POP MUSIC : Chet Atkins: All That Talent at His Finger Tips

In a career that spans more than 40 years, guitarist Chet Atkins has frequently changed chords from country to rock ‘n’ roll to jazz to New Age.

But, no matter what style of music he is playing, either on stage or in the studio, this finger-picking genius always manages to pluck plenty of magic from the strings.

Atkins, who will be appearing tonight at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island, first surfaced in the early 1940s as guitarist and fiddler with Bill Carlisle and his Dixieland Swingers, the studio band on a Knoxville, Tenn., country radio station.

A few years later, he moved to Nashville, where he was “adopted” by Mother Maybelle Carter and became a regular at the Grand Ole Opry.

Since then, Atkins has recorded more than 100 solo albums and played on myriad sessions by many country greats, including Merle Travis and Jerry Reed. He’s picked up eight Grammy Awards and 10 “Instrumentalist of the Year” honors from the Country Music Assn.

In 1973, Atkins was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; but, by then, his musicianship was as well known in rock and jazz circles as it was in Nashville.

In the late 1950s, he had played acoustic and electric guitar on landmark recordings by rock ‘n’ roll pioneers Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers. In the early ‘60s, his work with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton led to what many consider the first jazz-fusion album ever made.

Rivaling Atkins’ accomplishments as a musician in those years were his behind-the-scenes contributions to RCA Records, which he had joined in 1955 as a staff producer.

Among his production credits are two early Presley hits “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel,” as well as albums by the likes of Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Don Gibson, Al Hirt and Bobby Bare.

He also “discovered” and signed to the label such future country superstars as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and Charley Pride--an enviable track record that prompted RCA, in 1968, to name him vice president of its Nashville operations.

Throughout the 1970s and early ‘80s, Atkins continued to play this dual role of musician and record executive, cutting one or two solo albums--and producing, on the average, another 40 by other artists--each year.

But, in 1982, he decided to devote his energies to making his own records and left RCA for Columbia. He has since released three albums of instrumental New Age music featuring such notable sidemen as George Benson, Larry Carlton and Earl Klugh.

One critic, writing in the (Nashville) Tennessean, had this to say about “Sails,” Atkins’ newest album: “His fleet, gentle touch on the guitar strings is undimmed by time. . . . (He) floats from dreamy reveries to scampering little frolics. There are some moments of placid beauty and others with the sizzle of Fourth of July sparklers.”

Sharing the bill with Atkins at Humphrey’s is acoustic folk singer-guitarist Leo Kottke. There are two shows, one at 6:30 and another at 9.