Meanwhile, he collaborated with Boudleaux Bryant on two song hits: “Midnight,” which topped the country charts for Red Foley in January 1953, and “How’s the World Treating You?” which hit the country Top Ten for Eddy Arnold in July 1953. Eventually he was formally hired by RCA as an A&R assistant. In Nashville, Atkins worked as a session musician for RCA and other labels and helped set up recording sessions. The group went to KWTO in Springfield, then in 1950 was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry, and Atkins moved with them to Nashville. He began playing with the comic musical team of Homer and Jethro and later worked with the Carter Family spin-off group the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle. He didn’t score any hits and returned to working at WNOX in Knoxville. Steve Sholes, an executive at RCA, heard a radio transcription of Atkins in 1947 and offered him a recording contract Atkins did his first session for the label in Chicago on Aug. then WSM in Nashville, where in 1946 he cut “Brown Eyes Crying in the Rain” and “Guitar Blues,” his first recordings as a leader, for Bullet Records, and first performed on Grand Ole Opry with Red Foley then WRVA in Richmond, Va.
Leaving WLW in December 1945, Atkins worked at a succession of radio stations: first WPTF in Raleigh, N.C. There he met singer Leona Johnson, whom he married on Jthey had one child. His first recording session was as a sideman in 1944. At 17 he dropped out of high school to work in music full-time.Ītkins was hired as a fiddler by radio station WNOX in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1942 he later played guitar on the station and in concerts with other radio performers. He was particularly influenced by the finger-picking guitar style of Merle Travis, which he first heard on the radio when he was 14. His parents had divorced when he was six in 1935 he went to live with his father and stepmother near Columbus, Ga., for health reasons.
He suffered from asthma, which later made him ineligible for military service, and spent much of his childhood convalescing and practicing the guitar. He first began playing the ukulele at three or four then turned to the guitar, acquiring one at the age of nine then, the fiddle. As a session musician, A&R man, record producer, and company executive for RCA Victor Records, he guided the recording careers of dozens of performers and developed the pop-oriented Nashville Sound to compete with rock ’n’ roll and cross over to the pop charts in the late 1950s and 1960s.Ītkins, the son of James Arley Atkins, a music teacher, and Ida Sharp Atkins, was raised on a farm. As a performer, Atkins developed a finger-picking style that influenced other guitarists in all areas of music during a 50-year recording career, he made at least 84 albums, reaching the pop or country charts with 47 releases between 19 and winning 13 Grammys. Atkins, Chet (originally Chester Burton), American guitarist, producer, and record company executive b.
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