Session. Birth of the Blues. Chime and Pure Tone.

[LMark]

The question when Chet's various licks first "appeared" comes up here from time to time. Maybe this one has been discussed before. But I noticed at least two spots in "Birth of the Blues" (On Session with Chet Atkins LP) where Chet plays both a chime and a pure tone simultaneously. They are not "cascading" as what appeared at a later date, but they are simultaneous. At least I think that I hear them. It's quite subtle. They are in a different place than the section where he plays the melody in artificial chimes. I'm not speaking of the hammer-ons in that section either. And they aren't "accidental" or flub overtones. Can any of you fellows (or gals!) make out the spots I am hearing? What minute and second mark the spots? LMark

P.S. I noticed, after the fact, that the combo chime pure tone is also prominent in Frankie and Johnny. Been a long time since I actually listened to these old pieces on the Sessions album. Wasn't Chet great!

[Norm]

I believe Chet himself said he picked that trick up from steel guitarists and first used it in “Chinatown my Chinatown. Earliest release date I find for that is 1952.

A Session with CA came out in 1954.

I couldn’t spot the instances you describe in Birth of the Blues but I have hearing issues so that’s no surprise.

What I'm always reminded of is Chet's marvelous arranging skill, the harmonies he seems to so casually blend through everything he plays

[LMark]

For some reason I was thinking that Session was the first LP. But I (re-)discovered that Gallopin' Guitar and Stringing Along came along previously in 1953. (The latter was reissued in 1955, too.) Real Chet fans are supposed to know this stuff by heart, aren't they?!! Were both of the albums from 1953 done on the D'Angelico? LMark

[Norm]

If it was recorded in ’53 it had to be the D’Angelico since he didn’t sign on with Gretsch until 1954. The tricky part is that Chet redid Stringing Along in 1956 using a Gretsch.

This one would be D’Angelico:

RCA Victor LPM-3163 Stringin' Along With Chet Atkins: Blue Gypsy; Oh By Jingo; Hello Ma Baby; Memphis Blues; Alice Blue Gown; Indian Love Call; Main Street Breakdown; Twelfth Street Rag – 05-53 (10“ LP)

This one would be the Gretsch:

RCA Victor LPM-1236 Stringin' Along With Chet Atkins: Oh By Jingo; Indian Love Call; Memphis Blues; 12th Street Rag; Galloping On The Guitar; St Louis Blues; Main Street Breakdown; Hello Ma Baby; Alice Blue Gown; Blue Gypsy; Black Mountain Rag; Third Man Theme - 56 (MX:F2PP-8546/7. 8 rerecorded tracks from LPM-3163 + 4 original tracks from LPM-3079)

The Gallopin Guitar album looks like it was only released once and most of the songs “parted out” on other albums.

RCA Victor LPM-3079 Chet Atkins' Gallopin' Guitar: The Third Man Theme; St. Louis Blues; Lover Come Back To Me; Imagination; Hangover Blues; Black Mountain Rag; Stephen Foster Medley; Gallopin' Guitar (Galloping On The Guitar) – 09-52 (10“ LP; MX: E2VL-4573/4)

The Bear Family called one of their mass gatherings of Chet’s stuff “Gallopin Guitar” (Bear Family [GER] BCD-15714 Galloping Guitar)

[LMark]

Back to the original topic. Mark S. Reinhart put me onto the answer re: Chet's first publication of chimes and pure tones. (Reinhart's book, by the way, as far as I could tell by a quick look by preview at Amazon, is well-written and researched.) Here's the answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jC1xrYF0MM
LMark

[mark reinhart]

Thanks for the kind words regarding my book. While working on the book, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out just when Chet first paired harmonics with pure tones. He publicly stated that he first did this on "Chinatown, My Chinatown" (recorded 7/30/52), but in reality he used this technique on a recording he made almost a full year earlier. "Good-Bye Blues" was recorded on 10/11/51 -- since it gained so little notice when it was first released, perhaps Chet just forgot about it even though it featured him unveiling a wonderfully innovative guitar technique.

This brings up a point that I think I might have made here before, but I'll make it again. Chet was refreshingly casual about his incredible career. Many of us Chet fans take every note he played very seriously, but it sure seems that Chet didn't feel the need to pore over his legacy all that deeply. Chet struck a great balance in so many facets of his life, and keeping his ego in check was one of those facets. He was confident enough to be very proud of his legacy, but not so confident that he came off as arrogant and self-obsessed. And hey, a lot of us are happy to obsess over Chet's music for him!

[emjaybee94]

Mark,
First of all, thanks for a very entertaining book. I think I've read it all now, although I say that with a bit of hesitation. It's a book you can open at any page, and I like that.

On the subject of harmonics, when Chet came to the UK in 1983 and gave his British fans a two hour seminar, he said that he first got the idea of using harmonics (as Norm says) from a steel guitarist he was working with in 1949. That's two years before he recorded "Good Bye Blues", so I wonder if there is a recording with harmonics out there that predates that. He also said that the first time he used the cascading harmonics on a recording was in 1960 for the intro to "White Christmas".

Regards
Mike

[mark reinhart]

Mike, I'm so glad to hear that you have enjoyed the book. My goal was to create a literary work about Chet that collected all of his greatest recorded songs into an easily accessible format. Of course, just which of Chet's recorded songs are his greatest is a question that will always be open to debate. I realize that not every Chet fan will agree with every last one of the works I chose to include in the book. That said, however, I'm confident that Chet fans will agree with the majority of my choices!

In terms of Chet's combining of harmonics and pure tones -- my decision to state that his first recorded use of this technique was in "Good-Bye Blues" was based on my study of the Chet CD sets produced by Bear Family Records. Their exhaustive research created a chronicle of Chet's recorded work that was simply amazing. I'm not saying that there is absolutely no chance of there being an earlier Chet recording out there that features him using the technique -- but the Bear Family compilations of Chet's 1940s and 1950s recordings are so complete that I doubt much got by them.