Al Atkins

It's tough to live down one's past, especially if that past incorporates one of music's biggest "coulda been a star" stories since Pete Best. Al Atkins has been trying to escape the shadow of Judas Priest, the band he formed in the late '60s, ever since the band took off to stardom without him, but it's been a rough road that even 2007's Demon Deceiver couldn't entirely smooth. For that solo set, his fifth, Atkins joined forces with Budgie guitarist Simon Lees, bassist Pete Emms, and drummer Mick Hales, with Diamond Head's Brian Tatler and Danté Fox's Mike De Jager among the guest support. The album was a self-financed/self-produced labor of love, and suffered somewhat from the lack of money and big-production values, but only some.

The Essential Chet Atkins: The Columbia Years collects 15 tracks from eight albums recorded between 1983 and 1997. While Atkins never fully gives up his country roots, much of this material leans in a definite jazz-pop direction, highlighted by memorable collaborations with Mark Knopfler on "Poor Boy Blues," "So Soft, Your Goodbye," and "I'll See You in My Dreams." Atkins also trades licks with Tommy Emmanuel on "Dixie McGuire" and "Road to Gundaghi/Waltzing Matilda," as well as longtime buddy Jerry Reed on "Sneakin' Around." The selections have been digitally remastered so every tiny musical nuance can be detected, which should no doubt satisfy guitar enthusiasts and Atkins fans.

Though incredibly busy running RCA Victor's Nashville operation, Chet Atkins still found some time and enterprise to perform some musical experiments on his own. It was a simple idea, really, replacing the two lower strings on his electric guitar with the E and A strings from an electric bass, thus lowering the tone by an octave and creating a fuller balance. With this idea, Atkins' disarmingly easygoing fingerpicking facility threatened to put every bass player in Nashville out of business, but the so-called "Octabass Guitar" evidently wasn't pursued much further. Indeed, only on side one of this LP do listeners hear the new instrument on a series of mostly jazz and pop standards – including the newly minted Joe Zawinul soul/jazz vehicle "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy."

Judas Priest - Demolished Birmingham (2CD) (2001)
MP3 320 Kbps | 312.7 Mb
Heavy metal | 2CD

Judas Priest is a British heavy metal band who rocked the charts in 1980 with "Living After Midnight" and "Breaking the Law".The founder members were childhood friends K.K. Downing and Ian Hill. They were approached by Al Atkins, the singer of a defunct band called Judas Priest, and he asked if they would like to form a band using the Judas Priest name. The new band toured around the local area refining their sound until it developed its characteristic heavy metal thud, and though they lost Atkins along the way they picked up Rob Halford as their new singer. By 1974 they released their debut.

Pure…Country is a decent four-CD set highlighting 68 classic singles. Along with the original versions of radio favorites by Johnny Cash, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Ray Price, and Lynn Anderson are less than obvious inclusions by the Browns, Sylvia, and Little Jimmy Dickens.