The Chetboard

After being a trombone player in school, I eventually picked up guitar and took a few lessons that included a little fingerpicking (Dust in the Wind, etc.). I was aware of Chet, but not that familiar with his music. My first Chet album was Stay Tuned, which I always liked because it was kind of jazzy. I had still not gone back and listened to the classic Chet when I saw this video on TV. It still wasn't classic Chet, but it sure got me hooked enough to eventually learn it myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_xG2fTfkXo

Bill B.

Great Topic!

For me, I was exposed to Chet through a neighbor growing up, Mr. Bill Grant.

His son Doug and I were close friends from the age of 3. I would go over to play football and baseball and other things at Doug's house and would occasionally hear his dad playing Chet's records or even sometimes he would pick up and play his electric guitar which was a black 54 Gretsch Duo Jet. This was late 60's.

Mr. Grant was a tinkerer, building TV sets from Heathkit; in his real job he did electrical work for C&P telephone. He died a few years ago and I went to the nursing home and played a few tunes for him a day or two before he died. He got sick about 20 years ago and was bed ridden most of those years but loved to hear me come back after CAAS and tell stories. I am grateful I was exposed to Chet at a young age. There was something about the sound that was mesmerizing. The thumb is what really caught my attention, along with the great melodies. Trambone, Blue Ocean Echo, Rainbow, Armen's theme, Steeplechase Lane were some of my earliest favorites.

Great topic. We've had a "First Time I Heard Chet" page on our OFGC website for a number of years. Take a look at what other guys posted, Bill & Tom. Many different ways of getting "here."

http://ofgc.net/how_i_1st_heard_chet.htm

Palmer

I was about 3 when I sat down at my grandmother's piano. My family didn't have one. What always attracted me in music was the harmony. Everyone was singing or whistling the melody but the harmony added the "color" that made the difference to me. This is why single note instruments were never fulfilling to me and I loved that piano. I would always experiment with different harmonies under the melody. Then we'd go back home and I would be sad because I missed being able to play that piano.

One day I was about 5 years old and we visited my grandparents again and I followed my grandpa to his attic. There was an old Kalamazoo guitar up there that he had picked up from a pawn shop in 1933 for a friend who was supposed to pick it up from my grandpa and pay him. He never showed up. My grandpa wasn't a musician and he put it away in his attic for over 20 years until I discovered it. He allowed me to try and figure it out. I had only seen people strum guitars for accompaniment or play single note licks with flat pick. The idea came to me to play multiple notes simultaneously like I did on the piano but I had never seen anyone do it. We couldn't afford a piano and my grandma bought a cheap Kay guitar for me for my birthday. I used a flat pick and found a lot of chord combinations and would try to play songs where I'd play the melody and strum chords in between things to make sort of a "staggered" song.

One day at 13 years old a classmate of mine, who knew I was interested in the guitar, told me about a record that he had by a guy named Chet Atkins and asked if I'd like to borrow it. It was the album "Teen Scene". I was so blown away that I was in tears! I eventually started buying every Chet album that I could get my hands on at K-Mart! I practiced and practiced trying to figure things out. Finally at 16 I learned "Can't Buy Me Love", from Chet's Beatles album, as my first
song and threw away my flat pick and my life was changed!

In 1969 at 20 while I was in the army stationed at Ft. Banning in Georgia, he came to Atlanta with Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer, and Homer & Jethro, I took a bus and managed to purchase a scalped ticket outside for $8 instead of the original $6 and got to watch my idol perform for the first time. He was last on the show but the wait was worth it! He opened with his back to the audience as the curtain came up and he played "Mrs. Robinson". After the show I managed to go back stage and catch him alone as he was walking out into the hallway. I told him how much he meant to me and how he had changed my life. He seemed touched and I got his autograph. Concerned that I didn't have enough formal music education to go very far, I asked him how much he depended on reading music. His response was "Well, it's not enough to hurt my playing". He must have said that to more than one person because I've read it in his bios since then. That's all I needed to hear.

I followed him around the country, as I have lived in 6 states over the years. Through my friendship with Tommy Jones, I at least became an acquaintance of Chet through visits to his office and he always remembered me, even if it was only as "Tommy's friend".

These are interesting stories. I went to the OFGA link that Palmer suggested, and read some more. While doing so, I also found this link on their site about "the sickness". Pretty funny stuff here, Palmer!

http://ofgc.net/the_sickness.htm

Bill B.

I started playing guitar exactly one week after my 15th birthday in January 1958. I was totally in love with Skiffle .... if you guys remember that, then you've got to be as old as me! At that time I'd never heard any real guitar players .... well, OK, Les Paul and Mary Ford were very popular here in the UK, but I never heard Chet's name mentioned at all. I continued playing Skiffle and Folk music for the next 3 years and by then I was 18 months into a 3 year apprenticeship with the Royal Air Force.

One of my friends had sold me an LP of Duane Eddy; ‘The Twang’s the Thang’. I wasn’t a great fan of his, but there was one tune on it that I played over and over. Duane’s sleeve notes on the cover told me that it had been written by one “Chet Atkins” and that he played this piece in a little club in Printers Alley in Nashville. During the week day evenings when there wasn’t a film to watch at the cinema we often listened to Radio Halton, broadcast on the Camp Tannoy system; the ‘Steam radio’, as it was known. During the day it bellowed out orders, but the evenings were given over to would be DJ's and one evening my whole concept of guitar playing was turned upside down. One of the DJ’s played a complete LP of Chet Atkins. He stressed that there was no over-dubbing and what you heard was one man playing one guitar on his own. I was well and truly hooked. I had never imagined being able to play tunes with simultaneous bass, rhythm and melody. I hadn’t a clue as to how it was done but I vowed to find out. In those days you were lucky to find a decent book that showed how to play chords, let alone something as advanced as what Chet was playing. I found that there were no records of his available in the UK at the time, but that was soon to change. Chet had recorded a tune called ‘Boo Boo Stick Beat’, a rocking tune that had become immensely popular in the states. RCA decided that perhaps it might just be successful over here and released it as a single, (it made number 49 in the British Hit Parade) and also his latest LP, ‘Teen Scene’. At the first opportunity I rushed into Aylesbury and bought it. In retrospect I was probably a little disappointed that there wasn't a lot of "fingerstyle" played on "Teen Scene", but for the next month or so I played one track, ‘The Third Man Theme’, repeatedly, trying to decipher what Chet had created. I could hear what he was doing, but I’m damned if I could play it. Getting the thumb to work independently of the index finger seemed quite impossible to me. Before I go any further I should mention that the American version of "Teen Scene" didn't have the "The Third Man Theme" on it ... just in case you think I got that wrong.

One evening I met up with a fellow apprentice called Duane Kane, who also played a bit of Chet's style. He showed me the rudiments and from that moment on I was on the right track. I played guitar for hours in the lounge, sometimes playing for 10 hours a day at weekends. It was difficult but eventually I got the hang of thumb picking and could play a simple version of ‘The Third Man’. My only problem was that it never sounded right. I didn’t realise at that time that Chet was actually playing it in a ‘dropped D’ tuning and for that reason, he had a couple of bass notes on his guitar that I couldn’t possibly get in standard tuning.

My steel strung acoustic wasn’t much good for playing Chet Atkins Style and whenever I went down to London I would look, longingly in the music shop windows of Shaftsbury Avenue at the Gretsch guitars that carried Chet’s name. They were far too expensive on my meagre wages. If I couldn’t afford a Gretsch I would buy something cheap that vaguely looked like a Gretsch and fit it with a Bigsby tremolo arm and a pick-up.

One Saturday, after I had saved up enough cash, I went down to London and visited the Ivor Mariants Guitar Centre. Ivor was one of the finest guitarists in the country, and I felt quite honoured to be served by him. At that time his shop was just a dusty, cramped room up a flight of stairs in Denmark Street. I bought a Hoyer Archtop guitar for £15, second hand. It played beautifully, far easier that the acoustic I had. When I had saved up another £15 I bought a DeArmond double pickup with volume and tone controls. The Bigsby tremolo arm, as fitted to all Gretsch Chet Atkins models, was going to be a problem though. I had seen them on sale for £36, which seemed an extortionate amount of money for what was basically a couple of bits of of stainless steel and a car valve spring. I could have bought one third of a Gretsch guitar for that sort of money. Fortunately Bigsby Tremolo arms weren’t selling too well in the UK and the next time I saw an advert for one, the price had been halved. It didn’t take me too long to save up for one. Now all I needed was an amplifier.

In the mean time Chet had made two more LPs, ‘The Other Chet Atkins’, a collection of Spanish style tunes and ‘Workshop’, a sophisticated electric set that showed him at his very best. I longed to be able to emulate that. I had also managed to find some of his American releases at Imhofs, a record shop just off Tottenham Court Road in London. They were expensive at 44 shillings, (£2.10) but I had to have them. These records were my only tutor, as there were still no books to show me what to do and guitar teachers were virtually non existent. After a while my collection of Kingston Trio and Lonnie Donegan records began to gather dust and were rarely played again. Chet recalled playing guitar in a tiled bathroom at school, and I found I liked the echo sound that it produced too. Soon I seemed to spend all my spare time in the shower. The sound from that shower got even better when I bought a small amplifier.

In later years I got to meet Chet a couple of times when he came over to the UK, and he was every bit the gentleman he was portrayed to be.

Regards
Mike Barker

I have played bass for years, mostly rock and funk but when I was about 45, someone had left an acoustic guitar at my workplace. I noodled on it and picked out some Beatle tunes by ear. It was fun! I got one. Because I played bass it seemed natural to play the guitar with fingers.

My friend at work introduced me to a local fingerstyle guitar organization which had a regular open stage "pickin' party". I embarrassed myself on the stage numerous times, but watched the real players intently. A player named Wendell Ferguson blew me away. He played something he wrote called "Fret No More" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDQv2YfoNf4" - I said, "That's how I want to play!"

The organizer of the fingerstyle organization was always talking about Chet Atkins and planned a "Chet Night" where each player was to play a Chet tune or two at the open stage. I had heard of Chet Atkins but knew nothing of what he played. I bought some compilation albums and picked one tune to learn, "Trambone". I tried by ear to learn it like I do on bass, but couldn't make head nor tail of what he was doing. No one in my circle of friends played that way so I could get no pointers. I found a tab on the Fretted Instruments NYC site of the tune and taught myself how to read the tab and how to play the tune - at 1/8th speed! Hardest thing I've ever done!

I got to the point where I could squeeze out the song. I was so proud. The time came to play the tune on stage. I froze and bombed terribly - in front of Wendell Ferguson, too! Aaah!

All was not lost. Trambone cracked the code for me and I started learning more Chet tunes. I got more albums, listened all the time, learned more and more, was introduced to Jerry Reed, Merle Travis, all the fingerstyle players. It was like immersion in another language!

I started going to CAAS in 2009. I walked in and heard all kinds of folks playing in the style I'd been immersed in for about 2 years in isolation. It was heaven! I couldn't believe it. I was like a puppy running around. I'm still like that when I go.

Now I've been at the guitar for about 10 years and been listening to Chet for 9 of those years. I've learned maybe 40 or 50 Chet tunes. I'm getting a bit better at playing them. I still play bass but listening and learning the Chet and Jerry tunes is an all encompassing hobby for me that brings me so much joy. I'm glad I was introduced to Chet Atkins' music. Kinda wished I was introduced to it when I was younger, but better late than never.

My first big interest in guitar music was in both Merle and Chet.. Hard to say which one first caught my ear. That was way way back when I was just 11 or 12.. perhaps younger! My dad could play "Wildwood Flower" and "Under the Double Eagle" on the guitar.. That's pretty much it!!! I managed to get a couple of Merle Travis albums, then a number of Chet albums. I find it really funny now, but the first Chet tune I recall being interested in playing (like Chet) was "Glow Little Glow Worm"... How wimpy does that sound!! LOL.. Oh well I got over that... I think it was always "The Thumb" that got me. When I heard flat picking it was like listening to guitar in mono.... when the thumb started... it was just like the other channel came alive and it became stereo.. I still get that feeling when a single note tune turns into a fingerstyle /thumbstyle tune.
Events like CAAS (and there is no equal).. help me keep that feeling of hearing guitar in stereo..

This is funny story but true to every word of it. It was about 1966 and I was just 16 learning my chops and chords on guitar. I was better than the local players who played Louie Louie. I learned a ton of important chords that the Beatles
show cased on their early records. Aug, Dim, Maj 7th min 7th etc. That put me one step higher than the guys playing the standard run of the mill basic chords. I still remember learning my first hard song by the Beatles Till There Was You. Man I thought I was cool stumping all the other players with the 13 flat 9 right after Harrisons solo. Anyway back to 1966. I was hanging with the guys drinking at a social club and listening to the british blues players Clapton, Beck Page etc. They where still playing top 40's hit. After awhile after getting pretty much plastered I walk home and took a short cut though an alley I remember it was snowing out and I spotted a bunch of records that someone piled up in and old steel garbage can. So I stopped and looked in the can and there was about 4 Chet lp's ruined to hell with scratches and no covers. I decided to sift though them and when I got home and I was still buzzing from the beer I put on Chet playing Main Street Breakdown. That was it for me. I listened to Jeff Beck and the yard birds original Jeff's Bogie and thought he was God on guitar until I dropped that needle on those beat up Chet records. I never looked back and was and still am hooked on Mr. Guitar till day. Thanks for the early education Chet you where the real deal and cutting edge with your playing. Joe B.