The Chetboard

Someone contact Guy Van Duser...Chet just played the
version Guy Spoke of and played at CAAS... Chet was absolutely stunning!
What a sound!!!

John

I missed it, but I just found that it is playing again next Saturday evening and also the following Tuesday on PBS in Dallas/Fort Worth. I missed CAAS this year, too. So, I don't know the Guy Van Duser story that you mentioned, but Chet is on TV. Yay!!

Bill B.

Try this link to find it in your area.

http://www.tvguide.com/listings/setup/localizeus.aspx?RedirectUrl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.tvguide.com%2ftvshows%2fthe-jimmy-dean-show-country-classics%2f563314

The TV guide link did not show the airing for PBS in my area. I went directly to http://www.pbs.org and seleceted my area (Arizona) and the local PBS station is going to air the program at 6:00-8:30 PM this Tuesday evening (Aug 6th). I have my DVR set to record it!!

My appreciation to those of you who wanted to let me know about the PBS broadcast of the Jimmy Dean Show segment featuring Chet playing "Windy and Warm", first aired fifty years ago and not available on Youtube or anywhere else ever since. For those reading this who may not have heard me say so, this particular performance by Chet was my first opportunity to actually see him play on the TV screen and realize what his fingers were doing. My aunt made a tape recording of the audio from the TV speaker on one of those little 3-inch reel 'living letter' magnetic tape machines popular in the early 1960's, and it was from listening over and over again to that little tape that I learned my first Chet Atkins arrangement, and changed my life forever!

So naturally, our way-off-course PBS affiliates up here in Boston have chosen to run something else this August instead of what the rest of the country is watching. (Although, it is kind of unique to catch our own John Knowles during the pledge breaks, hawking memberships nationwide in his own inimitable style.) But I'll catch Chet's spot when PBS puts them in the online store, or if anyone happens to record it off the air and wants to share a DVD copy with me, that would be a very nice thing.

Meanwhile, to those of you learning from Chet: keep trying to get as much as you can from the AUDIO, NOT the TAB, if you can possibly make yourself learn arrangements by ear. It's not easy; neither is learning to sightread well, but locating the notes by ear teaches you where those actual sounds are on your instrument–– a most useful kind of knowledge in this big game of fingerboard 'concentration' that we're all playing! ––Guy

If I am correct I saw this show live in 1964 or 65. It would be the first time I saw Chet on television. I was in the Army at Ft Bliss in El Paso and when it was announced Chet would be on the show I ran all over the barracks to get my friends to come watch. I thought his voice was a little odd and wondered if a hero should sound like that. He played Windy and Warm and I think later he commented since time was running short he would play two songs at once. I knew Yankee Doodle Dixie was next. This show will be televised Thursday night here in Jacksonville.

David

Learning Chet's stuff is not easy!!!!! Wow! What an understatement that is! Personally - I have a very hard time learning strictly by ear. I have had tinnitus all my life, and it has NOT improved with age! I use everything I can get to learn....ear....tab....watching....others showing me, whatever I can get. This is why songs I have played for years get altered, because I pick up a new chord or little lick that I missed years before and add it in as I learn it. Add to that the fact that Chet seldom played a tune the same way twice - he was always throwing in another ear-catchiing lick where the record had something else altogether. Sometimes - someone will ask me "how long it took me to learn that song" and I always have to say - "I don't know" I haven't learned all of Chet's versions yet. I don't think I ever will either!

I think Chet's contracts with RCA specified three albums a year. Figure 12 sides per album, that's thirty six new tunes he had to work up arrangements for. And at the same time producing other people's albums upon which the fortunes of RCA/Nashville depended on to stay in business.
Some of them were better than others of course, the man was, after all, human. But he knew how to start and end a song and so many of the wannabe's have problems even with that part of it

But how many of you can say you learned thirty six new songs, fully arranged in a year? Definitely an accomplishment no matter how you cut it...

A lot of folks couldn't put togethera thirty six tune set list let alone corrall thirty six new songs a year.

Even on the songs Chet recorded that didn't get as much attention they all still spoke of tone and clarity that only comes from dedicated practice...

I believe when Chet became the WNOX's station guitarist he had to learn a new song every day. So by the time he got to RCA he was probably pretty accomplished at putting an album together. I read somewhere where he said he would hear a song he liked one day, practice it the next and record it the third day. Whatever the facts and whether or not you think his album production was prolific, which I do, you have to be amazed at the superbness of every song.

David