Finger-Style Guitar, by Chet Atkins (September 1956)

Dad's Take:

Chet Atkins was an innovator of country-style guitar playing, they tell me. And it may have been true. I don't know enough about that genre prior to this album to be able to comment on that.

All I know is, innovator or not, every song on this album makes me think of roller rink music or the samples for guitar lessons. There is some good picking here, but every song is played at the same roller skating tempo. Whether it's an upbeat number like "Gavotte in D" or a gentle ballad like "Unchained Melody," nearly every song is played at pretty much the same tempo, a tempo that reminds me of what you might hear when you walk into a chapel.. It doesn't help that there are no gaps between tracks. (You wouldn't, after all, want gaps of silence in your skating rink.) When songs are played pretty much the same and run together, there's no avoiding monotony. Occasionally, there's a song that promises a little more excitement, like "Malaguena," but by the end, even those songs drop back into the all-too-familiar tempo.

I'm going to have to leave it to my guitarist son to comment on the technical virtuosity of Atkins's playing. Truth is, whether this album is really innovative, and whether it is an influential disc, it's not something I find particularly entertaining. I'm afraid this is a one-time listen for me.

Brad's Take:

When I first started guitar lessons way back in the day, my teacher mostly taught me acoustic finger picking techniques. At the time, I hated it. I just wanted to play rock music. In the last few years though, I've opened my mind a bit more and I wish I had paid more attention and practiced more often during that first year of guitar lessons. I would love to be able to finger pick like Chet Atkins.

Fun fact: This album was recorded in only one day, which is pretty impressive. Then again, it's only a guy and his guitar, for the most part. If you're good enough (which he obviously is) then it shouldn't take very long to record a whole album in one day. I wonder how many takes each song took though.

There's no doubt that this guy is incredibly talented. The album went by really fast for me. I enjoyed it a lot. As my old man said, the tempo to each song is pretty much the same, at least in the first half of the album. The songs remind my dad of roller skating, but they remind me of the ending credits to Spongebob Squarepants. We definitely grew up in different eras.