Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Guitar Blues (Pickin' the Blues)
2. Bug Dance
3. Dizzy Strings
4. Centipede Boogie
5. Mainstreet Breakdown
6. Root, Hog Or Die - The Carter Sisters
7. Jitterbug Waltz
8. The Third Man Theme
9. Black Mountain Rag
10. Country Gentleman
11. City Slicker
12. Mister Sandman
13. The Poor People Of Paris (Jean's Song)
14. Big D - Eddy Arnold
15. Trambone
16. Should We Tell Him - Everly Brothers
17. Hidden Charm
18. Oh Lonesome Me - Don Gibson
19. I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles
20. Slinkey

Disc 2:

1. Boo Boo Stick Beat
2. Hot Mocking Bird
3. The Slop
4. Man Of Mystery
5. Wheels
6. Teen Scene
7. Freight Train
8. Satan's Doll
9. Yakety Axe
10. A Taste Of Honey
11. Drive In
12. Get On With It
13. Cannonball Rag
14. Take Five
15. Is Anything Better Than This
16. It's Been a Long Time
17. Polka Dots And Moonbeams
18. Poor Boy Blues
19. Sneakin' Around
20. Big Foot

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13303 in Music
• Released on: 2007-07-24
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Original recording remastered

Customer Reviews

Chet is the man
Awesome CD. This is a great place to start for Chet fans. I wish it had Dark Eyes but I'm not complaining.

Best Chet album I've heard
This is my favorite Chet Atkins album. I never really heard him until just a couple of years ago when I picked up a CD at a local library when I was feeling a bit glum and wanted to find something perhaps a bit surprising. I was teaching a class of college freshmen and was disappointed with how devoid of any sense of recent (or any other!) cultural history they all were--even the "A" students. (It was a design/drawing class so that struck me as a bad sign!)

I'm 52 years old and had only heard of him in the context of Ray Stevens' "Gitarzan" when I was in Junior High school! ("He's playin' Chet's guitar course, C.O.D./He makes A, and B, and he's workin' on C/and me and the chimpanzee agree/that one day soon he'll be a celebrity!") I thought maybe hearing it would carry me back to a time before my own and help me figure out how to interest my students in artists from before their own generation (musical or otherwise).

Well, that RCA Years album knocked my socks off. It saved my sanity for the rest of the year. It gave me clues on how to try to relate better to my students and try to get them to relate better to me. A lot of the songs are horribly corny to me--like something you would have heard your Grandma watching on "Lawrence Welk." But the way he plays them, even the corniest ones are amazing and can grow on you for awhile.

What I love most are the true traditional old hillbilly songs, at least that's what I think they are. "Black Mountain Rag" and others that show off Atkins' amazing gifts. Then, I love the jazzier entries. He mixes these up with ones that were a little too of-the-moment pop stuff, not as great but again I can stand them when HE plays them.

The spirit with which he interprets and delivers just never fails to leave me awestruck, entertained, full of the sheer joy he shares. If I could know that I was ever able to do 1/100th as much to entertain people with my cartoons and caricatures as he entertains me with his playing, I would die SO-O-O happy.

I have listened to all of these so many times I can't believe I'm not sick of them yet (well, except the corniest ones that I associate with certain childhood memories). I find myself playing these when on the exercise bike, and what would otherwise be a drudgery (I hate indoor exercise, especially sitting on an uncomfortable seat in one spot!) has become a pleasure.

Some here have complained about the vocals on some of these. I say they are used sparingly enough and on few enough of the pieces that they really provide just the right addition to the set. Most are really quite fine, perfect for Atkins' works. But of course it is the purer guitar pieces that soar. I am so glad I finally discovered him, and thanks to Ray Stevens and his silly song, of all things!

I'm listening to it right now... GET THIS ALBUM!

+1/2 -- Career spanning retrospective of landmark guitarist
Those of us who grew up in the rock era, particularly those who grew up outside the South (where country music still held sway during the '60s and '70s), know Atkins best through the impact he had on his acolytes. Starting with the merging of hillbilly and R&B into rockabilly, rock 'n' roll and rock, Atkins' picking technique (itself an expansion of Merle Travis' syncopated thumb-and-finger style) can be heard on Sun's early sides, from the guitar combos of the British Invasion, American instrumental bands like The Ventures, and through to more recent fans like Mark Knopfler. Atkins' guitar was an influence on country players as well, as was the Nashville Sound he pioneered as a producer and label head at RCA.

Atkins recorded voluminously as both a leader and a sideman, so there's no shortage of his material on disc. These forty tracks span his earliest instrumental work in the mid-40s, backing work with The Carter Sisters, Eddy Arnold, Everly Brothers and Don Gibson, a dense run of solo albums in the '60s, and his last releases in the '90s. Atkins merged jazz changes and blues progressions with the twangy picking of country, starting with the refined tone and controlled trills of 1946's "Guitar Blues (Pickin' the Blues)." His playing always remained tasteful and tuneful, even when hot-picking a tune like "Dizzy Strings" or swinging the gypsy-jazz styled "Mainstreet Breakdown." He awed you with his abilities but never lost the thread of a hummable, toe-tapping song.

Atkins recorded many of his best-known sides as a sideman, where he could either show off his signature chops or play seamlessly in the background. Eddy Arnold's "Big D" finds Atkins' guitar front-and-center, adding a near-duet voice, while on the Everly Brothers' "Should We Tell Him" his presence is a more subtle tic-tac behind the brothers' strummed acoustics. Playing with the Carter Family (with whom he joined the Grand Ol' Opry in 1950) he vamps on June Carter's spunky "Root, Hog or Die" before breaking out with two short syncopated solos, and on Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me," Atkins adds a memorable stuttering solo. He was the rare star who could write an accompanist's signature in small print beneath the headlining act's lead.

Many of Atkins' late-50s and early '60s instrumentals catered to the hi-fidelity crowd, but with a Nashville twist. 1959's "Slinkey" finds Atkins' guitar dueling with his tremelo unit, and "Boo Boo Stick Beat" is hiply reminiscent of Dave Brubek's "Unsquare Dance." The cooing choral voices of "The Slop" would sound at home in any bachelor pad, but Atkins' twanging guitar marks this as not having been recorded on the coast. It's ironic that one of the architects of the twang-lite Countrypolitan sound couldn't lose his own twang even when chording the jazz of "Satan's Doll," and the Euro-tinged melody of The Shadows' "Man of Mystery" is rendered distinctly American in Atkins' hands.

Atkins wrote many of his own songs, but also stamped his distinctive sound on numerous covers. A 1952 take of "The Third Man Theme" swaps syncopation for the original film score's wooziness, and a 1954 cover of "Mr. Sandman" replaces the keening vocal harmonies with fluid guitar picking. His duet with Jerry Reed on Merle Travis' "Cannonball Rag" is stupendous, with the players panned in stereo to reveal their individual and interlocking syncopation. Atkins played duets with many of his peers and fans, including Merle Travis ("Is Anything Sweeter Than This"), Les Paul ("It's Been a Long, Long Time") and Mark Knopfler ("Poor Boy Blues"), but it's his solo tracks and sessions as a sideman that best display his genius.

The merger of the RCA and Columbia catalogs allows this set to stretch from Atkins' seminal sides with the former to his final works for the latter. The Columbia tracks are limited to only three, which fairly represents their volume and stature among Atkins' overall catalog. Those wanting a deeper sampling of the Columbia period should look up the single disc "The Essential Chet Atkins: The Columbia Years." As an introduction to Atkins as a player, this is a superb place to start. But given his impact as a producer and label head, this is really only half the Chet Atkins story. Technical note: tracks 1-18 on disc one are mono, the rest are stereo. 4-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. [©2007 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]