For those unaware, guitarist, songwriter, session man, record producer and record company A&R man Chet Atkins was a ubiquitous and highly influential figure in Nashville through the ’50s and ’60s, helping to shape the industry’s output of country music as the genre’s styles and sounds evolved into the country/pop styles of the modern era.

His prowess as a guitarist was legendary, and this collection focuses on that aspect of his work. Acrobat already has on catalogue a 2-CD set devoted to his singles, which includes his early hits (The Chet Atkins Singles Collection 1946-61, Acrobat ADDCD3254), but this 59-track 2-CD collection focuses on his early album output during the 1950s as the LP format became established, and features most the titles from his albums Gallopin’ Guitar, Stringin’ Along With Chet Atkins, A Session With Chet Atkins, Chet Atkins In Three Dimensions, and Finger Style Guitar and selected titles from At Home and Hi-Fi In Focus.

It showcases the many sides of his instrumental artistry, as he interprets material from across the spectrum of the genres in his inimitable style. It’s an entertaining and absorbing showcase for his unique skills as a guitarist.

Chester Burton Atkins grew up in the hills near the tiny, remote East Tennessee town of Luttrell. His father, James Atkins, was an itinerant music teacher who had previously been married, and his mother, Ida Atkins, sang and played piano. After the Atkinses divorced, Ida remarried, in 1932, and Chester began to learn guitar and fiddle, often playing with his brother and sister and their stepfather, Willie Strevel.

A 1936 asthma attack forced Atkins to relocate to the improved climate at his father’s Georgia farm, where one night in the late 1930s he first heard Merle Travis playing guitar on WLW in Cincinnati. Travis’s thumb-and-finger picking style fascinated Atkins, who created his own thumb-and-two-finger variation.

After attending high school in Georgia, Atkins landed a job at WNOX in Knoxville, fiddling for the team of singer Bill Carlisle and comic Archie Campbell. WNOX executive Lowell Blanchard heard Atkins’s guitar playing and began featuring him on the station’s popular weekday multi-artist country show, Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round, and Atkins broadened his repertoire though listening sessions in the station’s music library.

He briefly joined WLW in Cincinnati in 1945, then worked with Johnnie & Jack in Raleigh, North Carolina, in early 1946, before moving to Chicago, where Red Foley, having left the WLS National Barn Dance to host the Grand Ole Opry’s NBC segment, The Prince Albert Show, hired Atkins and took him to Nashville. There, Atkins made his first solo recording, “Guitar Blues,” for the local record label Bullet.

The rest, as they say, is history, for he was also a noted record producer as well. Indeed, Atkins worked his way from low playing radio gigs to success as a recording artist and also became one of the most prolific record producers in history. While on Music Row in Nashville, Chet discovered and signed many talented artists as Vice President of RCA and ushered in what was later to be known as the “Nashville Sound.”

Artists included Jim Reeves, Eddy Arnold, Dolly Parton, Jerry Reed, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Charley Pride and many others. Of course, fans loved not only his unique and captivating music but also his humble and down to earth demeanor.

His last recording, “Solo Sessions” was a treasure trove of Chet playing solo in his home basement recording studio, tracks which he had laid down over the years. The tapes were discovered by Chet Atkin’s grandson Jonathan and rhythm guitarist Paul Yandell.

Disc 1:
Gallopin’ Guitar; Stephen Foster Medley; St. Louis Blues; Black Mountain Rag; Imagination; Oh By Jingo! (Oh By Gee, You’re The Only Girl For Me); Indian Love Call; Memphis Blues; 12th Street Rag; Hello Ma Baby; Alice Blue Gown; Blue Gypsy; South; Indiana (Back Home Again In Indiana); Alabama Jubilee; Have You Ever Been Lonely? (Have You Ever Been Blue?); Red Wing; Old Man River; Caravan; Corrine, Corrina; A Gay Ranchero; Frankie And Johnnie; Honeysuckle Rose; Arkansas Traveler; Londonderry Air; Ochi Chornya (Dark Eyes); La Golondrina; Blues In The Night

Disc 2:
Tenderly; Little Rock Getaway; Tip-Toe Through The Tulips With Me; Minuet (From French Harpsichord Suite / Prelude (From Six Short Preludes); Intermezzo; Schön Rosmarin; Minute Waltz; Swedish Rhapsody; Liza (All The Clouds’ll Roll Away); In The Mood; Heartaches; Glow Worm; Dance Of The Goldenrod; Petite Waltz; Adelita; Gavotte In D; Unchained Melody; Waltz In A-Flat; Malagueña; Say ’Si Si’; Vilia; Nagasaki; Yankee Doodle Dixie; April In Portugal; Czardas; Ain’t Misbehavin’; Tiger Rag; Walk, Don’t Run; Tara’s Theme; Johnson Rag; Lullaby Of The Leaves

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