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Paul Yandell
Written by John Schroeter, Fingerstyle Guitar Magazine (reprinted with permission)
Note: this piece was originally published in 1994
If Chet Atkins is known as "Mister Guitar" then Paul Yandell has certainly earned the name, "Mr. Second Guitar". Yandell's association with Atkins spans more than two decades as
sideman and co-composer. For nearly five years, he held the same post with
Jerry Reed. Though he'd never assume it, Yandell has been a critical link in
the careers of both of these legendary figures. "When you work with creative
people like Chet and Jerry," says Yandell. "you play their ideas. Those
guys are the Thomas Edison's of the guitar. They create and the rest of us
play catch-up!"
Yandell has his family's tobacco farm to thank for the place he's
earned in the history of the Nashville guitar sound. 'Working on that tobacco
farm was the reason I practiced so hard. It was back-breaking work.
When I found out I could be a musician I practiced night and day just to
stay out of the tobacco patch. Working in a tobacco patch will make
you practice your butt off. So I owe everything to tobacco. My whole
career. People knock tobacco, but I love it because it got me to Nashville."
Reflecting on those early days. Yandell remembers his first guitar
mentor Wanda Gunn, a lady in her fifties at the time, who happened to
play fingerstyle. "She'd take a hymnal and mark the chord changes over songs
like "In the Garden" and "Are you Washed in the Blood". That's how I
learned to play. For quite some time, I never saw anybody play with a straight
pick. After I had been playing for three or four years, there was a guy up the
road. Edwin Tynes, who had just come back from the army. He played Shanty
Town thumbstyle. Boy it tore me up. I never was the same again. I knew
that moment what I wanted to do. So I went and got a thumbpick, and not too
long after that, I heard Chet on the radio, By then, I was completely smitten
with the style. I'm glad I stuck with it. If I had been a straight-pick man, I'd
still be in Kentucky farming, raising tobacco."
continued...
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