A Prairie Home Companion

theryman: Just noticed this on the side of the @prairie_home big rig. Love it.

All the credit for this goes to our master of transportation, Mr. Russ Ringsak!

nprmusic:

Chet made it OK to be a solo guitar player. It’s not that there weren’t solo guitar players before him — but there weren’t that many. Chet took solo guitar to everybody.

—Chet Atkins Appreciation Society member Pat Kirtley at the annual Chet Atkins Day gathering in Nashville

via Chet Atkins: The Lasting Influence Of ‘Mr. Guitar’

“You might be shy and homely and puny and from the sticks and feel looked down upon, but if you could play the guitar like that, you would be aristocracy and never have to point it out, anybody with sense would know it and the others don’t matter anyway.” — Garrison on Chet, from his July 3, 2001 eulogy at the Ryman Auditorium

Listen to Pat Donhue’s song “Stealin’ from Chet” from the May 2, 2009 broadcast (“I stole so many licks from Chet Atkins records that I wrote a song about it”), and Steve Wariner performing his tribute “Chet’s Guitar” this October.