Chet's NY Times Obit
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Chet Atkins, Country Guitarist and Producer, Is Dead at 77
By BEN RATLIFF
Chet Atkins, the versatile guitarist and record producer who was a leader in
the growth of Nashville as a music center in the 1950's and part of the elite
force that transformed country music and affected popular musical taste in
America, died on Saturday at his home in Nashville. He was 77.
Mr. Atkins had battled cancer for several years, undergoing surgery to remove a
brain tumor in June 1997, and had a bout with colon cancer in 1970's, The
Associated Press reported.
Nicknamed "The Country Gentleman," Chet Atkins accepted his position in the
music industry with a remarkable lack of arrogance, spending his last years in
his office on Nashville's "Music Row" singing and playing the old songs with
visiting performers whose recording careers he had a hand in shaping and whose
music he influenced.
Though he was directly involved in turning Nashville into a distinct country
music hit-making empire, he played down his own ingenuity as a prime mover.
"All I was trying to do was to keep my job," he recalled in 1988 of the days
when Nashville was becoming the center of country music in the mid-1950's. "And
the way you keep your job is to surprise the friends and neighbors with each
new record."
Chester Burton Atkins was born on June 20, 1924, on his grandfather's 50- acre
farm in the Clinch Mountains near Luttrell, Tenn. He spent his childhood in
poverty, and he said that left him with a sense of insecurity. "We were so poor
and everybody around us was so poor that it was the 40's before any of us knew
there had been a Depression," he wrote in his 1975 autobiography, "Country
Gentleman."
Music was central to his upbringing. His grandfather was a champion fiddler,
and his father, James Arley Atkins, was a music teacher, piano tuner and
sometime evangelistic singer. His half-brother, Jim, would become the rhythm
guitarist in the Les Paul Trio in the 1930's, and his other brother, Lowell,
also played guitar.
Asthmatic as a child, Mr. Atkins learned how to play the banjo on days when he
had to stay home from school. "I'd play it until the strings broke," he
recalled. "When that happened, I'd just rip a wire out of the screen porch and
tune 'er up again. It took me 20 years to learn I couldn't tune too well. And
by that time I was too rich to care."
According to stories, he traded either a pistol or a farm wagon for his first
guitar, which was owned by his stepfather, Willie Strevel. He took up the
instrument at age 9, having already learned to play the ukulele and the fiddle,
and he played at local parties and roadhouses. Meanwhile, he was learning
guitar styles by listening to groups like the Sons of the Pioneers and the Corn
Cobblers on radio.
At 11, he moved to Columbus, Ga., where it was hoped that the drier climate
would ease his asthma. He lived with his natural father and his stepmother.
Listening to a Cincinnati radio station, the young Chet Atkins became
enthralled by the playing style of guitarist Merle Travis, and in 1941, while
working for the National Youth Administration in Mountain Hill, Ga., he spent
his salary on equipment to make his acoustic guitar electric. To get even
closer to the Travis style, he devised a method of picking with a thumb and
three fingers that would later influence other guitarists. He did not know that
Merle Travis got his own sound with a thumb and one finger.
Mr. Atkins was a professional musician by age 17. The outbreak of World War II
spread Southern rural music as Southerners left home for military bases and
defense plants all over the country. Mr. Atkins quit high school and took
advantage of the wider demand for country music, getting a job as a fiddler
with the Jumpin' Bill Carlisle-Archie Campbell program, which was broadcast
once a week from WNOX in Knoxville, Tenn.
Lowell Blanchard, the director of the radio station, heard him idly practicing
guitar and was impressed enough to put Mr. Atkins on the station's "Midday
Merry-Go-Round" program. After the Carlisle-Campbell show was canceled, Mr.
Blanchard made Mr. Atkins the rhythm guitarist in the radio station's staff
band, at $30 a week.
Mr. Atkins was a solitary young man whose shyness was often misinterpreted as
hostility. As a result, he was often fired. He found and lost short-term jobs
at radio stations in Cincinnati; Raleigh, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; and Springfield,
Mo. But the guitarist's luck changed when the Carter Sisters and Mother
Maybelle, among the most popular performers on WNOX, added him to their touring
band.
The troupe traveled extensively and appeared every Saturday night on the radio
program "Tennessee Barn Dance" in Knoxville. They moved to Springfield, Mo.,
where "The Carter Family and Chet Atkins Show" on KWTO proved so successful
that it was nationally syndicated.
Chet Atkins was becoming known throughout the country and his reputation grew
even more when he and the Carter sisters began to appear as stars of the "Grand
Ole Opry."
Mr. Atkins capitalized on his radio success with LPs, which he began recording
for RCA Victor in 1946. He had his first hit, "The Galloping Guitars," in 1949.
He moved to Nashville, where he found steady work as a studio musician and as
an artists- and-repertory man for Steve Sholes, the chief producer of country
and western records for RCA Victor.
Mr. Atkins settled into a group of young musicians who played on most RCA
country sessions, a group that included the pianist Floyd Cramer, the drummer
Buddy Harman, the bassist Bob Moore, and the guitarists Ray Edenton and Grady
Martin. Harmonies were provided by the Jordanaires and the Anita Kerr Singers.
The sound of that strong team at work enlivened hit after hit.
In 1957, Mr. Sholes, who had become head of artists and repertory for RCA
Victor in New York, appointed Mr. Atkins the manager of recording operations in
Nashville. "There were an awful lot of sidemen around who could have done the
same thing," Mr. Atkins said in 1988, when asked about his early promotion to a
position of authority at RCA. "But the difference was that I was friends with
Mr. Steve Sholes."
RCA built a recording studio in Nashville, and there Mr. Atkins, who had left
the "Grand Ole Opry" and the Carter Sisters to concentrate on his recording
career, guided many of the most famous country artists to success. Among the
singers whose career-enhancing records were produced by Mr. Atkins were Don
Gibson, Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, Roger Miller, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton and
Charley Pride. Don Gibson had failed with four record companies before Mr.
Atkins signed him for RCA. Mr. Gibson's first single for the company was a
recording of two songs he wrote on one day in 1957. The first, "Oh, Lonesome
Me," hit both the country and pop-music charts. The song on the flip side, "I
Can't Stop Loving You," became an American standard.
Mr. Atkins also suggested to Mr. Sholes that RCA should outbid Columbia Records
and sign Elvis Presley to a contract. RCA made millions of dollars from that
suggestion.
Mr. Atkins was regarded as possibly the consummate pop professional in American
music. He used his own wide taste, his mastery of every kind of music, from the
classics and jazz to religious music and flamenco, and his familiarity with
electronic instruments and sound to change the sound of country music in the
1950's and 60's. Rock and roll had made enormous inroads into country music
when Mr. Atkins was operating as a record producer. Sales of country music were
declining and many radio stations were switching to rock. Mr. Atkins was
pivotal in adapting country music to changing American tastes, initially toward
a hard-edged, urban honky-tonk style, then toward a suburban pop style with
strings and vocal choruses.
This softer sound — Mr. Atkins liked to call it "uptown" — was marketed as
"countrypolitan" but became more widely known as "the Nashville Sound." It was
created so that country music could have an identity separate from rockabilly,
but the softening also took place because Mr. Atkins and a few other
influential producers believed that the sounds of steel guitars and country
fiddles had become too old-fashioned.
Under his guidance, "progressive" country music achieved its intended
commercial crossover. Its admirers believe it saved country music from the rock
'n' roll juggernaut, brought the music to mid-America in a way that had not
been experienced since Gene Autry, and turned Nashville into Music City U.S.A.
Once success was achieved, however, the the style was derided for its
homogeneity and lack of backbone. "Aren't you going to ask me to define `The
Nashville Sound?' " Mr. Atkins would tease interviewers. Then he would jingle
some coins in his fist over the microphone. "It's the sound of money."
Mr. Atkins became vice president in charge of country music for RCA in 1967,
but three years later he began to phase himself out of that end of the
business. "Producing can be so stressful," he said later. "I couldn't handle
it. It wasn't fun anymore."
Mr. Atkins made concert tours of Europe, Asia and Africa and played at the
Newport Jazz Festival, the White House and on numerous television programs. He
always played with a thumb-pick and his fingers, rather than a flat pick, and
he liked to show off his dexterity by playing two melodies simultaneously on
different strings. He took up the classical guitar and was a guest artist with
many symphony orchestras. Though he was offered honorary degrees by various
universities, he never accepted one; he preferred instead the degree he
bestowed on himself, Certified Guitar Picker or C.G.P.
He recorded duet albums through the 90's, among them sessions with the singer
Suzy Bogguss and the singer-guitarists Mark Knopfler and Jerry Reed.
Mr. Atkins was a tall, slender man who retained his childhood reticence. Paul
Hemphill described him in his book "The Nashville Sound" as "an icy-veined,
wry-humored, conservatively dressed refugee from the mountains" with the
"demeanor of a small-town undertaker."
He had been a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame since 1973 and received
many awards, including being named Cashbox magazine's outstanding
instrumentalist for 13 consecutive years.
He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Leona; a daughter, Merle, who was named
after his idol, Merle Travis; and two grandchildren.
In 1995, he told The Los Angeles Times that the reason he was still performing
on guitar was because he was still trying to "get it right."
"I've never expressed myself musically the way I would like," he said "Because
of that, I've had a long career. I've never been able to sit back and say,
`Wasn't I great? Listen to the one I made in 1958!' "
Dean Eaton
of Atkins' more reputable albums such as "The Night Atlanta Burned" with the
Nashville String Ensemble. Amazing how many people have never even heard of
this great album of Civil War-era music, a true classic and one of CHet's
finest hours.
Dean
"SMHOME2" <smh...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010701012802...@ng-fd1.aol.com...
Scott
> Don Gibson had failed with four record companies before Mr.
> Atkins signed him for RCA.
Depends on what you mean by "failed". He released some good stuff.
What were the four? M-G-M, Columbia, (ahem) RCA Victor, and who else?
> Mr. Gibson's first single for the company was a
> recording of two songs he wrote on one day in 1957. The first, "Oh, Lonesome
> Me," hit both the country and pop-music charts. The song on the flip side, "I
> Can't Stop Loving You," became an American standard.
His first singles for RCA Victor were:
Red Lips, White Lies & Blue Hours/Just Let Me Love You 47-4364
Dark Future/Blue Million Tears 47-4473
in 1952. Then in 1957:
I Can't Leave/I Love You Still 47-6860
Everything Turns Out For The Best/Sittin' Here Cryin' 47-6942
Blue, Blue Day/Too Soon To Know 47-7010
were released before
Oh, Lonesome Me/I Can't Stop Loving You 47-7133
Barbara Sherrill
me.... We lost one of the greatest around.....
Barb
"SMHOME2" <smh...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010701012802...@ng-fd1.aol.com...
> This softer sound - Mr. Atkins liked to call it "uptown" - was marketed as
Maggie Smolkovich
in the Tennessean today. Here is the
regular obit. Note the names of the
pallbearers....
Chester (Chet) ATKINS
Nashville, TN
June 30, 2001
June 30, 2001. Survived by wife, Leona Atkins; daughter, Merle Atkins
Russell; grandson, Jonathan Russell; granddaughter, Amanda Russell;
sister, Billie Rose Shockley and several nieces and nephews. Visitation
will be from 5-8 p.m. Monday, July 2, 2001 at Roesch-Patton Austin
Bracey & Charlton Funeral Home. Funeral services will be conducted at
1:00 a.m. Tuesday, July 3, 2001 at the Ryman Auditorium. Interment at
Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens. Active Pallbearers are Gary Atkins, Ray
Stevens, Vince Gill, David Conrad, Steve Wariner, Jonathan Russell, Dr.
Will Russell, Chad Sawyer, Paul Yandell and Harry Warner. Memorial
contributions may be made to Alive Hospice, 1718 Patterson St.,
Nashville, TN 37203. Roesch-Patton Austin Bracey & Charlton, 1715
Broadway, Nashville, TN, 244-6480