
^ ARRLWeb: 'Mister Guitar', Chet Atkins, W4CGP, SKArchived September 20, 2005, at the Wayback Machine.^ *Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumArchived October 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.^ 'Interview of Chet Atkins' on YouTube.
^ a b c d e f g h i Atkins, Chet Cochran, Russ (2003). ^ Rush, Dianne Samms (October 23, 1994). ^ a b c d e f g Atkins, Chet Neely, Bill (1974). ^ a b 'Country Music Television biography'. 'Show 10 â Tennessee Firebird: American Country Music Before and After Elvis. 1997 Best Country Instrumental Performance â 'Jam Man'. 1995 Best Country Instrumental Performance â 'Young Thing'. 1994 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Asleep at the Wheel, Eldon Shamblin, Johnny Gimble, Marty Stuart, Reuben 'Lucky Oceans' Gosfield & Vince Gill â 'Red Wing'. 1993 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award'. 1993 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Jerry Reed â Sneakin' Around. 1991 Best Country Vocal Collaboration with Mark Knopfler â 'Poor Boy Blues'. 1991 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Mark Knopfler â 'So Soft, Your Goodbye'. 1986 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Mark Knopfler â 'Cosmic Square Dance'. 1982 Best Country Instrumental Performance â Country After All These Years. 1977 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Les Paul â Chester and Lester. 1976 Best Country Instrumental Performance â 'The Entertainer'. 1975 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Merle Travis â The Atkins-Travis Traveling Show. 1972 Best Country Instrumental Performance â 'Snowbird'. 1971 Best Country Instrumental Performance with Jerry Reed â Me and Jerry. In November 2011, Rolling Stone ranked Atkins number 21 on their list of the '100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time'. When Porter left RCA in late-1964, Atkins said, 'the sound was never the same, never as great.' Everybody check and see what's going on.' If that did not work, Atkins would instruct Porter to turn the offending player down in the mix. Instead, he would say something like, 'we got a little tuning problem. In later years, when Bradley asked how he achieved his sound, Atkins told him 'it was Porter.' Porter described Atkins as respectful of musicians when recordingâif someone was out of tune, he would not single that person out by name. The sound of the recordings improved significantly, and the studio achieved a string of successes. With his golden ear, Porter found the studio's acoustics to be problematic, and he devised a set of acoustic baffles to hang from the ceiling, then selected positions for microphones based on resonant room modes. (At the time, RCA's sole Nashville studio had no letter designation.) Porter soon helped Atkins get a better reverberation sound from the studio's German effects device, an EMTplate reverb. Īt the end of March 1959, Porter took over as chief engineer at RCA's Nashville studio, in the space eventually known as Studio B after the facility expanded with a second studio in 1960. Stories have been told about the very young Chet, who, when a friend or relative would come to visit and play guitar, would crowd in and put his ear so close to the instrument that it became difficult for the visitor to play. He returned in the 1990s to play a series of charity concerts to save the school from demolition. While living in Fortson, he attended the historic Mountain Hill School. On those nights, he played his guitar until he fell asleep holding it, a habit that lasted his whole life. Because of his illness, he was forced to sleep in a straight-back chair to breathe comfortably. He stated in his 1974 autobiography, 'We were so poor and everybody around us was so poor that it was the forties before anyone even knew there had been a depression.' Forced to relocate to Fortson, Georgia, outside of Columbus, to live with his father because of a critical asthma condition, Atkins was a sensitive youth who made music his obsession. He started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle, but made a swap with his brother, Lowell, when he was nine: an old pistol and some chores for a guitar. He was the youngest of three boys and a girl. His parents divorced when he was six years old, after which he was raised by his mother. Atkins was born on June 20, 1924, in Luttrell, Tennessee, near Clinch Mountain.