Chet Atkins › Similar Artists

Tommy Emmanuel - 48% match to Chet Atkins

31 May 1955, Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia. Emmanuel began playing guitar while still a small child, inspired in part through hearing a Chet Atkins record on radio. He played in the family band from the age of six, touring Australia. Gradually developing a formidable technique, he played in many styles, including jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, but focused on co Read more

Merle Travis - 44% match to Chet Atkins

Merle Robert Travis, 29 November 1917, Rosewood, Kentucky, USA, d. 20 October 1983, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, USA. Travis was the son of a tobacco farmer but by the time he was four years old, the family had moved to Ebenezer, Kentucky, and his father was working down the mines. Travis’ father often remarked, ‘Another day older and deeper in debt’, a phrase his son Read more

Jerry Reed - 33% match to Chet Atkins

Jerry Hubbard, 20 March 1937, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Reed has had three distinct careers: as a respected country guitarist, as a composer and singer of clever pop country hits, and as a genial, jokey television personality and film actor.A cotton-mill worker, Reed was one of many youths brought up on country music who played rockabilly in the mid-50s. Read more

Hank Snow - 28% match to Chet Atkins

Clarence Eugene Snow, 9 May 1914, Brooklyn, near Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada, d. 20 December 1999, Madison, Tennessee, USA. After his parents divorced when he was eight years old, Snow spent four unhappy years with his grandmother, finally running away to rejoin his mother when she remarried. However, he was cruelly mistreated by his stepfather, which prompted him to absc Read more

Les Paul - 27% match to Chet Atkins

Lester Williams Polfus, 9 June 1915, Wankesha, Wisconsin, USA. Paul began playing guitar and other instruments while still a child. In the early 30s he broadcast on the radio and in 1936 was leading his own trio. In the late 30s and early 40s he worked in New York, where he was featured on Fred Waring’s radio show. He made records accompanying singers such as Bing Crosb Read more

Floyd Cramer - 22% match to Chet Atkins

27 October 1933, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA, d. 31 December 1997, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The style and sound of Cramer’s piano-playing was possibly one of the biggest influences on post-50s country music. His delicate rock ‘n’ roll sound was achieved by accentuating the discord in rolling from the main note to a sharp or flat, known as ‘slip note’ Read more

Buck Owens - 19% match to Chet Atkins

Alvis Edgar Owens Jnr., 12 August 1929, Sherman, Texas, USA, d. 25 March 2006, USA, Bakersfield, California, USA. Buck Owens became one of the leading country music stars of the 60s and 70s, along with Merle Haggard, the leading exponent of the ‘west coast sound’. Owens gave himself the nickname Buck at the age of three, after a favourite horse. When he was 10, his Read more

Les Paul & Mary Ford - 19% match to Chet Atkins

Doc Watson - 16% match to Chet Atkins

Arthel L. Watson, 3 March 1923, Stony Fork, near Deep Gap, Watauga County, North Carolina, USA. One of nine children in a farming family, Watson grew up in a musical environment; his mother, Annie, had a vast knowledge of folk songs and his father, General Dixon, played banjo and led his family in nightly hymn singing. He contracted a serious eye defect as a baby and was bli Read more

The Notting Hillbillies - 16% match to Chet Atkins

On 31 May 1986, Mark Knopfler (12 August 1949, Glasgow, Scotland) played a low-key gig at the Grove pub in Holbeck, Leeds, with old friends Steve Phillips (b. Nicholas Stephen Phillips, 18 February 1948, London, England) and Brendan Croker (b. 15 August 1953, Bradford, Yorkshire, England). They were billed as the Notting Hillbillies and each received the princely sum of &pou Read more

Johnny Mathis - 15% match to Chet Atkins

John Royce Mathis, 30 September 1935, San Francisco, California, USA. In 1956, the 19-year-old Mathis was signed to Columbia Records where he began his career with a jazz-tinged album. A US Top 20 hit with ‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ saw him move adroitly towards the balladeer market, and before long he was a major concert attraction, with regular appearances on highly Read more

Ray Conniff - 15% match to Chet Atkins

6 November 1916, Attelboro, Massachusetts, USA, d. 12 October 2002, Escondido, California, USA. Taught to play the trombone by his father, Conniff studied arranging with the aid of a mail-order course while still at college. In 1934, after graduation, he worked with small bands in Boston before joining Bunny Berigan as trombonist/arranger in 1937. After a spell with Bob Cros Read more

Leo Kottke - 14% match to Chet Atkins

11 September 1945, Athens, Georgia, USA. This inventive guitarist drew inspiration from the country-blues style of Mississippi John Hurt, and having taken up the instrument as an adolescent, joined several aspiring mid-60s groups. Induction into the US Navy interrupted his progress, but the artist was discharged following an accident that permanently damaged his hearing. Kot Read more

Charlie Byrd - 13% match to Chet Atkins

16 September 1925, Chuckatuck, Virginia, USA, d. 2 December 1999, Annapolis, Maryland, USA. Byrd began playing guitar while still a small child and by the start of World War II was already highly proficient. During the war he met and played with Django Reinhardt and soon after the end of the war he became a full-time professional musician. He played in a number of popular da Read more

Danny Gatton - 12% match to Chet Atkins

4 September 1945, Washington DC, USA, d. 4 October 1994, Newburg, Maryland, USA. Guitarist and songwriter Danny Gatton first picked up a guitar at the age of nine. Inspired by guitarist Charlie Christian and Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys, Gatton soon developed a unique individual style. Much of this was due to his customization of a standard Les Paul guitar into what he ter Read more