Chet Atkins

Guitarist

• Born: June 20, 1924
• Birthplace: Luttrell, Tennessee
• Died: June 30, 2001
• Place of death: Nashville, Tennessee

American country guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter

Perhaps the best technical guitarist of his generation, Atkins was instrumental in making country music mainstream.

The Life

Chester Burton Atkins was born into a musical farm family in rural Union County, Tennessee. His first instruments were the ukulele and violin, and in 1932 he got a budget Silvertone guitar from his brother, for which he traded a year’s worth of milking chores.

Atkins was about fifteen when he first heard guitarist Merle Travis on the radio. Travis’s style of playing bass notes with the thumb and of rolling the first three fingers over the other strings, picking individual notes, produced a sound that impressed the fledgling musician, and it gave Atkins the direction he needed to perfect his style. By the time he left high school, he was quite musically accomplished, and in 1942 he got his first professional job on WNOX in Knoxville, playing fiddle. When the station manager heard Atkins playing guitar in the back of the tour bus, he immediately appointed Atkins WNOX staff guitarist. For the next three years, this position required Atkins to master a new song every day, which rapidly boosted his repertoire and his technique.

Later, Atkins moved to KWTO in Springfield, Missouri, where he picked up the nickname Chet (instead of Ches). His style, however, seemed too polished and sophisticated for that audience, and he was soon let go. In 1948 Atkins returned to Knoxville to play with Homer and Jethro and with the Carter Sisters (the group Maybelle Carter formed after the Carter Family broke up). They joined the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in 1950. Once in Nashville, Atkins’s talents as a sideman became in demand.

Atkins’s own records were selling well by the mid-1950’s. From 1957 to 1982, Atkins worked as producer and manager at RCA Records. His production skills became critical as rock and roll had eroded country music’s audience. In 1982 Atkins left RCA to resume his performing career, creating what came to be known as the Nashville sound and collaborating with others to transform country music. Atkins died of cancer in Nashville, his longtime home, on June 30, 2001.

The Music

In an effort to gain broad appeal, Atkins changed the arrangements of much of the country canon, replacing the traditional instrumentation and harmonies of country music (such as fiddles, banjos, steel guitars, mandolins, and brother duets) with orchestra string sections or vocal choruses. This so-called Nashville sound diluted much of the difference between country and pop music until the 1990’s.

Early Works. Atkins’s first hit record was his instrumental version of the pop song “Mister Sandman,” which reached number thirteen on the charts in 1955. This was followed closely by his guitar duet with Hank Snow, “Silver Bell.” Seminal albums appeared, including Finger Style Guitar, Mister Guitar, Chet Atkins’ Workshop, and Guitar Country.

“Yakety Axe.”By 1965 Atkins’s career was well established. After an appearance at the Newport Jazz festival, Atkins took Nashville studio musician Boots Randolph’s jazz saxophone standard, “Yakety Sax,” and made it a signature piece. Calling it “Yakety Axe”—axe being guitarists’ slang for their instrument—the song became a Top 5 hit in 1965.

Stay Tuned.Atkins left RCA in the 1980’s because the label was reluctant to let him make a jazz album. With Stay Tuned, a jazz-rock fusion project, Atkins’s wish was fulfilled. The record featured duets with the next generation of guitarists, such as George Benson, Earl Klugh, Mark Knopfler, Brent Mason, and Steve Lukather. Songs included “Sunrise” and “Quiet Eyes.” When he premiered the album, newspaper headlines proclaimed that Atkins had transformed Nashville once again. Atkins and Knopfler received the Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance for the track “Cosmic Square Dance” in 1985.

Neck and Neck.In November, 1990, Atkins released an album of duets with Dire Straits’ guitarist Mark Knopfler. This was his biggest success since 1966, and it introduced Atkins’s new renditions on a number of classic country and pop standards, some new material, and a rather different version of “Yakety Axe.” The track “So Soft, Your Goodbye” won Atkins and Knopfler a country instrumental Grammy Award, while “Poor Boy Blues” won the Best Country Vocal Collaboration Award.

Solo Sessions. After his death in 2001, twenty-eight solo songs Atkins had recorded in his home studio from 1982 to 1992 were discovered. These were released as a two-album set in 2003. They included instrumental examples of almost every genre of music, from show tunes and spirituals to jazz standards and country-bluegrass songs. There was even a cover of the 1963 Japanese hit in America, “Sukiyaki.” The range of material and the way Atkins approaches it show the depth of Atkins musical sensitivity.

Musical Legacy

A master musician, Atkins left a recorded output of some one hundred forty albums and a style of playing that is still emulated. He was one of the most recorded solo instrumentalists and session players in history, appearing on hundreds of recordings, starting with Hank Williams, Sr., and Elvis Presley in the 1950’s and continuing through the 1990’s.

As an RCA music executive, Atkins produced such varied artists as Eddy Arnold, Bobby Bare, Perry Como, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton. He was the youngest person ever inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1973. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 as a sideman. From 1967 to 1996, Atkins won fourteen Grammy Awards (most for Best Instrumental Performance and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993) and nine Country Music Association Awards. A street in Nashville is named after him: Chet Atkins Place. He also developed a line of signature guitars for Gibson, including the revolutionary acoustic-electric SST, which ran from 1987 to 2006.

Principal Recordings

albums:Chet Atkins’ Gallopin’ Guitar, 1953; Stringin’ Along with Chet Atkins, 1953; A Session with Chet Atkins, 1954; Chet Atkins in Three Dimensions, 1955; Finger Style Guitar, 1956; Chet Atkins at Home, 1957; Hi Fi in Focus, 1957; Chet Atkins in Hollywood, 1959; Hum and Strum Along with Chet Atkins, 1959; Mister Guitar, 1959; The Other Chet Atkins, 1960; Teensville, 1960; Chet Atkins’ Workshop, 1961; Christmas with Chet Atkins, 1961; The Most Popular Guitar, 1961; Caribbean Guitar, 1962; Down Home, 1962; The Guitar Genius, 1963; Our Man in Nashville, 1963; Teen Scene, 1963; Travelin’, 1963; The Early Years of Chet Atkins and His Guitar, 1964; Guitar Country, 1964; My Favorite Guitar, 1964; Progressive Pickin’, 1964; Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles, 1965; More of That Guitar Country, 1965; From Nashville with Love, 1966; Music from Nashville, My Hometown, 1966; The Pops Goes Country, 1966; Chet Atkins, 1967; Class Guitar, 1967; It’s a Guitar World, 1967; Hometown Guitar, 1968; Solid Gold ’68, 1968; Solo Flights, 1968; Chet Atkins and C. E. Snow, 1969; Chet Picks on the Pops, 1969; Lover’s Guitar, 1969; Solid Gold ’69, 1969; C. B. Atkins and C. E. Snoe by Special Request, 1970; Me and Jerry, 1970; Solid Gold ’70, 1970; Yestergroovin’, 1970; For the Good Times and Other Country Moods, 1971; This Is Chet Atkins, 1971; Chet Atkins Picks on the Hits, 1972; Alone, 1973; Strum Along Guitar Method, 1973; Atkins-Travis Traveling Show, 1974; Chet Atkins Picks on Jerry Reed, 1974; The Night Atlanta Burned, 1975; Chet Atkins Goes to the Movies, 1976; Guitar Monsters, 1976; Chester and Lester, 1977 (with Les Paul); Me and My Guitar, 1977; First Nashville Guitar Quartet, 1979; Reflections, 1980; Country After All These Years, 1981; East Tennessee Christmas, 1983; Great Hits of the Past, 1983; Work It out with Chet Atkins, 1983; Stay Tuned, 1985; Street Dreams, 1986; Sails, 1987; C. G. P., 1988; Neck and Neck, 1990; Sneakin’ Around, 1991; Read My Licks, 1994; Almost Alone, 1996; The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World, 1997; Discover Japan, 2002; Solo Sessions, 2003.

Bibliography

Atkins, Chet, and Michael Cochran. Chet Atkins: Me and My Guitars. Milwaukee, Wis.: Hal Leonard, 2003. Part autobiography and part homage to the more than one hundred guitars he has used over the years, this is Atkins’s collection of stories and anecdotes, illustrated with beautiful photographs of some of the instruments Atkins made famous.

Atkins, Chet, and Bill Neely. Country Gentleman. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1974. Atkins’s early autobiography, which is a valuable source of information on his life and his musical development.

Johnson, Chad. The Best of Chet Atkins: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Styles and Techniques of the Father of Country Guitar. Milwaukee, Wis.: Hal Leonard, 2004. Intended for guitarists, this book offers transcriptions and analyses of a dozen Atkins trademark songs, including “Mister Sandman,” “Yakety Axe,” “Country Gentleman,” and “Galloping on the Guitar.”

Kienzle, Rich. “Chet Atkins.” In The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music. New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Summary article on Atkins’s life and work from a standard source.

McClellan, John, and Devan Bratic. Chet Atkins in Three Dimensions: Fifty Years of Legendary Guitar, Volumes 1 and 2. Pacific, Mo.: Mel Bay, 2004. A fascinating collection of about four dozen interviews with artists who worked with Atkins over the years, including nearly fifty transcriptions of his songs.

Wolf, Charles, and William Ivey. “The Nashville Sound.” In The Illustrated History of Country Music. New York: Random House, 1995. Good discussion of Atkins’s work as a music producer and executive and his creation of a crossover style that changed the face of country music.