When he was developing his guitar playing chops as a teenager in the 1960s,\u00a0Mark Knopfler\u00a0thought his idols were the Everly Brothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t until quite a few years later that he realised his reverence had been slightly misguided. Yes, the Everlys wrote great tunes, but that fantastic guitar sound on most of those records wasn\u2019t coming from Don or Phil. It was, of course, the great Chet Atkins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once Knopfler understood the foundational influence that Atkins had on his own guitar playing, he eventually decided to take advantage of his Dire Straits cachet in the 1980s and connect with the Nashville legend about a possible collaboration. That led to some memorable jam sessions and a 1990 album titled Neck and Neck<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPrecision, feeling, melody, perfect accompaniment,\u201d Knopfler told The<\/em> Guardian<\/em> that year, trying to succinctly describe what made Atkins so special, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t just say \u2018Hi, how are you?\u2019 with the guitar, you get a really cohesive picture. He can play a guitar concerto, but we actually play a lot of very simple things in C, and getting the maximum expression and beauty out of simple things is what makes a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Atkins, in turn, felt like he could actually tell what sort of personality Knopfler would have just by hearing his playing on Dire Straits\u2019 breakout single, \u2018Sultans of Swing\u2019.\u00a0\u201cI thought he was a nice guy by his playing,\u201d said\u00a0Atkins, who died in 2001, \u201cYou can tell what a person is like by the way he plays.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Atkins might have been slightly biased. Since Knopfler had grown up emulating his style, he probably heard a bit of himself, a fellow nice guy, in those \u2018Sultans\u2019 solos. Both guitarists are masters of the finger-picking style, \u201ca bouncing thumb for bass and two or three fingers for melody\u201d, as Atkins put it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n