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Friday December 14th, 2001
Rock Hall to induct 'Country Gentleman', Chet Atkins
Pioneering guitarist, producer and record label excutive Chet Atkins will be the inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mr. Atkins was named the 2002 "side-men" inductee and will enter the Rock Hall during the March 18, 2002, ceremony for his work as a sideman. Mr. Atkins, who died this year, has been a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame since 1973. Chet is one of the most successful guitar players in the history of popular music. Atkins played on recording sessions for Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, Hank Williams and numerous Nashville legends, while his playing style influenced such rock legends as George Harrison, Mark Knofler and Eddie Cochran.
Brenda Lee, a child star of the 1950s who had hits in four different decades, also learned yesterday that she will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, making her the first woman to be inducted into the Rock Hall in Cleveland and the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
Other rock inductees announced yesterday were Isaac Hayes, Gene Pitney, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Ramones, The Talking Heads and Stax Records founder Jim Stewart.
He had an elegant, tasteful style - as a guitarist and, more importantly, as a person," said Henry Juszkiewicz, chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp.
"The Chet Atkins name brought a great deal of honor and prestige to the Gibson line, because Chet was such a gentleman in addition to all his other accomplishments.
Juszkiewicz singled out the Gibson solidbody acoustic guitars as Chets most important achievement in guitar design.
The acoustic solidbody model is probably the most underrated innovation in recent guitar history, Juszkiewicz said. When you see a Dave Matthews or a Mark Knopfler onstage, getting an acoustic guitar sound at full volume with no feedback, youre seeing a part of Chets legacy.
We were also very proud to revive two of the most popular of Chets endorsement models from the fifties and sixties that are still in great demand among his followers.
Although he was associated for many years with another company, he started and ended his professional career with Gibson.
He had made his first solo recording in 1949 but didnt make the record charts until Mr. Sandman went to No. 13 on the country charts in 1955, introducing to the nation his elegant, reserved guitar style. Yackety Ax, a guitar version of the Boots Randolph hit Yackety Sax, was his biggest chart success, reaching No. 4 on the country charts and also appearing on the pop charts in 1965.
Chets influence on guitar players around the world was rivaled only by his influence within the Nashville music business community. He helped design RCAs legendary Studio B in 1957 and went on to become vice president of the RCAs Nashville operation. Under his leadership, RCA was Nashvilles most successful label, boasting at one time a roster of 50 artists, half of whom Chet produced. He was one of the leading forces in creating the Nashville Sound, with heavy echo effects, string sections and vocal choruses that made country music more palatable to mainstream audiences.
In 1978 he began working on a new idea for an electric guitar. He had always had trouble with broken nails and had been playing more and more on nylon-stringed classicals in order to save his nails. Recent developments in the field of piezo guitar pickups for acoustic guitars inspired him to put a piezo pickup on a solidbody guitar.
Chet had envisioned the solidbody acoustic only as a classical model, but in 1986, shortly after Gibson was acquired by Mr. Juszkiewicz and his partners, a new steel-string version, the Chet Atkins SST, was introduced. Now rock and rollers could plug in an acoustic guitar and crank up the volume, and the SST played a prime role in the infusion of acoustic guitar sounds back into rock music.
Chet took an active role in the design of all his Gibson endorsement models, according to Mike Voltz, former head of the development and production team for the Chet line. Every model we came out with, he had final approval over, Voltz said, and many times he instigated changes. The pickup windings on the
Tennessean and Country Gentleman were exactly to his specifications.
Chet was the most active artist involved with any guitar line.
With the Gibson CE came the introduction of a new Chet Atkins. He left RCA in 1982, put c.g.p. (for certified guitar player) after his name and embarked on a new performing career, working with a wide array of musical friends such as Mark Knopfler, George Benson, Suzy Bogguss, David Hungate, Mark O'Connor, Larry Carlton and Earl Klugh.
With renewed interest in his recording career, Gibson introduced new versions of two of his old Gretsch models, the Chet Atkins Country Gentleman in 1986 and the Chet Atkins Tennessean in 1990.
Chet served as an active guest curator for 100 Years of Gibson, an exhibit of historic Gibson instruments that ran for six years at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. At the opening of the exhibit in 1994 he was presented with the prototype of a new, limited-edition model, the Chet Atkins Super 4000 a large, thin-bodied electric-acoustic archtop made by the Gibson's Custom, Art & Historic division.
Gibson currently offers four Chet Atkins models: The Country Gentleman and the Tennessean (both hollowbody electrics), the SST steel-string solidbody acoustic and the CE/CEC (standard neck on the CE, wider classical-style neck on the CEC) nylon-string solidbody acoustic.
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