Customer Reviews

Early Years 1946-1957

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are several reasons that you should get this.
1. Atkins is on the top ten list of greatest guitar players EVER.
2. The arpegio attacks in some of the songs will make your jaw drop.
3. Even though he's listed as country, he was respected by his peers IN ALL GENRES.
4. Many of the recordings are from the Joe (Down In The Basement) Broussard collection.
5. If you consider yourself a guitarist, this is a must have.
6. 95% of all his greatest hits is on these discs (Freight Train was recorded after 1957).
7. Each disc is no less than 70 minutes.
8. The sound remastering is great.
9. You wont find a collection this great at a lower price.
10. SO WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS? BUY IT!!!

This is a wonderful, affordable way to explore early Atkins. The sound is fantastic, as is typical of JSP. The packaging (individual jewel cases in a sleeve) is fine, but nothing special. There really aren't any substantial essays about the music, just some nice anecdotes and commentary. The sessionography is very thorough and makes up lack of more liner notes. I much prefer the instrumental tracks later, but Chet's vocals have a certain charm, despite not being a terribly accomplished singer. This set is a much more affordable way to get the music than the Bear Family set. If you love Chet Atkins, this should be in your collection.

This is an inexpensive and excellent way to hear the famous Chet Atkins sound evolve. The digital conversion is excellent and what an array of sidemen recorded with him. I love the jazz mandolin style of the late Jethro Burns and there's lots of his material here. And who knew that Chet originally signed as a vocalist? A must for any fan of electric guitar and one of it's most popular players.

In 1977, a record store guy told me, "If you don't have 'Songs In the Key of Life', you've got no record collection." He was very sure!

Last week I bought this collection, along with some Mingus, Debussy, and early Parliament. The wrappers are still on those others. I know they are great, but this music crushed me, and I don't need anything else for a while.

Starting around the end of '53 or '54, fortified by his first hit, "Mister Sandman", Chet Atkins' artistic power went ballistic. These disks show the trajectory like a movie.

He had been fired from every job for ten years. But luck in '53 gave him a little stability: "Sandman", and an endorsement deal with Gretsch guitars. He didn't just pose for Gretsch. He made lots of changes to the instrument, resulting in a sound as straight and burnished and revolutionary as Paul Revere sterling.

By the end of '55, he had stripped all the tricks from his music. A technical virtuoso of guitar, playing slow, straight, sweet. Wild sweet. Country smokehouse sweet, like a fresh picked Appalachian wood stove blackberry pie.

Hearing this perfection, you might think: ah, smooth Nashville country stuff. But country music wasn't like that yet. At all! Immediately after recording these songs, Chet Atkins was hired by RCA to produce Elvis, the Everly Brothers, and every country record made in Nashville, where he built the first major studio. The phenomenon of Nashville sound which he created, now obscures the memory of his original work.

A nuclear explosion is too bright to see. If you're looking that way, you're blinded.

Chet Atkins' interpretation of Country, Pop, and Rock and Roll, became orthodoxy, the sound of radio to this day. We are immersed in it. But to say his original music sounds ordinary, is flash blind.

Time to rub the glare out of our eyes, come to our senses, and give this glorious original, this shocking natural genius, the focus, the attention and commitment his seminal work demands. Claim the legacy of a golden era.

( There's Not enough stars in the universe to state how great this box set is, October 23, 2007
By bobtec (Redlands, CA) - See all my reviews
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There are several reasons that you should get this.
1. Atkins is on the top ten list of greatest guitar players EVER.
2. The arpegio attacks in some of the songs will make your jaw drop.
3. Even though he's listed as country, he was respected by his peers IN ALL GENRES.
4. Many of the recordings are from the Joe (Down In The Basement) Broussard collection.
5. If you consider yourself a guitarist, this is a must have.
6. 95% of all his greatest hits is on these discs (Freight Train was recorded after 1957).
7. Each disc is no less than 70 minutes.
8. The sound remastering is great.
9. You wont find a collection this great at a lower price.
10. SO WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS? BUY IT!!! )

I couldn't agree more.
Well Said

The sound quality is excellent and no less than 157 tunes for a screaming good deal. There are 122 instrumental tracks give or take one or two.

The albums you are getting in this set are: Chet Atkin's Gallopin' Guitar, Stringin Along with Chet Atkins, A Session with Chet Atkins, Chet Atkins in Three Dimensions, and Finger-Style Guitar plus a whole lot more. I have some of these on vinyl and interestingly the mixes are not the same. For example, Unchained Melody on my Finger-Style Guitar LP has a heavy echo/delay effect that is not on the JSP version. I think Chet would go back in the studio and rework things and they'd be re-released a few years later. I'm assuming that the JSP version is the original from 1956. At any rate, this is one collection you should not pass up on. These albums are hard to find on disc and are fairly expensive.

Chet Atkins is truly a guitar genius and anyone who plays the instrument or just loves to hear it played with unmatched skill should get this set.

This is a great box set for the money. "Well recorded", great musicianship, period songs and
very nice sound quality throughout the five discs.
The liner notes are complete with session dates and musicians included.

My introduction to Chet Atkins was in 1957. My father owned his latest album at that time. Over the years I've listened to his music, and to my mind he is the greatest guitarist who ever lived. In honesty, there are others equally as good, and even better, in their fields. I've listened to classical guitarists from several countries, and there are many who are beyond compare in their own styles. This applies as well to other genres, including such originals as Stanley Jordan.

But Chester Burton Atkins was a true original, and a true great. His talent covered a great many styles, and listening to him play never grows old.

This set covers his early career from his very first professional recordings through that very same album, 'Finger Style Guitar'. Remastered, this collection features clean, beautiful recordings of the seminal years of one of the greatest talents to ever touch a guitar. I'll be buying a second copy soon to send to my father for his eighty-third birthday.

If you like pure guitar playing you'll pick up a copy too.

Another reviewer wrote: "Too perfect, too flawless, too monotonous"? Gimme a break! That's what they said about John Williams (the guitarist not the composer). Did they say that about Clapton or Hank Marvin? You buy records to hear something played well, with no mistakes. You can forgive live flubs (apart from the rehearsed bum notes and ad-libs of The Carpenters). Monotonous? Atkinns plays very laid-back. I prefer that to the pseudo-agonised mugging of more pretentious guitarists.
In this set, you get the amazingly noise-free remasters from the Bear Family sets, at a fraction of the price. The old tracks are a bit cheesy but so what? They're good fun, played well.

As far as textbook perfection playing goes, Chet ranks at the top; however, as a player offering a unique stamp of his own, a heart, a soul, a spirit or whatever you want to call that special something that touches the listener inside, and makes good music the special ART that it is capable of being, he is lacking. A textbook gives us the facts, fascinating though they may be, but the well written story, with heart and soul, is what touches us; haunts us if you will, and stays with us well into the future, perhaps, sometimes, all the way through to the end of our lives. Music can do that also, when it carries that special something, that uniqueness, even that mistake, that makes the artist playing it special and one of a kind. Chet's playing is too perfect, too flawless, too monotonous. I can listen for short periods of time and enjoy his playing, in the context of that textbook perfection, but as far as that kind of playing you can listen to; sometimes for hours on end, and be truly touched by it; never tiring, Chet's playing does not have that inner spark.