Chet Atkins, Tommy Emmanuel "Ode To Mel Bay"

Imagine, two guitar masters taking lessons from Mel Bay books! Just too funny!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• tommy
• emmanuel
• mel
• bay
• chet
• atkins
• guitar
• fingerpickin

[jesterd14]

I played this for my guitar teacher who starts out students on Mel Bay's Guitar Method 1 and he listened and the part where they play Red River Valley with all the missed notes had him cracking up. I've got a friend who is a an engineer and has his own studio and has been playing for over 35+ years, and I played this for him, and he went and got his book out from when he first began playing in 1976, still had the price sticker on it... $1.25. His brother learned to play just from that book.

[daffydoug]

@jesterd14 Yup! I too have a lot of fond memories from those old Mel bay books way back a few decades in my life!

We all got to start somewhere, and good ol' Mel helped a bunch of us!

[MichaelHansenFUN]

i got the feeling at "Mel Bay" was a joke amongs others. my guitar teacher laughed and I read somewhere that one guitar player threw the book away...

[daffydoug]

@MichaelHansenFUN It's weird. Mel put out a bunch of books on Chet's style through the years...and in later years, several detailed books with meticulous transcriptions by John Knowles of Chet's advanced arrangements.

The beginners books may be a joke, but Mel put out some advanced, very serious stuff.

[bluesexplosionrob]

The little solos inbetween made me cry with laughter.

[katanamanatee]

Ha ha, I love the comedy beginner trying too hard solos.

Great tune, I am not usually into the country sound but this is fun. Tommy is a fantastic player and this is a cool duet. Chet was a good player too.

[Hikikomori013]

Despite the joshing, it's true that Mel Bay put a lot of guitars in people's hands with his books. His Chord System and Modern Guitar Method are still highly regarded after more than 70 years.

Although the Chet Atkins books are not for the faint of heart or slow of finger.

[MadnessOfMarmots]

I love how at 2:30 Tommy screams, fighting back laughter. This must have been the most fun to play.

[drjeff1111]

That was Johnny Gimble on the fiddle. How he pulled that off I will never know. Clark Hagen did the bad guitar. And yes, Clark was so bad they started calling him "Hack Hagen". The part about the outhouse was written by Shel Silverstein. Great parody song that shows even the greatest musicians remember their roots.

[cgb777]

I about died laughing on the first guitar solo

[swift10falcon]

My brother wrote this song. Mark Denny. Howie and The Hillcats. He wrote it years before and and let Mr Atkins modify it a little to get his name on it. But its all good. Soup Granda came in on it after as well before Chet.

[Sunambra]

I don't take this seriously but to those that do it's like a great writer laughing at the alphabet or english lessons.