For Chet Atkins, a Guitar Is the Dessert Tray of Life

Veteran musician Chet Atkins says he gets depressed unless his nimble fingers are dancing along the neck of a guitar.

The 64-year-old performer, known as “Mr. Guitar,” is staying happy by playing his instrument.

This fall he won the Country Music Assn.’s musician of the year award for the ninth time. He has a new album, “Chet Atkins, C.G.P,” which stands for “certified guitar player.” He performs frequently with Garrison Keillor, the former host of the radio show “A Prairie Home Companion.” And he has released an instructional video, “Get Started on Guitar With Chet Atkins.”

“To me playing the guitar is like some people who enjoy a meal and a dessert,” he says. “I remember my boss at RCA when they would bring the dessert tray and he’d look at it like it was a pretty girl.

“I think guitar playing to me is that way. I see a guitar and imagine the tunes I can play on it, and I kind of get ecstatic and excited like my boss when he looked at that dessert tray.

“If I’m not working on a project, I get depressed. I think I’m not accomplishing anything, and I get mad at the world.”

Atkins’ album, about his 80th (no one, apparently, has kept score), includes a duet with Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler on John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Atkins also plays a jazzy version of the 1960s pop hit “What a Day for a Daydream” and does a rare vocal performance on the ballad “I Still Can’t Say Goodbye.”

But he did not have to work much on “Imagine”: “It’s a beautiful melody. There’s no use improvising too much and leading the listener astray.”

Even though he has sold more than 30 million records, he says he still finds it necessary to practice playing the instrument he learned as he grew up in rural poverty in the Clinch Mountains of eastern Tennessee.

“I’ve got to,” he says. “It’s like typing or playing tennis or golf. If you don’t do it every 3 or 4 days, you can’t do it. I try to practice a little bit every week and learn new things. If you don’t, you get so you conform too much, and you become very predictable.

“It’s a constant learning process because the music keeps changing due to the entrance of young people into music. They introduce a lot of new ideas. To stay a little bit contemporary requires a lot of listening and a lot of work; no, not work, but play. It’s always been play to me.”

He still makes mistakes while playing, even though he has been coaxing melodies out of the instrument for more than 50 years.

“But you learn to cover up those things,” he says. “All notes, all dissonance, leads to something else. That’s the reason music is beautiful. Music is dissonance always resolved.

“Any note you play is one halftone away from something that will work if you improvise. So if I hit a bad note, I just go up or down a halftone, and it sounds like I meant to do it.”

He is so dedicated to the guitar that years ago he named his daughter Merle after fellow guitarist Merle Travis.

“For some reason, the guitar gave me a passion to play it that will follow me to the grave,” he says. “I just loved the sound of the chords and the romance and the shape of the guitar.

“My older brother played the guitar, and I thought it was such a romantic, beautiful instrument. My dad was a professional music teacher, and he didn’t want me to play guitar because he didn’t think there was any future in it.

“Of course, I rebelled like all kids do. If kids listened to their parents, there would never be any progress because they want you to stick with the status quo.”

He owns about 30 guitars but does not consider himself a collector: “I don’t have room in my little home. It’s better to collect gold or diamonds--it doesn’t take up as much space.”

He and Keillor performed together in 1987 on Keillor’s final broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion.” They have appeared together often and are scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall in early 1989.

“I enjoy working with him and standing and watching him entertain in his very unusual way,” Atkins said.

“I hope to continue what I do: playing a few concerts, making records, ducking when the grim reaper swings at me and get on the back porch and pick with my friends.”