Everyone should have some Chet Atkins in their music collection and, if you don’t already own a track or two, you could do much worse than buy this compilation. The Art Of… puts 1958’s Chet Atkins In Hollywood together with its 1959 follow-up Teensville, plus seven bonus tracks, for a total of 31 prime cuts of guitar-picking.
In addition to his wonderful ability on the guitar, Atkins is known as the architect of the Nashville Sound that simultaneously saved and ruined country music – saving it by making it acceptable to a pop audience and ruining it by taking out the “country” instruments such as fiddle and pedal steel. As a result, a fair number of the tunes here are given the strings-and-choir arrangement, particularly on the earlier album. Crucially, though, more than enough is straightahead picking and the bonus tracks are pure Chet.
Like his fellow guitar magician Les Paul, Chet was an innovator and can be heard using a rudimentary wah wah effect on several tracks. It’s not as pronounced as a Cry Baby, but it’s definitely there: a distinct and deliberate modulation of the upper frequencies almost a decade before Voodoo Chile or White Room. Real crazy, daddy-o!
