Chet Atkins made many appearances on television over the years. Here he is on Carl Smiths Five Star Jubilee, on NBC, some time in the mid 60s. The people in this show wore bright western costumes to show off the new capabilities of color television. Chet came dressed like an insurance salesman. Chet was a businessman, running RCA’s recording operation in Nashville for many years. Notice that Chet has the same smooth, relaxed delivery as Merle Travis, with alternating bass played on strings muted with the heel of his right hand. Also watch the two note, two finger runs up the neck,learned from Django Reinhardt.
One of the many people for whom a finger picking guitar style is named, Merle Travis’ influence is seen in the playing of Doc Watson, Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed and many other fine musicians. Merle’s playing is characterized by the use muted bass strings, extended, jazzy sounding chords, walking bass runs, and a smooth sophisticated delivery, “Travis Picking.” There is a story about a stranger hearing a recording of Merle Travis, solo, and remarking “Those guys sure can play the guitar.”
This is the video that gave me the idea to start this blog. Doc is playing Deep River Blues in a Travis style of fingerpicking. He is perhaps better known for his flatpicking, but has several fingerstyle pieces in his repertoire. The E and A strings are muted slightly using the heel of his picking hand, but he lifts his hand to let those notes ring out when they are emphasized.
Doc is alternating between an E7 chord at 0X6757 and an Edim chord spelled 0X5656 the rest of the piece is based on cowboy chords A. E and D7. The bass line walks up from the open E to F#, G, open A and B. The timing of it is the hard part.
Deep River Blues is included in the book, “The Songs of Doc Watson”, which has the lyrics, chords, sheet music and guitar tabulature.
Notes:
“Cowboy chords” refers to those open chords that you fist learned on the guitar. When I use alphanumeric chord spelling I am giving the fret position of each string starting with the low E string. 0 is an open string, X is muted (or just not played) 1,2.3 … are the first, second third, etc. frets.
One day I was cruising YouTube, playing videos of various guitarists and I said to my wife " I'm just amazed that I can be sitting here watching Doc Watson's fingers for free." It dawned on me that it would be a valuable service to share these gems with other people. The videos posted here are the ones that really caught my eye.
