Guitar Chet Atkins

As seen on PBS. Chet Atkins - Certified Guitar Player is a concert-tribute to Chet Atkins, performed by Chet and many giants in the music business: Mark Knopfler, The Everly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Michael McDonald, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson, backed by Nashville's premier studio musicians. Great music, great fun, and a moving experience as a joyful document created about Chet Atkins' importance in the history of music, and to everyone on that stage. The CD: contains the entire soundtrack of the program above. It has all the music (17 songs), all the interplay between Chet and his fellow stars, and all the excitement felt by the audience that night.

These two RCA LPs came out in '64 and '65 when Chet was at the height of his success with the label, scoring his biggest country hit (#4) with Yakety Axe . That classic joins 23 others by the late Nashville icon, including Freight Train; Winter Walkin'; Alone and Forsaken; Guitar Country ; his own versions of Johnny Cash's Understand Your Man and Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, and more!

After decades of recording for RCA Victor, Atkins switched labels; this 1985 effort is a summit meeting of sorts with young guitar hotshots like Larry Carlton, George Benson, Mark Knopfler, Steve Lukather, and Earl Klugh, plus session A-teamers like Boots Randolph, Larrie Londin, David Hungate, Mark O'Connor and others. Atkins' tone is, as usual, faultless, and his playing superb. If the "meetings" don't always come off, it's usually due to the overzealousness of the other guitar players (Lukather's over-the-top style screams '80s big hair, for instance), not Chet, whose playing always exercises the utmost in restraint in every situation. All in all, a good modern-day Chet Atkins album, but not the place to start a collection.

Another of Chet Atkins' attempts to break into the jazz world during his Columbia period, this recording veers well across the line into new age wallowing of the most innocuous kind. At this point in time, when a record opened with soothing ocean waves, followed by a gentle wash of synths, you could pretty much expect the new age to be lapping at your feet throughout. As he has with so many other genres, Atkins displays an instinctive grasp of this feel-good idiom, though he has to hold back his powers of invention to conform to its clichés and repetitions. Yet even amidst the twittering sound effects and electronic drums of "Up in My Treehouse" and the listless treatment of Keith Jarrett's "My Song," Atkins' guitar always exudes dignity.

This budget-priced, four-disc set from the Real Gone Music label arrives stocked with eight complete, remastered albums (two on each disc) from the legendary guitarist and producer, including Chet Atkins' Gallopin' Guitar (1952), Stringin' Along With Chet Atkins (1953), Session With Chet Atkins (1954), In Three Dimensions (1955), The Finger Style Guitar (1956), Hi Fi In Focus (1957), At Home (1957), and In Hollywood (1957).