53 Facts About Chet Atkins

Chet Atkins was primarily a guitarist, but he played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele, and occasionally sang.

Chet Atkins's distinctive picking style and musicianship brought him admirers inside and outside the country scene, both in the United States and abroad.

Chet Atkins spent most of his career at RCA Victor and produced records for the Browns, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Waylon Jennings, Roger Whittaker, Ann-Margret and many others.

Chet Atkins received nine Country Music Association awards for Instrumentalist of the Year.

Chet Atkins was born on June 20,1924, in Luttrell, Tennessee, near Clinch Mountain.

Chet Atkins's parents divorced when he was six years old, after which he was raised by his mother.

Chet Atkins was the youngest of three boys and a girl.

Chet Atkins started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle, but he made a swap with his brother Lowell when he was nine: an old pistol and some chores for a guitar.

Chet Atkins returned in the 1990s to play a series of charity concerts to save the school from demolition.

Chet Atkins became an accomplished guitarist while he was in high school.

Chet Atkins used the restroom in the school to practice because it had good acoustics.

Chet Atkins later purchased a semi-acoustic electric guitar and amp, but he had to travel many miles to find an electrical outlet, since his home didn't have electricity.

In 2011, his daughter Merle Chet Atkins Russell bestowed the CGP degree on his longtime sideman Paul Yandell.

Chet Atkins then declared no more CGPs would be allowed by the Atkins estate.

Chet Atkins's half-brother Jim was a successful guitarist who worked with the Les Paul Trio in New York.

Chet Atkins did not have a strong style of his own until 1939 when he heard Merle Travis picking over WLW radio.

Whereas Travis used his index finger on his right hand for the melody and his thumb for the bass notes, Chet Atkins expanded his right-hand style to include picking with his first three fingers, with the thumb on bass.

Chet Atkins was a member of the American Radio Relay League.

Chet Atkins was fired often but was able to land another job at another radio station on account of his unique playing ability.

Leona Chet Atkins outlived her husband by eight years, dying in 2009 at the age of 85.

Chet Atkins made his first appearance at the Opry in 1946 as a member of Foley's band.

Chet Atkins recorded a single for Nashville-based Bullet Records that year.

Chet Atkins had a solo spot on the Opry, but when that was cut, Atkins moved on to KWTO in Springfield, Missouri.

Chet Atkins made his first RCA Victor recordings in Chicago in 1947, but they did not sell.

Chet Atkins did some studio work for RCA that year, but had relocated to Knoxville again where he worked with Homer and Jethro on WNOX's new Saturday night radio show The Tennessee Barn Dance and the popular Midday Merry Go Round.

Chet Atkins began working on recording sessions and performing on WSM-AM and the Opry.

Chet Atkins's first hit single was "Mr Sandman", followed by "Silver Bell", which he recorded as a duet with Hank Snow.

Chet Atkins was featured on ABC-TV's The Eddy Arnold Show in the summer of 1956 and on Country Music Jubilee in 1957 and 1958.

Chet Atkins became manager of RCA Victor's Nashville studios, eventually inspiring and seeing the completion of the legendary RCA Studio B, the first studio built specifically for the purpose of recording on the now-famous Music Row.

Chet Atkins made his own records, which usually visited pop standards and jazz, in a sophisticated home studio, often recording the rhythm tracks at RCA and adding his solo parts at home, refining the tracks until the results satisfied him.

Chet Atkins developed this style from listening to Merle Travis, occasionally on a primitive radio.

Chet Atkins enjoyed jamming with fellow studio musicians, and they were asked to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960.

Chet Atkins was a member of the Million Dollar Band during the 1980s.

Chet Atkins took a considerable risk during the mid-1960s, when the civil rights movement sparked violence throughout the South, by signing country music's first African-American singer, Charley Pride, who sang rawer country than the smoother music Atkins had pioneered.

Chet Atkins's biggest hit single came in 1965, with "Yakety Axe", an adaptation of "Yakety Sax", by his friend, the saxophonist Boots Randolph.

Chet Atkins rarely performed in those days and eventually hired other RCA producers, such as Bob Ferguson and Felton Jarvis, to lessen his workload.

Chet Atkins produced fewer records, but could still turn out hits such as Perry Como's 1973 pop hit "And I Love You So".

Chet Atkins recorded extensively with close friend and fellow picker Jerry Reed, who had become a hit artist in his own right.

Chet Atkins would turn over his administrative duties to Jerry Bradley, son of Owen, in 1973 at RCA.

Chet Atkins did little production work at RCA after stepping down and in fact, had hired producers at the label in the 1960s, among them Bob Ferguson and Felton Jarvis.

Chet Atkins felt stifled because the record company would not let him branch into jazz.

Chet Atkins had produced late '60s jazz recordings by Canadian guitarist Lenny Breau, a friend and protege.

Chet Atkins ended his 35-year association with RCA Records in 1982 and signed with Columbia Records, for whom he produced a debut album in 1983.

Chet Atkins returned to his country roots for albums he recorded with Mark Knopfler and Jerry Reed.

Chet Atkins received numerous awards, including 14 Grammy awards and nine Country Music Association awards for Instrumentalist of the Year.

Chet Atkins recorded smooth jazz guitar still played on American airwaves today.

Chet Atkins continued performing in the 1990s, but his health declined after he was diagnosed again with colon cancer in 1996.

Chet Atkins died on June 30,2001, at his home in Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 77.

Chet Atkins was buried at Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens in Nashville.

In 2002, Chet Atkins was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Chet Atkins's award was presented by Marty Stuart and Brian Setzer and accepted by Atkins's grandson, Jonathan Russell.

At the age of 13, the future jazz guitarist Earl Klugh was captivated watching Chet Atkins's guitar playing on The Perry Como Show.

One song from that record, "Producer's Medley", featured Wariner's recreation of several famous songs that Chet Atkins both produced and performed.