Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), also known as "Mister Guitar" and "the Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music style which expanded its appeal to adult pop music fans.

Other major guitar influences were Django Reinhardt, George Barnes, Les Paul, and, later, Jerry Reed.

[1] His distinctive picking style and musicianship brought him admirers inside and outside the country scene, both in the United States and abroad.

Atkins spent most of his career at RCA Victor and produced records for the Browns, Hank Snow, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, Perry Como, Floyd Cramer, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Waylon Jennings, Roger Whittaker, Ann-Margret and many others.

Rolling Stone credited Atkins with inventing the "popwise 'Nashville sound' that rescued country music from a commercial slump" and ranked him number 21 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

He started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle, but he made a swap with his brother Lowell when he was nine: an old pistol and some chores for a guitar.

Forced to relocate to Fortson, Georgia, outside of Columbus to live with his father because of a critical asthma condition, Atkins was a sensitive youth who became obsessed with music.

[10] Later in life, he lightheartedly gave himself (along with John Knowles, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner, and Jerry Reed[11]) the honorary degree CGP ("Certified Guitar Player").

[9] In 2011, his daughter Merle Atkins Russell bestowed the CGP degree on his longtime sideman Paul Yandell.

[5] Atkins did not have a strong style of his own until 1939 when (while still living in Georgia) he heard Merle Travis picking over WLW radio.

[14] After dropping out of high school in 1942, Atkins landed a job at WNOX (AM) (now WNML) radio in Knoxville, where he played fiddle and guitar with the singer Bill Carlisle and the comic Archie Campbell and became a member of the station's Dixieland Swingsters, a small swing instrumental combo.

After six months, he moved to Raleigh and worked with Johnnie and Jack before heading for Richmond, Virginia, where he performed with Sunshine Sue Workman.

[15] Travelling to Chicago, Atkins auditioned for Red Foley, who was leaving his star position on WLS-AM's National Barn Dance to join the Grand Ole Opry.

That single, "Guitar Blues", was fairly progressive, including a clarinet solo by the Nashville dance band musician Dutch McMillin and produced by Jim Bulleit, founder of Bullet Records.

Siman had been encouraging Steve Sholes to sign Atkins, as his style (with the success of Merle Travis as a hit recording artist) was suddenly in vogue.

[9] When Sholes took over pop production in 1957—a result of his success with Elvis Presley—he put Atkins in charge of RCA Victor's Nashville division.

This became known as the Nashville Sound, which Atkins said was a label created by the media for a style of recording during that period intended to keep country (and their jobs) viable.

He and Bradley had essentially put the producer in the driver's seat, guiding an artist's choice of material and the musical background.

Porter soon helped Atkins get a better reverberation sound from the studio's German effects device, an EMT 140 plate reverb.

In 1987, he told Nine-O-One Network magazine that he was "ashamed" of his promotion: "I wanted to be known as a guitarist and I know, too, that they give you titles like that in lieu of money.

"[22] He had brought Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Connie Smith, Bobby Bare, Dolly Parton, Jerry Reed, and John Hartford to the label in the 1960s and inspired and helped countless others.

He rarely performed in those days and eventually hired other RCA producers, such as Bob Ferguson and Felton Jarvis, to lessen his workload.

He recorded extensively with close friend and fellow picker Jerry Reed, who had become a hit artist in his own right.

Atkins did little production work at RCA after stepping down and in fact, had hired producers at the label in the 1960s, among them Bob Ferguson and Felton Jarvis.

At the same time, he grew dissatisfied with the direction Gretsch (no longer family-owned) was going and withdrew his authorization for them to use his name and began designing guitars with Gibson.

[24] In later years, he returned to radio, appearing on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion program, on American Public Media radio, even picking up a fiddle from time to time,[9] and performing songs such as Bob Wills's "Corrina, Corrina" and Willie Nelson's "Seven Spanish Angels" with Nelson on a 1985 broadcast of the show at the Bridges Auditorium on the campus of Pomona College.

[23] His award was presented by Marty Stuart and Brian Setzer and accepted by Atkins's grandson, Jonathan Russell.

At the age of 13, the future jazz guitarist Earl Klugh was captivated watching Atkins perform on The Perry Como Show.

[32] Steve Howe called Atkins his favorite "all round guitarist", adding that "there are those in different areas of music who are better than him, but nobody had the same ability when it comes to being across the board.

In 1967, a tribute song, "Chet's Tune", was produced for Atkins' birthday, with contributions by a long list of RCA Victor artists, including Eddy Arnold, Connie Smith, Jerry Reed, Willie Nelson, Hank Snow, and others.