Tommy Emmanuel - A Short Biography

Tommy Emmanuel was inspired by his hero Chet Atkins, and it is perhaps fitting that Tommy and Chet's 1997 duo album, "The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World", was the last album that Chet Atkins recorded before he died in 2001.

Tommy was born in Muswellbrook, New South Wales, on 31st May, 1955 and began playing guitar at the age of four, accompanying his mother Jane who was a lap steel guitar player. Two years later he was on tour round the Australian outback with his family under the name "Emmanuel Quartet", but the name didn't really portray their style of music so was changed to the "Midget Surfaries". The band originally began with Tommy on rhythm guitar, his brother Phil on lead and his other brother and sister, Chris and Virginia on drums and steel guitar respectively.

It was around that time that he first heard Chet Atkins on radio, who was to be a great influence on him, and inspired him to continue with guitar as a career. By the age of nine he was permanently on the road with his family, but his father was very poor and food was a problem. They tended to drive around, with his father going on ahead trying to arrange concerts, and eventually the education authorities caught up with them and the children were forced to attend school on a regular basis.

Once his father died when Tommy was 11, they settled down and Tommy moved to Sydney where he won some talent contests as a teenager. At that time he worked long days to earn money for the family, but his talent paid off and he spent the next 10 years perfecting his style that was influenced by Atkins.

Chet Atkins' style of playing involved the thumb playing the bass and three fingers playing the melody: until Atkins introduced the three finger technique, the 'Travis Picking' style as it was called after Merle Travis involved only one or two fingers. Tommy's style is based on two, and sometimes three, fingers, with the thumb on bass, frequently using a banjo thumb pick. He normally uses his thumb to fret the first two bass strings.

By the end of the 1970s he was part of the band Goldrush with his brother Phil, with whom he still plays. In fact, he and Phil performed live at the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony that was broadcast throughout the world. He then joined the reformed rock band Dragon, replacing guitarist Robert Taylor, and in 1987 they toured Europe with Tina Turner, using the name 'Hunter' after the brothers Todd and Marc Hunter. Eventually, however, he left Dragon to take up a solo career before joining the John Farnham band in 1994 alongside Stuart Frazer of 'Noiseworks' for the Concert for Rwanda.

Going back to the influence of Chet Atkins, he once wrote to his hero in Nashville, and was awarded a Certified Guitar Player by Atkins in 1999 for his contribution to fingerstyle guitar. This is an award that was bestowed by Chet Atkins himself, and is held by only two other people: John Knowles and Jerry Reed.

"I think he's probably the greatest finger-picker in the world today," said Atkins just before his death. A true compliment from a fingerpicking master. Tommy makes a point of appearing at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society every June in Nashville.

His preferred choice of guitar is a custom Maton EBG808, with a small body fitted with both a pickup and a condenser microphone in the body. His main stage guitar is the TE1 Maton dreadnought, which is well marked due to his habit of playing percussion on the body of his guitar. During his career Tommy Emmanuel has played not only with Chet Atkins and Tina Turner, but also with Eric Clapton, John Denver, Stevie Wonder, Air Supply and many others. He has played the Grand Ole Opry, the Sydney Opera House and in front of the Australian Prime Minister and the King of Thailand. He has won the Nashville Award for 'Fingerpickers', and he achieved one of his ambitions by playing with the Australian Philharmonic Orchestra on the album 'Classical Gas'.

Since 1997 he has lived in the USA and the UK, and still tours the world. He has a very large dedicated fan base, and his concerts are packed wherever he plays. He is currently engaged to Lizzie Watkins, with whom he currently lives in Nashville, and after a health scare in 2007 is back to full time touring.

Tommy Emmanuel is a brilliant exponent of the fingerpicking style of guitar playing. If you want to learn that style yourself you will need a good guitar teacher, and http://www.jamplaynow.com can offer you a choice of great fingerpicking players that are also proven teachers in this style.

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