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Excerpt from the book:
CHET ATKINS: ME AND MY GUITARS
Chet Atkins with Russ Cochran
In his own words, Chet tells about his childhood, influences, early struggles to find work, and the guitars he used and endorsed along the way. Includes full-color photos of Chet and his guitars, including his first Sears Roebuck Silvertone, custom made D'Angelicos, the Gretsches, and more. Over 60 guitars in Chet's private collection are shown in Chet's home and his office on Music Row, telling the story of his career as seen through his guitars.
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Inventory # HL 331040. Book $30.00 (US).
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CHET ATKINS
(From Chet Atkins: Me and My Guitars)
I was about 15 [1939] when I first heard Merle Travis on the radio. I was in Georgia, living with my dad, and Merle was a regular on WLW in Cincinatti. On a good night, I could tune in that station. I only heard Merle a few times, but it was enough. I thought his sound was fantastic. His strong thumb and fingerstyle playing gave me the focus I had been needing. It wasn't just the notes he played, it was the intensity of his playing that got through to me. It sounded full and complete, like he was in total command of the instrument. I loved it, but I couldn't figure out how he was doing it so I had to invent my own way, using my thumb and three fingers.
I believe it was in 1941 when I did my first experimenting with amplifying my guitar. With money I saved from a summer job working for the government's National Youth Administration, I bought an Amperite pickup and put together a crude P.A. type amplifier from components I ordered. I didn't get to use it very often because we didn't have electricity at my dad's farm. I would take it to our church and plug it in there and play. The sound was terrible because both the simple coil pickup and the amplifier had very uneven tonal response. The amp would squawk and oscillate if I didn't keep my guitar turned just the right way. It left a lot to be desired, but it was still exciting to hear the sounds of my guitar coming out of a speaker.
In 1942, when I was 18, I got my first real job as a professional musician, playing fiddle for Bill Carlisle and Archie Campbell, who worked out of WNOX in Knoxville. For live shows, I got three dollars a night. One night, on the way home from a personal appearance, I was sitting in the back seat playing Bill's guitar. WNOX boss Lowell Blanchard was riding with us, heard me, and appointed me the new WNOX staff guitarist on the spot. This was a great advancement for me, but also troubling because I only knew two or three songs all the way through. All my practice time had been spent learning technique, not learning tunes. Lowell gave me a key to the music room at the station, where all the records and transcriptions were filed, and told me to go up there and listen to whatever I liked, but whatever I did, I had to learn a new song every day. I spent countless hours holed up in the radio station, trying my best to make interesting two minute arrangements out of the wealth of material available for me to listen to, and my repertoire began to grow steadily. This was also when I put the fiddle down and began devoting all my energy to the guitar.
So here I was, a working professional musician, and I still didn't own a decent guitar. I was still playing the old Silvertone, or whatever I could borrow. I had some of my very first publicity pictures taken with a Martin archtop my brother Lowell loaned to me. That's the guitar I used most of the time on WNOX and doing personal appearances with Archie and Bill. After working quite a while for three bucks a night and paying all my own living expenses, I realized, at that rate, I was never going to be able to save enough money to buy good guitar. Fortunately, Aytchie Burns, a good bass player at WNOX, saw my predicament and offered to sign a note for me. With his help, I purchased a small flattop Gibson for fifty dollars and was finally able to return the borrowed Martin. I was going to get rid of the old Silvertone, but my mother insisted on keeping it. I'm glad now that she did, but at the time I was glad to replace it. [The guitar is now in the Country Music Hall of Fame.]
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