Chet, along with such diverse geniuses as Thelonius Monk and Bill
Monroe, was honored in 1993 with a Lifetime Achievement Award
Grammy “For this peerless fingerstyle guitar technique, his extensive
creative legacy documented on more than one hundred albums, and
his influential work on both sides of the recording console as a
primary architect of the Nashville sound.”
PURINA S HOW, 1955: The Poor People Of Paris, Side By Side, Makin'
Believe • O ZARK J UBILEE, 1958: Villa, Say Si Si • N ORWAY, 1963:
Levee Walking, Wildwood Flower, Yes Ma'am, Malaguena, Medley:
Greensleeves/Streets Of Laredo, Peanut Vendor, Tiger Rag • N ORWAY
(NASHVILLE CAVALCADE), 1973: Alhambra, Black Mountain Rag,
Medley: Windy & Warm/Back Home In Indiana/Country Gentleman/
Mr. Sandman/Wildwood Flower/Freight Train, Medley: The Three
Bells/I Can't Stop Loving You/Java/He'll Have To Go/When You're Hot
You're Hot/Oh Lonesome Me, Just Another Rag, Mr. Bojangles,
Misionera, Wheels • Porter Wagoner Show, 1973: Muskrat Ramble
POP G OES THE C OUNTRY, 1975: Vincent
Running Time: 58 minutes • B/W & Color
VESTAPOL 13027
Duplicated in SP Mode/Real Time Duplication ISBN: 1-57940-904-0
Nationally distributed by Rounder Records,
One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140
Representation to Music Stores by
Mel Bay Publications
® 2001 Vestapol Productions / A division of
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