Chet Atkins and the drunken drinking song

The late Chet Atkins was a charming and personable guitarist whose personality encouraged his fans to form not only a club—the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society—but also a yearly convention in Nashville, TN. Much of his life and music was bound up with Nashville, and he's co-credited with inventing the smoother country style known as the Nashville sound.

His personal sound is generally very clear and bright, with a minimum of feedback, and his rhythm style is generally ornamented with fast, arpeggiated flourishes. The tone has an almost tubular-bell roundness and echo, which you can hear to full effect on the (almost unaccompanied) Mr Sandman.

In the audio-only YouTube clip below, Chet plays his own instrumental variation of Show Me The Way To Go Home:

He begins by playing unaccompanied, in a slightly tipsy, hiccuppy style; then, like a drunk finding a lamppost to lean on and suddenly breaking into a dance routine around it, the song then segues neatly into an accompanied, up-tempo swing. This gradually mutates into an intricate mix of gin-joint piano, surf-guitar augmented chords and rockabilly chord-chugging: there must be a half-dozen genres in this version alone.