Chet Atkins: A lifelong friendship/June 20, 2023

Chet Atkins, a legendary guitarist, had a profound influence on the music industry. Even though the author never met him, Chet's music played a significant role in his life. Chet taught the author how to play various songs and inspired him to practice for hours every day. The author's dedication to playing the guitar led to opportunities to perform and share the gift of music with his daughter. Chet's contributions to American music were remarkable, as he saved the country music industry and influenced artists from Elvis Presley to the Beatles. His experimentation with technology and collaboration with various musicians left a lasting impact. Chet Atkins will be remembered for generations to come. Welcome to the Sunday Column. I'm Dan Flannery. Today, June 20th, is the 99th anniversary of the birth of the legendary guitarist Chet Atkins. As you can hear in my July 5th, 2001 column from the Post Crescent in Appleton, Wisconsin, Chet's influence is difficult to overstate on the music industry. But from a personal perspective, his influence on my life is profound and daily. This piece was written after Chet's death on June 30th, 2001, 22 years ago next week. We never met, but it sure feels like we did. This is called, Friendship Formed at an Early Age with Atkins Will Last a Lifetime. Chet Atkins died the other day, and a few people have given me their condolences. He was one of my best friends, and we never met each other. But we go way back, almost 40 years to the early 1960s. We spent a lot of time together, him on vinyl, me on a padded stool. It was just tall enough to let me reach the arm on Brother Terry's record player. Chet was a great teacher. He taught me Wildwood Flower when I was five or six. Copper Kettle, Freight Train, and I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles weren't far behind, and I played them whenever my old man asked to hear them. And that was when we had company. Play it like you mean it, the old man would say. I usually meant it, and Chet helped me like it, too. His style and grace and taste captured my imagination and made us virtually inseparable. When I was six, my brother-in-law must have heard some potential because he loaned me his Van Electro guitar for the next few years. I picked it up every chance I had. Even though we lived in the middle of Forest County, with trout swimming and deer roaming just a few hundred feet away, the outdoors world really didn't interest me all that much. Chet and I practiced. Even then, it was clear to me that Chet hadn't gotten great overnight. He'd worked at his craft, and if I were to be any good at all, I'd need to practice just as much. So for four to six, sometimes eight hours a day, I played and I played and I played, and I couldn't wait to play again. Every time I saw that Van Electro, I'd rush to the record player and Chet and I would work on a new lick. He was using echo chambers and distortion pedals. He was an early innovator of the fuzz pedals, but I was armed with only an inexpensive borrowed six-string and a Japanese transistor amplifier. I tried to replicate the sound that Chet's technology had made easier, but it was difficult, and if you've heard Blue Ocean Echo, you understand that. I didn't know he was using an echo chamber on that song. I learned without one. But we worked well together, and with every album, between Brother Luke and I, we have about 50 or 60 of Chet's more than 100 recorded works. He gave me new challenges. I conquered enough of those challenges that not long after I turned 10, the old man agreed to buy me a new guitar. I was hell-bent to get something Chet designed for Gretsch guitars. The old man traded a Yamaha motorcycle and $200 for a Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 DC model, later called a Nashville model. Before you open the case, the old man told me, you have to promise that you'll play it wherever I want you to play. I would have played the old rugged cross at the gates of hell just to take a peek at that guitar. It still rests in my house, and it always will. Chet and I kept our practice schedule throughout my high school and college years. He eventually taught me to play two songs at one time, called Yankee Doodle Dixie, and he helped me expand beyond the country-flavored fingerstyle picking we had shared to more varied styles and genres. I'm still listening to him today and learning from him. Today. He helped me improve enough to perform with a lot of bands and as a solo act, and today as an accompanist for my youngest daughter, a gifted singer with an interest in a variety of styles. Put another way, he's put money in my pocket, and more importantly, allowed me to share the gift of music with one of my kids. That's worth a lot more than a $75 gig at a wedding dance. But he's done more than help a country kid, millions of us actually, learn how to use a thumb pick. Chet's contributions to American music are breathtaking. He was a consummate musician and an awesome talent, not just as a guitarist, but as a visionary. As an RCA producer and the head of the company's Nashville recording operations in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Chet and producer Owen Bradley almost single-handedly saved the country music industry. Bradley, who handled some of the genre's biggest names for another recording company, and Atkins created the Nashville sound that incorporated many new and improved recording techniques, fuller orchestration, better vocal background, and a higher degree of professionalism into a style of music that has been slow to break from its hillbilly roots. As a musician and a guitar innovator, he influenced artists from Elvis Presley, he played on the Heartbreak Hotel session, to Dave Matthews, from George Benson to Vince Gill, from Garrison Keillor to the Beatles. Did you know that George Harrison and John Lennon each played Gretch Chet Atkins' models at times, too? Chet set a standard for experimentation with technology, along with Les Paul and Leo Fender and a few others, for perusing various styles of music and for exploring the limits of the instrument. As a consultant to the luthiers at Gretch and Gibson, his stamp and his name were put on the line of wildly popular guitars that will never go out of style. It is not an overstatement to say that Chet's influence spans generations, from his beginnings in the Tennessee Hills to today's renewal in fingerstyle guitar and a host of musical styles. A list of his collaborators over the years runs from country star Hank Snow to Dire Streets leader Mark Knopfler and covers almost every bass in the middle. I'm forever grateful that Chet Atkins worked in the recording industry. He will be with us for a long, long time. I can't thank him enough for being there for me. He was my hero. Thanks for listening to and reading The Sunday Column. For more of my columns, go to danlflannery.com, that's D-A-N-L-F-L-A-N-N-E-R-Y dot com, or head to Facebook and like or follow The Sunday Column page. Thank you so much for your support. Have a great day.