Guest
- Amazing jam session with two of the most iconic guitar players in the world. Chester Burton Atkins grew up in the hills near the tiny, remote East Tennessee town of Luttrell. His father, James Atkins, was an itinerant music teacher who had previously been married, and his mother, Ida Atkins, sang and played piano. After the Atkinses divorced, Ida remarried, in 1932, and Chester began to learn guitar and fiddle, often playing with his brother and sister and their stepfather, Willie Strevel. A 1936 asthma attack forced Atkins to relocate to the improved climate at his father’s Georgia farm, where one night in the late 1930s he first heard Merle Travis playing guitar on WLW in Cincinnati. Travis’s thumb-and-finger picking style fascinated Atkins, who created his own thumb-and-two-finger variation. After attending high school in Georgia, Atkins landed a job at WNOX in Knoxville, fiddling for the team of singer Bill Carlisle and comic Archie Campbell. WNOX executive Lowell Blanchard heard Atkins’s guitar playing and began featuring him on the station’s popular weekday multi-artist country show, Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round, and Atkins broadened his repertoire though listening sessions in the station’s music library. He briefly joined WLW in Cincinnati in 1945, then worked with Johnnie & Jack in Raleigh, North Carolina, in early 1946, before moving to Chicago, where Red Foley, having left the WLS National Barn Dance to host the Grand Ole Opry’s NBC segment, The Prince Albert Show, hired Atkins and took him to Nashville. There, Atkins made his first solo recording, “Guitar Blues,” for the local record label Bullet. Moving on to KWTO in Springfield, Missouri, Atkins received his nickname, “Chet,” from station official Si Siman. Other officials there felt Atkins’s style was too polished for “hillbilly” music and eventually fired him, but meanwhile, Siman tried to get record companies interested in Atkins. LES PAUL Les Paul was an inventor, an award-winning musician, an innovator and a creative genius. Like Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs changed their worlds, Les Paul changed the world of music. He was the creator of the solid-body electric guitar, multi-track recording, echo, over-dubbing and other musical technologies. Les never stopped exploring and his curiosity led to innovations that musicians still use today. He is known as the “Father of Modern Music” and the “Wizard of Waukesha.” Famous musicians, producers and engineers alike owe their careers to Les Paul and to this day, pay homage to him. Every time we hear an electric guitar shred or download our favorite music, we owe it to Les Paul. Acclaimed as the “Godfather of the Modern Recording Studio,” Les Paul is known for numerous inventions and innovations that changed the way musicians play music, the way engineers record music and the way fans hear music. Arguably, Les Paul is the most important individual in the history of the modern music industry. His influence is profound, having been a pioneer in the development of the solid body electric guitar as well as numerous recording techniques including multi-track recording, digital delay, reverb, and more. The Les Paul Foundation inspires innovative and creative thinking by sharing the legacy of Les Paul through support of music education, recording, innovation and medical research related to hearing. Please subscribe, like and share! Follow Us: Facebook - Instagram - Twitter -
