Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), also known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music style which expanded its appeal to adult pop music fans. He was primarily a guitarist, but he also played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele, and occasionally sang.
"Chester Atkins" redirects here. For the former U.S. congressman, see Chester G. Atkins.
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins
"Mr. Guitar", "The Country Gentleman"
June 20, 1924
Luttrell, Tennessee, U.S.
June 30, 2001 (aged 77)
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
- Musician
- songwriter
- producer
Guitar
1942–1996
Atkins's signature picking style was inspired by Merle Travis. Other major guitar influences were Django Reinhardt, George Barnes, Les Paul, and, later, Jerry Reed.[1] His distinctive picking style and musicianship brought him admirers inside and outside the country scene, both in the United States and abroad. Atkins spent most of his career at RCA Victor and produced records for the Browns, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Waylon Jennings, Roger Whittaker, Ann-Margret and many others.
Rolling Stone credited Atkins with inventing the "popwise 'Nashville sound' that rescued country music from a commercial slump" and ranked him number 21 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".[2] In 2023, Atkins was named the 39th best guitarist of all time.[3] Among many other honors, Atkins received 14 Grammy Awards and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He also received nine Country Music Association awards for Instrumentalist of the Year. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. George Harrison was also inspired by Chet Atkins; early Beatles songs such as "All My Loving" show the influence.
Biography[edit]
Childhood and early life[edit]
Atkins was born on June 20, 1924, in Luttrell, Tennessee, near Clinch Mountain. His parents divorced when he was six years old, after which he was raised by his mother. He was the youngest of three boys and a girl. He started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle, but he made a swap with his brother Lowell when he was nine: an old pistol and some chores for a guitar.[4] He stated in his 1974 autobiography, "We were so poor and everybody around us was so poor that it was the forties before anyone even knew there had been a depression." Forced to relocate to Fortson, Georgia, outside of Columbus to live with his father because of a critical asthma condition, Atkins was a sensitive youth who became obsessed with music. Because of his illness, he was forced to sleep in a straight-back chair to breathe comfortably. On those nights, he played his guitar until he fell asleep holding it, a habit that lasted his whole life.[5] While living in Fortson, Atkins attended the historic Mountain Hill School. He returned in the 1990s to play a series of charity concerts to save the school from demolition.[6]
Stories have been told about the very young Chet who, when a friend or relative would come to visit and play guitar, crowded the musician and put his ear so close to the instrument that it became difficult for the visitor to play.[5]
Atkins became an accomplished guitarist while he was in high school.[4] He used the restroom in the school to practice because it had good acoustics.[7][8] His first guitar had a nail for a nut and was so bowed that only the first few frets could be used.[9] He later purchased a semi-acoustic electric guitar and amp, but he had to travel many miles to find an electrical outlet, since his home didn't have electricity.[10]
Later in life, he lightheartedly gave himself (along with John Knowles, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner, and Jerry Reed[11]) the honorary degree CGP ("Certified Guitar Player").[9]
In 2011, his daughter Merle Atkins Russell bestowed the CGP degree on his longtime sideman Paul Yandell. She then declared no more CGPs would be allowed by the Atkins estate.[12]
His half-brother Jim was a successful guitarist who worked with the Les Paul Trio in New York.[5]
Atkins did not have a strong style of his own until 1939 when (while still living in Georgia) he heard Merle Travis picking over WLW radio.[5][13] This early influence dramatically shaped his unique playing style.[1] Whereas Travis used his index finger on his right hand for the melody and his thumb for the bass notes, Atkins expanded his right-hand style to include picking with his first three fingers, with the thumb on bass. He also listened closely to the single-string playing of George Barnes and Les Paul.
Chet Atkins was an amateur radio general class licensee. Formerly using the call sign WA4CZD, he obtained the vanity call sign W4CGP in 1998 to include the CGP designation, which supposedly stood for "Certified Guitar Picker". He was a member of the American Radio Relay League.[14]
Early musical career[edit]
After dropping out of high school in 1942, Atkins landed a job at WNOX (AM) (now WNML) radio in Knoxville, where he played fiddle and guitar with the singer Bill Carlisle and the comic Archie Campbell and became a member of the station's Dixieland Swingsters, a small swing instrumental combo. After three years, he moved to WLW-AM in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Merle Travis had formerly worked.
After six months, he moved to Raleigh and worked with Johnnie and Jack before heading for Richmond, Virginia, where he performed with Sunshine Sue Workman. Atkins's shy personality worked against him, as did the fact that his sophisticated style led many to doubt he was truly "country". He was fired often but was soon able to land another job at another radio station on account of his unique playing ability.[5]
Atkins and Jethro Burns (of Homer and Jethro) married twin sisters Leona and Lois Johnson, who sang as Laverne and Fern Johnson, the Johnson Sisters. Leona Atkins outlived her husband by eight years, dying in 2009 at the age of 85.[15]
Travelling to Chicago, Atkins auditioned for Red Foley, who was leaving his star position on WLS-AM's National Barn Dance to join the Grand Ole Opry.[16] Atkins made his first appearance at the Opry in 1946 as a member of Foley's band. He also recorded a single for Nashville-based Bullet Records that year. That single, "Guitar Blues", was fairly progressive, including a clarinet solo by the Nashville dance band musician Dutch McMillan and produced by Owen Bradley. He had a solo spot on the Opry, but when that was cut, Atkins moved on to KWTO in Springfield, Missouri. Despite the support of executive Si Siman, however, he soon was fired for not sounding "country enough".[5]
Signing with RCA Victor[edit]
While working with a Western band in Denver, Colorado, Atkins came to the attention of RCA Victor. Siman had been encouraging Steve Sholes to sign Atkins, as his style (with the success of Merle Travis as a hit recording artist) was suddenly in vogue. Sholes, A&R director of country music at RCA, tracked Atkins down in Denver.
He made his first RCA Victor recordings in Chicago in 1947, but they did not sell. He did some studio work for RCA that year, but had relocated to Knoxville again where he worked with Homer and Jethro on WNOX's new Saturday night radio show The Tennessee Barn Dance and the popular Midday Merry Go Round.
In 1949, he left WNOX to join June Carter with Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters on KWTO. This incarnation of the Carter Family featured Maybelle Carter and daughters June, Helen, and Anita. Their work soon attracted attention from the Grand Ole Opry. The group relocated to Nashville in the mid-1950s. Atkins began working on recording sessions and performing on WSM-AM and the Opry.[5] Atkins became a member of the Opry in the 1950s.[17]
While he had not yet had a hit record for RCA Victor, his stature was growing. He began assisting Sholes as a session leader when the New York–based producer needed help organizing Nashville sessions for RCA Victor artists. Atkins's first hit single was "Mr. Sandman", followed by "Silver Bell", which he recorded as a duet with Hank Snow. His albums also became more popular. He was featured on ABC-TV's The Eddy Arnold Show in the summer of 1956 and on Country Music Jubilee in 1957 and 1958 (by then renamed Jubilee USA).
Death and legacy[edit]
Atkins received numerous awards, including 14 Grammy awards and nine Country Music Association awards for Instrumentalist of the Year.[16] In 1993, he was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Billboard magazine awarded him its Century Award, its "highest honor for distinguished creative achievement", in December 1997.[25]
Atkins is notable for his broad influence. His love for numerous styles of music can be traced from his early recording of the stride pianist James P. Johnson's "Johnson Rag", all the way to the rock stylings of Eric Johnson, an invited guest on Atkins's recording sessions, who, when Atkins attempted to copy his influential rocker "Cliffs of Dover", led to Atkins's creation of a unique arrangement of "Londonderry Air (Danny Boy)".
The classical guitar selections included on almost all his albums were, for many American artists working in the field today, the first classical guitar they ever heard. He recorded smooth jazz guitar still played on American airwaves today.
Atkins continued performing in the 1990s, but his health declined after he was diagnosed again with colon cancer in 1996. He died on June 30, 2001, at his home in Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 77.[26] His memorial service was held at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.[27] He was buried at Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens in Nashville.
A stretch of Interstate 185 in southwest Georgia (between LaGrange and Columbus) is named "Chet Atkins Parkway".[28] This stretch of interstate runs through Fortson, where Atkins spent much of his childhood.
In 2002, Atkins was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[23] His award was presented by Marty Stuart and Brian Setzer and accepted by Atkins's grandson, Jonathan Russell. The following year, Atkins ranked number 28 in Country Music Television's "40 Greatest Men of Country Music".
At the age of 13, the future jazz guitarist Earl Klugh was captivated watching Atkins's guitar playing on The Perry Como Show.[29] Similarly, he was a big influence on Doyle Dykes. Atkins also inspired Drexl Jonez and Tommy Emmanuel.[30]
Johnny Winter's thumb-picking style came from Atkin's playing.[31]
Clint Black's album Nothin' but the Taillights includes the song "Ode to Chet", which includes the lyrics "'Cause I can win her over like Romeo did Juliet, if I can only show her I can almost pick that legato lick like Chet" and "It'll take more than Mel Bay 1, 2, & 3 if I'm ever gonna play like CGP." Atkins played guitar on the track. At the end of the song, Black and Atkins had a brief conversation.
Atkins' song "Jam Man" is currently used in commercials for Esurance.
In 1967, a tribute song, "Chet's Tune", was produced for Atkins' birthday, with contributions by a long list of RCA Victor artists, including Eddy Arnold, Connie Smith, Jerry Reed, Willie Nelson, Hank Snow, and others. The song was written by the Nashville songwriter Cy Coben, a friend of Atkins. The single reached number 38 on the country charts.[32][33][34]
In 2009, Steve Wariner released an album titled My Tribute to Chet Atkins. One song from that record, "Producer's Medley", featured Wariner's recreation of several famous songs that Atkins both produced and performed. "Producer's Medley" won the Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2010.
In November 2011, Rolling Stone ranked Atkins number 21 on their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".[2]
