Chet Atkins had the best hands in Nashville. While unremarkable in both size and strength, they were truly a work of art. His long, slender, callused fingers, simultaneously masculine and elegant, were adorned by impeccably filed, indestructibly hard nails. In the last few years of his life, his nails had, ironically, become stronger than ever due to the calcium pills he was taking to offset the effects of cancer medication.
It was the hands of Atkins, who died at age 77 on June 30, that played the guitar parts on records by Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, and the Everly Brothers; inspired such guitar greats as George Harrison and Mark Knopfler; and guided the studio knobs for Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, and Don Gibson. Only recently did those hands begin to show the ravages of time and cancer. “I used to have the prettiest hands,” Atkins said in 1998, in what was one of his last interviews. “My wife always says, ‘Daddy, you’ve got the prettiest hands.’ ”
It wasn’t appearances that concerned Atkins in his final years, but rather his diminished ability to finger-pick his guitar—a lifelong ritual that began each day while he was still in bed and concluded when he fell asleep at night. A 1997 operation to remove a malignant brain tumor cruelly robbed him of his ability to control his fretting hand. Undeterred, he practiced every night until he could play no more.
Incredible talent aside, Atkins will also be remembered for his self-deprecating manner, a quick wit that offered insight into this highly private man. Like a comedian, he turned his pain into shtick, making light of childhood poverty and abandonment that made the thrifty millionaire worry about money his entire life. He joked that he had been fired in “three or four time zones,” but frequent firings early in his career, coupled with a longing for his father’s acceptance and love, caused Atkins to be insecure about his abilities throughout most of his life. “I used to be a hell of a player and really didn’t know it,” he said. “I think I was playing my best about 20 or 25 years ago. When I listen to those old records, I think, ‘Boy, I was good then. No wonder so many people copied me.’ But I never thought that then.”
Raised in poverty in Luttrell, Tenn., Atkins suffered from malnutrition at an early age. Only a severe case of asthma provided him with an excuse to avoid toiling in the tobacco and corn fields with his siblings. “My mother would lean a hard-back chair against a wall and put pillows behind it so I could sleep,” he said. “I used to wish I could die.
“For the past 40 years, I hadn’t thought about things like that. I think that now sometimes, but I haven’t been maudlin about it,” he said of the cancer that would claim his life only a few years later. “I don’t worry much about it. Well, if I die, maybe it will be sudden, and I won’t care. But you can’t predict that. You can’t work out your own destiny; somebody else does it for you.”
Atkins’ parents, James and Ida, divorced when he was 6, and for years he was in denial about the effect that the split had on him. “It happened when I was so young,” he said. “My dad just went down to the spring house where I was playing and said, ‘Well, kiddies, goodbye. I’m leaving.’ And I thought he would be back as he always does, but he didn’t come back for a year.
“He came back about once a year, and he would bring presents for my sister and brother, but he never brought me anything,” Atkins said, a lone tear slowly falling along the crevice of his cheek. “Stuff like that will make you tough. But I loved him. I was good to him until he died, and I’m proud of that. I took better care of him than any of his kids.”
James Atkins lived until the mid-’60s, long enough to see his son become a superstar. “He would stop people in restaurants and say, ‘Do you know my son, Chet Atkins?’ and they would say, ‘No, I don’t.’ I would say, ‘Dad, don’t do that, dammit.’ ” Such bragging secretly pleased Atkins, “[but] I thought, ‘Why didn’t he give me some encouragement years ago when I needed it so badly?’ But I’m glad. I wouldn’t change a damn thing. I really wouldn’t.”
During the ’40s, early in Atkins’ career, he landed gigs playing on radio stations in Denver, Chicago, and Cincinnati, but he had a rough time because he frequently got fired. “That will make you insecure,” he said. “I usually worked with country bands that were kind of not-too-swift musically, and I usually knew three or four chords more than they did. I was all the time telling everybody what to do and that’s why I got fired so much.”
In 1950, he began playing the Opry regularly as a guitarist for the Carter Sisters; he considered it the best time in his life. “When I first came to the Opry, I did solos and I could work up so many new things that hadn’t been done before, or I hadn’t heard them, at least,” he said. “I thought, will this last? Will I still be inventing things in 10 or 20 years? I didn’t because I started producing other artists and stopped coming up with things like I had been.”
Throughout the ’50s, Atkins worked as a session musician and played increasingly important roles as a session organizer, studio manager, and producer at RCA. By the late ’50s, he was one of the producers, along with Decca’s Owen Bradley and Columbia’s Don Law, who helped create the Nashville Sound, which was designed to make country music more appealing to pop buyers. In the years that followed, Atkins was often criticized for taking the country out of country. “I used to get blamed a lot for taking it uptown too much, and I apologized for it,” he said. “I guess I had a guilt complex that day, but I didn’t deserve to have one.”
Of his work as a producer, Atkins said, “I just surrounded myself with my good friends who were usually better musicians than I ever was, and I would get them around the piano and once in a while they would hit a lick I liked, and I would say, ‘Let’s use that.’ I owe all of my success to the sidemen in this town.”
Atkins unknowingly began what became a 28-year battle with cancer in 1973, when a tumor was removed from his colon. Prostate cancer followed, then lung cancer, and finally the brain tumor in 1997. “I learned I’m a crybaby,” he said of his health battles. “I learned that I’m a coward, that I don’t want to die. I want to keep on playing music. But I realize that as you get older, you may have four or five more years to live and you’ve got to use your time as intelligently as you can. I do it by being nice to my family and learning to play the guitar again.”
Although he remained a humble man, Atkins enjoyed the accolades bestowed on him. “It makes me feel real good,” he said. “I just hope it continues after I’m gone. I think of things like, how long is it going to last? I think, will they know me after I’m gone? Will they remember what I’ve contributed to the art of playing guitar? I don’t think they will and I don’t think they should, but I wish they would.
“I hope people will remember that I was a nice fellow and that I helped a lot of artists get over the humps. I’m proud of that.”
