First Time I Heard Chet

[bill_h]

It was my 17th birthday. I had been taking guitar lessons for a year and a half or so. Started out using a flatpick. I was always taken with the way the pastor at church played using a thumbpick. I even managed to pick up the basics of that style from listening and with a little help from the pastor's son who was the same age as me and was a good player too. He told me at some point that his Dad played the Chet Atkins style and some time later told me if I ever wanted to hear some good guitar playing to get a Chet Atkins album. I had heard the name Chet Atkins but wasn't familiar with his music. That was about to change!

I remember mentioning to my Mother that I'd like to find a Chet Atkins album. Before I got around to it she bought me a double LP set called "Country Pickin'" for my birthday ( it was later re-released on CD as "Tennessee Guitar Man." ) I had no idea how my life was about to be impacted when I dropped the needle. The first tune was called "Foggy Mountain Top." I was so flabbergasted I had to pick the needle up and start the tune all over again after the first verse. I had no idea a guitar could sound that way! I don't remember exactly how many times I listened to the LP set that night but it's like I had my own private birthday party just listening to Chet.

I remember how I would think about the music on that album while daydreaming in class or later on while walking the streets of Nuremberg Germany during some of my free time while in the Army. ( I missed my Chet album back in the U.S.)

Years later and I'm still as big a fan of Chet's playing as ever. Lots of hotshot players have come along and can really hot dog it on Alabama Jubilee but as far as I'm concerned Chet owns that tune to this day. No one bosses Alabama Jubilee like Chet could.

As much as I idolize Chet's playing to this day I feel like I'm just now beginning to comprehend how he didn't just think like an artist, he had the ears of a recording engineer to boot! There will never be another Chet Atkins!!

Does anyone else care to weigh in on the first time you heard Chet?

[Tom Workman]

Hi, Bill...
The year was 1965, I was fourteen years old and was visiting my aunt in a neighboring state. She knew I had recently started taking guitar lessons and got out a Chet Atkins album, held it up for me to see and asked if I had heard of him. "No", I replied and she asked if I would like to listen to it and I said "sure". Well, the first song to come up was "Freight Train" and I asked her who was playing the "other" guitar along with him and when I found out that there was no "other" guitar all I could think was "how the heck is he doing that?!" Long story short, it was a life-changing moment for me and I was determined to learn that style of playing no matter what it took or how long it took and am I glad I stuck with it as I find it to be so satisfying and I love the challenge of trying something new all the time. Like the album title reads on one of my Chet CD's... "Guitar Genius" Guitar genius indeed! Thanks, Tom W.

[Norm]

We had one of those floor model radios that had a tilt-to-open front that exposed a turntable. It did not shut off after the last record dropped and played.

My dad came home with a 45 rpm of Poor People Of Paris and he would play the thing for sometimes an hour Every Day when he got off work.
1954. I was 14. Can't remember what was on the other side. Might have been "Honey".

Chet would sometimes be on the Jimmy Dean show in the mornings, too.

[Mike Nye]

Well Norm,

I'm not as old as you, (FINALLY, someone ! ! !) so I'd haveta say it was when I was a kid listenin' to my transistor radio in '64. The Beatles just landed in America, and 'She Loves You' (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah) was on the radio every hour.

I was sittin' on my bike in front of a beer joint, where a C&W band was settin' up to play that night. One of the guys from the band walked by and stopped dead in his tracks at the point where George Harrison was playin' the bridge, and said: "That's got Chet Atkins written all over it !!!"

Well, after hearin' that, I just had to find out what this Chet Atkins guy was all about . . .

I really didn't put it together that George was a big fan of Chet's, until I found that the guitar he was playin' was a Chet Atkins Country Gentleman ! ! !

Funny how things come full circle . . .

[Randy Finney]

You may wonder what planet I lived on for the first 20 years of my life after hearing this (some of you likely wonder this anyway), but I didn't become aware of Chet until 1985.

I had just started music college and one of my guitar instructors assigned me "Cosmic Square Dance" to analyze. Never bothered to listen to any of the rest of Stay Tuned until a few years ago.

The first Chet record I actually bought was Neck And Neck in the early 90s.

I have somewhat redeemed myself as I now own at least one copy of almost all of Chet's LPs, and I am in the process of collecting his EPs. (I missed out on String Dustin' EP on eBay last night by only 3 bucks! Argh. It sold for $136.50.)

Randy

[Terry Tolley]

I recall I was about 13 years old (winter of 1962). I had been taking piano lessons for three years to appease my mother. My dad thought music was good, but he told me..."You ought to learn an instrument you can carry around with you." A friend of mine had an acoustic guitar which I borrowed, and I bought a Mel Bay book of guitar chords. I learned C, G/G7, and D. After a bit, I asked my parents for an electric guitar for Christmas. This would have been for Christmas of 1963, which seemed forever to me then. In the mean-time, my dad bought a record for me..."Guitar Country." He told me, "If you are going to play guitar, this is the way you ought to play it." Long story short, Christmas finally came and brought me an Airline (Montgomery Ward)Telecaster copy and a small tube amp. I practiced on the chords I learned....at maximum volume of course, until my fingers literally bled. I soaked them in warm salt-water when they had started hurting a lot, but my index and middle finger would occasionally bleed, nonetheless. Small pieces of bandaids helped there. It took me a bit more than a year, but I learned the opening 1st verse to Freight Train, still at high volume. It still takes me a year to learn a new tune it seems. I turn the volume lower now.

[synchro]

In the early '60s my parents bought a nice little Motorola portable stereo record player which served them for years. My father started buying Chet albums so I got an earful of Chet starting, perhaps, at the age of eight. Between that and Billy Bean's fills on The Beverly Hillbillies my tastes were set early. "Most Popular Guitar" was an early favorite and when I listen to "East of the Sun" it's like a rune-stone to decode my tastes in Jazz guitar. Without consciously being aware of it I've been using some of his ideas from that song for decades.

[rhirvine]

Whenever Chet's hit "yakitty Ax" came out and got airtime out in California was the first time but while I enjoyed the tune it was not truly fingerstyle. They started playing a tune he covered of Ray Charles called "What I say" and that had fingerstyle and I was hooked on Chet from that point on and went to Wallach's Music City and bought the Galloping guitar album. I was having trouble figuring out Chet's thumb style so my father got me lessons with a guy who worked out a music shop in Lawndale who taught me Chet's thumb style, some Chet chords and a couple of his tunes.

Rich Irvine

[albertgen]

I first heard a guy playing a green gretsch in a gas station. He worked there pumping gas. I was there putting air in my bicycle tires and I heard him. I went in and watched him play. I was already playing but was trying to learn to read music out of Alfred something books. When I heard him he told me the style he was playing was Chet Atkins. Off I went every Saturday downtown to buy a Chet Atkins record. What a thrill, and that went on for a long time.Al

[MitchC]

Growing up, my dad was either playing Chet Atkins or Buddy Merril records. He encourgaged me at age 8 to try guitar. I did. THANKS DAD ! After a couple years of lessons, he'd say.. 'you ready to learn one of those Chet tunes ?' ... uh, yeah right dad ! There's like 3 guys playing that stuff !

He passed a couple years ago, but before he did, I DID learn to play the Chet tunes... he was SO happy. Glad he got to hear his son fulfull his request from 50 years prior.

Thank you Chet, for your great influence on SO many guitar players !