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Yakety axe metal cover4/29/2023 ![]() Along with Owen Bradley, who was performing a similar function for Decca Records, Atkins became an architect of the country music industry in Nashville. ![]() After RCA decided to build a recording studio in Nashville in 1955, Sholes made Atkins studio manager. Those early sessions were done with portable recording equipment in rented garages or offices. Steve Sholes, who was based at RCA Victor in New York and occasionally journeyed to Nashville to supervise RCA recording sessions, began relying on Atkins as his Nashville surrogate and Atkins began producing sessions. With Rose's support, Atkins became one of the "A-Team" of Nashville session players and played on recordings by Hank Williams, the Everly Brothers and Elvis Presley and appeared on the Opry as a solo artist. He was befriended by early country music pioneer Fred Rose, who developed the Acuff-Rose Publishing company and guided the career of Hank Williams. When the Carters joined the Opry and moved to Nashville in 1950, Atkins came along. He briefly returned to WNOX, where he worked first with Homer & Jethro and then with Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters. After the station fired Atkins for being "too hillbilly," Steve Sholes of RCA Victor signed him to a recording contract in 1947 as a singer and guitarist. The station's Si Siman gave him the nickname "Chet" and pitched him as an artist to different record companies. Again he moved on, this time to KWTO in Springfield, Missouri. In Nashville, he made his first recording, "Guitar Blues," for Bullet Records. When Red Foley left WLS to host the "Prince Albert Show" on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, he took Atkins with him. He worked briefly at the "National Barn Dance" on Chicago's WLS. He moved on to WLW in Cincinnati and the following year joined Johnnie & Jack. When WNOX's Lowell Blanchard heard Atkins' guitar playing, he put him on the station's daily barn dance show, "Midday Merry-Go-Round." At the same time, he moonlighted as a jazz guitarist with the Dixieland Swingsters. His first job after high school was at station WNOX in Knoxville, Tennessee, as fiddler for the duo Archie Campbell and Bill Carlisle. In later life Travis would autograph a picture to Atkins thusly: "My claim to fame is bragging that we're friends. Atkins developed his own two-finger-and-thumb style of picking since he couldn't see Travis picking, he had no idea of how he did it. Atkins had listened to Jimmie Rodgers and Blind Lemon Jefferson records and could copy them, but was amazed by the thumb-and-finger-picking style developed by Travis. It was then that his life forever changed, when he happened to hear Merle Travis playing guitar live on station WLW broadcasting from Cincinnati. He also suffered from asthma, and in 1936 was sent to live on his father's farm in Georgia with the hope his health would improve out of the hills. Atkins later said that as a child he was so shy as to seem almost autistic, and that the fiddle and guitar offered him an alternate means of expressing himself. His parents divorced in 1932 and Atkins began playing fiddle and later guitar with his new stepfather, Willie Strevel. He also in tandem with Decca Records' Nashville chief Owen Bradley developed what came to be known as the Nashville Sound, a pop-leaning strain of country music epitomized by such Atkins-produced landmark hits as Jim Reeves' "Four Walls" in 1957 and Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" in 1958.Ĭhester Burton Atkins was born on June 20, 1924, in the small east Tennessee town of Luttrell, which he described as a "whistle stop on the Southern Railway." His father, James, was an itinerant music teacher and his mother, Ida, played piano and sang. He also played guitar in pivotal music sessions, from Hank Williams recording dates in the early '50s to hit-laden sessions by the Everly Brothers and Elvis Presley. He was also a keen-eared talent scout, signing artists ranging from Dolly Parton to Roy Orbison. As head of RCA's Nashville division since the mid-'50s and the label's chief of A&R, Atkins was instrumental in fashioning the emerging music industry in Nashville. In addition to being one of the best-known guitarists in popular music, Atkins was also an architect of modern country music. Atkins died of cancer on Saturday at his home. Guitar," will be remembered in a memorial service on Tuesday (July 3) at Ryman Auditorium. NASHVILLE Chet Atkins, known around the world as "Mr.
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