FINGER-PICKING GOOD : He Makes Like He’s Just One of the Boys, but Chet Atkins Is a True Guitar Pioneer

Chet Atkins was on TV the other week on a show honoring the Country Music Hall of Fame, of which he was the youngest inductee (he was 49 when tabbed in 1973). He was jamming with several of Nashville’s hottest musicians, all a couple of generations his junior, in a session recorded in RCA’s fabled Studio B, where decades ago Atkins helped launch modern country music and a fledgling new style called rock ‘n’ roll. The studio is now a museum, which led Atkins to quip, “I guess that makes me a museum piece.”

If so, the guitarist, who turns 68 on June 20, is at least a touring exhibition, and one that grows in worth by the day. He still hits the road for a comfortable 30 dates a year, playing in contexts as varied as symphonic concerts and club dates with the likes of Leo Kottke, with whom he performs at the Coach House Saturday. And he still has a guitar in his hands at every idle moment, trying to expand and improve his already impeccable craft.

Over the phone Atkins more than lives up to his nickname of the Country Gentleman, fielding questions with a modesty and dry wit that would never lead one to suspect that without his influence Nashville and country music might not be the forces they are today.

As a producer and A&R; (Artists and Repertoire) man in the ‘50s, he was credited with shaping “the Nashville Sound,” an infusion of country music with pop styles, without which country might never have weathered the rock age. His studio credits include formative work with Elvis Presley, Don Gibson, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, the Everly Brothers, Waylon Jennings and a host of others.

While the Nashville Sound eventually came to represent the production cliches that threatened to choke the life out of country, when Atkins introduced them they were fresh, expanded the music and brought it new listeners. Atkins always was on the lookout for new sounds, and pioneered some of the studio techniques and technical advances that have reached throughout the recording industry.

As a guitarist, which Atkins first and foremost has always been, he brought respect to a music that had been dismissed as “that hillbilly noise.” Country had a few stellar instrumentalists before him--including Merle Travis, who was a huge influence on Atkins’ playing--but it was Atkins’ remarkable finger-picking style that set a standard for musicianship that put country on a footing with jazz and other musical art forms. His guitar albums have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and Guitar Player magazine names him the most influential instrumental stylist in popular music.

The line of guitars bearing his name that he helped the Gretsch company design in the ‘50s and ‘60s were adopted by newer generations of musicians, including Atkins fan George Harrison of the Beatles, and are now so rare and valued that they sell for about $5,000, a sum beyond the reach of most working musicians. He continues to design new guitars with Gibson.

Not bad for a fellow who describes himself as “a dim bulb in the marquee of show business,” a phrase he borrowed from his friend Garrison Keillor.

“I haven’t been real big where people had a chance to get tired of me,” Atkins said. “The reason I’ve had such longevity, I think, is that I’ve never been a fan of myself. I can’t stand to hear my records. I’ve never gotten it the way I wanted, never got the sound I wanted, never phrased the way I wanted, never used substitution chords the way I wanted. I’m constantly fighting mediocrity with all my energy, afraid that it might catch up with me.”

Growing up in rural east Tennessee, asthma left him in such poor health that he missed months of school, which only increased the shyness and feelings of inferiority he felt as a child. When he was 8, he got a guitar--a beat-up acoustic (electric guitars didn’t exist yet)--and it became his solace.

As he explained in his 1974 autobiography, “Country Gentleman”: “That guitar, and the others that followed it, would absorb almost every moment I could find for it for the rest of my life. I would lean on it for the love I never seemed to have enough of and depend on it for the friendships I didn’t always find.”

He pestered local musicians to teach him their licks, or got them off his crystal radio. The reception was so poor, though, that he could barely make out what Merle Travis and others were doing, so he developed his own distinctive finger-picking style. When he did finally get a newfangled pickup and amplifier to make his guitar electric, he encountered another problem: neither his family nor any of their neighbors had houses with electricity.

By the time he was 16 he was performing regularly on local radio stations and at dances. He slowly made his way up in the business, working with a variety of Southern radio stations and touring groups, including the Carter Sisters and Red Foley. Despite his obvious talent, his advanced, jazz-inflected style didn’t always go over well with his bosses. His standoffish demeanor didn’t help matters any, and he frequently got the sack. That happened so often that appearances on the “Grand Ole Opry” weren’t enough to convince him he was a success, and even when he was firmly ensconced at RCA in the ‘50s, producing huge hits for the label, he didn’t relax.

“I kept thinking, ‘Well, it’ll slack off and I’ll get fired again,’ because I’d been fired from every damn job I ever had,” he said, going on to explain how that uncertainty fueled the Nashville Sound. “I was just trying to keep my job, and the way I was trying to do that was by giving the friends and neighbors something different every time you put out a record.”

As recording scenes go, Nashville was a two-horse town in the ‘50s, with RCA’s Studio B and legendary producer Owen Bradley’s studio responsible for nearly every disc released.

“Owen and I each got a couple of smash hits going back in the late ‘50s, it started growing and just kept growing. If I’d known all that, I’d have bought a lot of property and been wealthy by now. But no one knew then how it would take off. We were just struggling along trying to make a few records,” Atkins said.

Along with handling a production load of some 35 artists in his RCA heyday--and assisting such non-RCA-aligned friends as the Everlys--Atkins had his own recording career, which now numbers more than 70 albums. His finger-picking incorporated the subtlety and deft touch of a classical guitarist, with the fiery invention and jazz phrasing of Django Reinhardt and with the simplicity, clean attack and rhythm of traditional country.

It’s telling of his mastery that he’s as at home performing with folk-master Doc Watson as he is with a symphony, jazzman George Benson or Dire Strait’s Mark Knopfler. He recently released his third album of duets with country picker Jerry Reed, a combination that will be onstage Sunday at McCabes in Santa Monica.

According to Kottke, who has often shared shows with him, Atkins’ guitar style has become so influential and pervasive that people forget it all started with one man.

“He’s an essential guy, I think,” Kottke said. “He pretty much invented the sort of finger style that everybody who plays with their fingers is involved in now. There were players before him, but Chet was the first guy to synthesize a lot of these influences and really come up with something. He’s such a prime mover in the history of the guitar that you can lose him in there.

“He makes like he’s just one of the boys, but he’s an originator, a creator, and you can feel that in his playing. He probably has the best touch there is, in the kind of soul he gets out of his playing. He captures a special point in time every time he plays.”

Atkins, in turn, is an enthusiastic booster of other guitar players. Of Kottke he says, “I love his style. He’s so different. He’s got a lot of strange thoughts going through his head.” He loves Texas rocker Eric Johnson, and thinks that Reed is one of the best finger-pickers around. He’s encouraged Reed to display more of that ability in their shows and most recent duet album.

Of all the people he’s dueted with, Les Paul is a particular favorite, “because he’s so damn crazy. His playing’s just wild.” He’s disappointed that an album recorded with Benson was never released, because the two artists’ labels couldn’t come to terms: “George has got two of the greatest hands I’ve ever seen. I think the album would have shown another side of George that people don’t know about, because his record company will hardly let him play guitar on his albums.”

His most successful duet album was “Neck and Neck,” recorded with Mark Knopfler, which sold well over a million copies worldwide.

“I think that was one of the best albums I’ve ever done. Mark’s an admirer of mine, and a finger-picker too. The only trouble with Mark was he loved everything I did. I’d play something and he’d go, ‘Oh, that’s great!’ I’d say, ‘No, wait I can do that better,’ and he’d go, ‘No, it’s wonderful.’ I’m kind of the same way with him, I just think he’s the most wonderful guitar player, in any style. He can do your rock ‘n’ roll but he can also play a ballad with so much feeling.”

He numbers several other rock players among his friends. Curiously, the Beatle he became friends with wasn’t Harrison but bassist Paul McCartney.

“George played one of my Gretsch guitars, and that sold an awful lot of guitars for me, and he wrote the liner notes for one of my records once (‘Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles’), but I never met him.

“I even did a record with Paul, though. He was out at the house one night and was playing me a song his daddy wrote called ‘Walking in the Park With Eliose’ and I said, ‘You know, if you want to make your dad really happy, record that song for him.’ ‘Cause I did that for my dad once. He wrote a breakdown called ‘Prancin’ Filly,’ and I did it on an album, and, hell, my dad made $200 or $300 off it every year. He loved it.’ So Paul called me one night and said ‘Get a band together. We’re going to record that tune.’ ”

In concert, Atkins often sings a song he wrote about his father, which he calls “an industrial-grade tear-jerker,” adding, “I’m probably the worst singer in Tennessee, though there are singers in other states that are worse, I think, somewhere.”

He still tours and performs, he said, “because I love the applause. I’m a shy person, really. I’ve learned to cover it up and I’ve gained a little confidence along the way. But I’m slenderly educated, you know, a high school dropout, so I’ve tried to educate myself. I know a lot of stuff but I don’t know necessarily how to use it.

“But when I play, it brings me acceptance. When I go out there in front of hundreds of people and try to play something that’s difficult, I feel I’ve really accomplished something if I’ve pulled it off, and I do most of the time. Or at least I’ve learned to cover up my mistakes,” he said with a chuckle.

Playing music has helped keep his thinking young. Consequently he finds that many of his friends--including the current A-team of Nashville studio players--are of a younger generation.

“I hang out with a lot of young people, guitarists and people in general, and sometimes I sit back and think, ‘You know, that isn’t fair to them, because one of these days I’ll go to that Grand Ole Opry in the sky and then their friend will be gone.’ I should hang out with older people so they won’t have to go through that, but I’m a little greedy I guess. I like for all these good young players to come around and visit,” Atkins said.

There was a point when he feared that the runaway Nashville Sound he introduced would rob country of its identity. But these days he thinks country has never been healthier, even if he is a bit disappointed that his own records turn up on jazz fusion stations instead of country ones lately.

“Garth Brooks is the best thing that’s happened in years. I’ve been saying ever since Elvis and the Beatles we needed somebody to come along to get people into record stores. He’s sure doing that for country. I don’t understand it because he sounds real whiny and country to me; I don’t see how he appeals to pop audiences, but thank God for him.

“The level of musicianship in this town has never been better, and I think the artists are better educated now. A lot of people used to come here and think they had to relive Hank Williams’ life--they had to get into drugs and drink and raise hell (Atkins played guitar on Williams’ prophetic song “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”). I think the newer guys realize that’s not so. They treat it more as a business now.”

There is one side to that which Atkins doesn’t like.

“The record companies have gotten cold . They’re run by lawyers, most of them. I’d like to see record companies that have a heart, that maybe keep artists around even if they aren’t selling, keep ‘em around and give them a chance. So many times now they only get to put out one record and that’s it.”

He eventually became a vice president at RCA, but parted with the company as an artist when it was reluctant to promote his albums aimed at reaching a younger audience. He’s now with CBS-Sony, and far happier for it, he said. He did have a hand in compiling a career retrospective CD set with RCA due out this fall.

As for his personal tally of accomplishments, Atkins said, “I’m proud that I’ve been a good guy, that I’ve never taken advantage of some things I could’ve that would have made me a greedy person. I’ve always tried to help people with talent and so I’m kind of proud of that. And I’m proud of my innovations on the guitar, the finger-picking contributions which I kind of started, because when I started playing everybody was fighting the guitar with a straight pick. I’m a little proud of that.”

Who: Chet Atkins.

When: Saturday, June 6, at 7 and 9:30 p.m. With Leo Kottke.

Where: The Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano.

Whereabouts: Interstate 5 to the San Juan Creek Road exit. Left onto Camino Capistrano. The Coach House is in the Esplanade Plaza.

Wherewithal: $25.

Where to call: (714) 496-8930.