Chet Atkins With Tommy Emmanuel The Day Finger Pickers Took Over The World

At 73, with hundreds of albums and countless sessions to his credit, Chet Atkins still had another great recording in him – this splendid duo session with the young Australian guitarist/composer Tommy Emmanuel. Here, Atkins leaves all of the smooth jazz experiments from the previous decade and a half behind him, choosing superior material for their acoustic guitars, with the rhythm section laying down swinging country-pie tracks underneath. Emmanuel's fingerpicking style isn't quite as tied to the rhythm as Atkins'; it's a little sharper in attack, fleeter in technique and a bit flashier in temperament, yet remarkably well-matched to that of the east Tennessee master, almost an alter ego.

Originally released in 2002 in Tommy Emmanuel's native Australia (where he's a jazz and folk guitar legend) but not available in the States until 2005, Endless Road is a solo acoustic album that in its revamped form adds a pair of unimpressive vocal numbers. Emmanuel's fingerpicking style is heavily influenced by Chet Atkins, who appears here on a genial but melodically flimsy duet called "Chet's Ramble" that, truth be told, sounds like it was probably an outtake from their 1997 duet album, The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World. Emmanuel fares much better on his own, but he's at his best when he's working with songs that have stronger melodies than his own competent but unexciting tunes. For example, on the increasingly moldy standard "Over the Rainbow," Emmanuel offers a hint of John Fahey's diffused, abstract style in its intro before moving into a more traditional iteration of the familiar melody. Even better is Emmanuel's flashy but effective reworking of the nearly as hoary "Mona Lisa," which Emmanuel turns into a shimmering, kaleidoscopic version of itself. Not all of the recastings are quite so effective: Emmanuel simply is a far better guitar player than he is a singer, and the a cappella take on Jerry Reed's "Today Is Mine" does neither singer nor song any favors.

Tommy Emmanuel, four-time winner of Australia's Best Guitarist award, has helped bring the art of rock guitar down under to a higher awareness over his two-decade-long career by bringing a sense of jazz improvisation into a mix that also includes blues, country, rock, classical, and Spanish music. After years as a popular sideman and ace songwriter, the two-time ARIA (Aussie Grammys equivalent) award winner launched his solo career in 1988 with Up from Down Under. Several releases have followed, most notably 1993's critically acclaimed The Journey, which hit high on Gavin and Radio & Records NAC airplay charts.