Chet Atkins - The Master And His Music

Chet Atkins - The Master And His Music

The 2001 compilation The Master and his Music includes material recorded between the '50s and '70s, and it emphasizes Chet Atkins’ versatility. Atkins’ masterful technique is well-known, but he gets less credit for his fearlessness in exploring untested territory. If there was a new trend or a new sound, Chet was the first to give it a go. This collection shows him bouncing from bluegrass to Beatles to slow jazz to cowboy songs, but nothing he did had the plastic taste of novelty; he took a palpable delight in everything he recorded. His innovations in guitar technique are overpowered only by his innovations in sound design. The range of kooky and hypnotic sounds he invented are on full display in this collection, and most of them are as beguiling 50 years after the fact as they were when they first appeared. Besides asserting his sense of fun and adventure, this collection reminds listeners of Chet’s deep sense of feeling. Even when interpreting well-trod standards like “Yesterday” or “Streets of Laredo,” Atkins brought to them a lyrical attentiveness more befitting a vocalist than an instrumentalist.

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