During this 2011 program, Suzy Bogguss performs a selection of songs, including several she recorded with Chet Atkins, and reminisces about her friendship and creative collaboration with the guitar great and Country Music Hall of Fame member.

Bogguss opens with two 1991 hits, “Outbound Plane” and “Someday Soon,” then turns to “I Still Miss Someone” from her 1994 duets album with Atkins, “Simpatico.” Other songs she performs during the tribute to Chet Atkins include “All My Loving,” which she and Atkins recorded as a duet on a Beatles tribute album; “When She Smiled at Him” and “One More for the Road,” both from “Simpatico”; “Froggy Went a-Courtin’,” “Shenandoah,” and “Poor Wayfaring Stranger,” from her 2011 album “American Folk Songbook”; “Mr. Santa,” which she recorded with Atkins; and folk standard “Red River Valley,” for which she enlists the audience in a sing-along.

Bogguss answers a wide range of questions about Atkins, as well as her own recent work. She recalls how she first became aware of Atkins when she was growing up in Illinois, and first met him in 1986, when they both appeared on Ralph Emery’s “Nashville Now” TV show. She says she got to know Chet Atkins “very slowly,” but that their friendship was immediately evident. She tells of the hours that she and Atkins spent singing and playing privately together.

Bogguss also remembers how Atkins initially didn’t want to make a collaborative album, fearing that making a record with “an older person” might drag Bogguss’s career down. She remembers Atkins giving her advice on how to stay “in the pocket” during recording sessions, and how she gave him advice on hitting a low note when he sang.

Bogguss says Atkins left a lasting impression on her music and her life, and that she still constantly quotes “Chet-isms.”

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