Two on a country road.
Rydvan at the beginning of the century.
Broken wheel.
One imposingly sat down on the wing of an ancient ruin, in fashionable boots, with an expensive electric guitar in his hands, strumming something and looking down a little at the second - tall and funny, swirling, in an inconceivable splashed hat, in his eyes he has a challenge: “It turns out, I I will tinker with the wheel alone ?! "
On the sides there is a forest-forest, underfoot there is a path.
These envelopes are no longer made.
Everything is too real on them.
They did not have time to smooth out anyone.
The first is clearly older, more judicious.
A sort of master.
The second is younger and behind the backs.
With a challenge and a claim to life.
So it all happens.
This is Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed.
The guitar gods of a generation.
Epochs.
Why are they together?
On this album?
And the name is very simple - Me & Jerry.
Where for the current "loud" times with such a name, only burgers are peddled.
1970th, album recorded at RCA Nashville Sound Studios.
Ten Songs About Summer Almighty.
Ten melodies that lead along the paths (straight from the sobbed, or thrown without a wheel on an old primer) into the shade and coolness of July noon, into green, gloomy vaults, in times without time and a look at the past - how is it there, have you not forgotten in what is it?
Didn't the milk skip away, and along with it savings, love, plans, career, investments? ..
Maybe she escaped.
Only you don't care now.
Making our way along the sleepy Old Man River, carefully stepping along Bridge Over Troubled Water, then running and jumping through MacArthur Park, there, there, to Stump Water, clutching a treasure above all the riches of the kings of the earth - Nut Sundae ...
And all with a guitar, two guitars, but not enough and two - it seems, three, maybe four strangers, right here, in the thicket, or not - on the hill!
- through the sun and summer ripe rains break through with songs to the sky, to the stars! ..
Two people who have known each other too well and for a long time.
There are forty-six on this record, he is "one of the earliest country guitars, the savior of style, a new prophet in a land dried up by commercial pop style, a breath of pure water in the middle of the desert of everyday life."
Jerry is thirty-three, and it was he who "wrote and made with Elvis himself a brilliant track Guitar Man, and Felton Jarvis himself asked him about it, because he is the only guitarist in the world who ..."
Yes Yes.
Both of them are the only ones in the world.
AllMusic music critic Stephen Thomas Erlevin famously said (a million years ago) about this album: “Virtuosity and superior skill are all the more attractive to us when they do not attract our attention at all and we happily rush into the trap prepared for us, and these two, Atkins and Reed, they just lie in the sun and play for their own pleasure, beckoning us and laughing at us - and we are happy and good, as in childhood! "
Good, as in Childhood.
I love these stories.
Because any saucepan has a bottom, it happens that it is smoky, crumpled, shabby and battered by life - only because the soup is cooked in it, and especially if it is on fire, it does not get worse, but it’s better from time to time - yes.
Chet Atkins made his way upstairs with difficulty.
It is funny and sad to read his memoirs: "We were so poor, and everyone around us was so poor that we learned about the Great Depression when the forties ended, and even then - according to rumors ..."
Four children, Chet was the youngest.
And yes - at first the guitar was homemade, and then he exchanged for himself an almost real guitar for a rusty pistol and some debris of something, and it was almost possible to play it.
Well, you know everything - they have everything there, in the South, as usual.
Asthma.
Therefore, Atkins never sang much, except for a couple of tunes in the voice of a kind country uncle, who settled down at sunset under his favorite apple tree with a banjo and a bottle of red to boot.
This kind uncle, Mr. Chet Atkins, played the guitar on the albums of almost all the greats that were written in Nashville, and Steve Scholes (who wrote the early Elvis), realizing the depth of Atkins' innate musical culture, made him the head of RCA Victor in Nashville, and then - and the whole South.
Asthma...
It was because of her that Atkins taught himself to sleep in a high-backed chair from time to time - it was easier to breathe this way.
He fell asleep with a guitar in his hands, playing all night long.
Jerry Reed is also not a darling of fate with a silver spoon in his teeth.
His parents divorced when he was four months old.
While grandmother and grandfather were alive, he and his sister had a house.
Then - seven years in foster families and orphanages.
But interestingly, finding himself in each of the new places, this swirling imp repeated the same thing: “I am a country star!
I'll be recording in Nashville!
Everyone will hear about me! "
Good boy.
Rustic.
Two years later, in 1972, Chet and Reed will record on RCA Nashville Sound another album with an unusually fashionable name - Me & Chet - a mirror image of that very Summer of the Almighty.
The envelope is not just a photograph - a window to Happiness.
Take a look.
Find the net in the abyss, it is not difficult at all.
Two in a boat (both are avid fishermen all their lives), Chet with an oar, Reed with a guitar, and we understand that they are being filmed, yes, for an album, yes, but somehow exclusively for real, without a stupid pump.
I am incredibly, to the point of insanity, love this album.
And all year long, and especially in summer, he is next to the turntable.
And I can't say how many times I've listened to it, I can't.
Serenade To Summertime, Good Stuff, Limehouse Blues, Mystery Train, Flying South, I Saw The Light ... And every wonderful other - eleven songs about life in the midst of warmth and light, wind and dreams, on the banks of rivers and lakes, under the shadow of growing forever, never ceasing to grow ...
I think, be that as it may, you will deserve to listen to Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins.
And that is my luck and the author's luck - the most pleasant thing is to share joy, everyone has their own sorrows.
On the second album - Reed's address to the listener.
Touching, funny and heartfelt, especially from today: “Chet and I have gone deep into the issue of guitar confrontation and recorded a new album. Second. But, you know, in my experience, it gets harder and harder over time to record records with this person - he always stops in the middle to suddenly scold me for tapping or talking to him while he picks up a solo part. or I forget my part, or something else (you notice how fastidious he is - our guitar genius). In fact, he is, of course, a soulful guy - old Chet. And I want you to note who is holding the paddle. Last time, on the cover of the last album, Chet somewhat arrogantly forced me to repair a punctured tire while he himself sat and played the guitar calmly. So this time I took a guitarand he bravely held the oar - after all, the guys were filming us from the shore and from another boat. Immediately after that, HE took the guitar and handed ME the paddle, and I took us back to the shore, and Chet played something in the background all the way, and it was okay. To be honest, I would paddle across the Atlantic just to be able to play guitar with my boss - He's in charge of plucking guitar strings. And you can't argue with that. I love you, Chester! "
There are things in the world, events, phenomena that cannot be conveyed by words - only by signs, mooing, waving hands and feet, thoughtful silence.
This is exactly the case - the albums of Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins.
Twenty years later, in 1992, they will gather in the studio again, record the disc Sneakin 'Around - eleven melodies of the outgoing Time, the outgoing era.
They will sound differently, imperceptibly changing along with the world flying to hell through star clusters, human stupidity, cosmic nebulae and white clouds in the eyes.
And the first, title thing will be Summertime.
Everything continues.
Already a whole bottomless eternity.
Everything continues.
Summertime and the livin 'is easy
Fish are jumpin 'and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich and your ma is good lookin '
So hush, little baby, baby, don't you cry ...
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.