Guitar Chet Atkins

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.

If the cover of At Home evokes the 1950s, the music on In Hollywood is the 1950s: a warm, cozy, sophisticated album of mood music in the best sense. Yet this is not an album of film music (though a handful of film themes turn up). Rather, it is exactly what the title indicates: Chet Atkins recording an album in a Hollywood studio, as opposed to the familiar haunts of Nashville…

This is an enjoyable reissue from the RCA Chet Atkins catalog, combining two adjoining albums – The Guitar Genius and Chet Atkins and His Guitar – from the mid-'60s onto one very clean if spare CD, with no annotation or session information. Guitar instrumental fans will probably find more to like in the 12 songs off of Chet Atkins and His Guitar than the ten from The Guitar Genius – which are weighted down with vocals a bit too frequently – but it's all a serious sonic pleasure, very clean and bright, if at times a bit too languid for rock & roll, though the version of "Heartbreak Hotel" here will even impress fans on the latter level.

This CD's 15 newly recorded tracks includes a 20-page commemorative booklet with The Journey of Mr. Guitar by Robert K Oermann, liner notes by award winning journalist Holly Gleason, rare photos and extensive session notes by Grammy winning producer Carl Jackson. Few artists have been as influential in multiple music industry roles and reached across genre as smoothly as the charming Chet Atkins, the original C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player).

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.