5 of The Beatles' Most Country Songs
Always heavily influenced by Motown and the American blues and rock of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Ray Charles, as they made their big jump from the smaller stages in Liverpool to defining their sound in Hamburg, Germany, The Beatles’ repertoire extended into earlier influences of rockabilly, folk, and country-western with covers by Carl Perkins and Buck Owens among others.
All four members had their particular brushes with country. A big Chet Atkins fan, George Harrison started playing Atkins’ 1962 black Country Gentleman and Tennessean Rose model Gretsch guitars while in The Beatles. Atkins also admired the band and released an album of their covers, Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles, in 1966, with liner notes written by Harrison.
“I have appreciated Chet Atkins as a musician since long before the tracks on this album were written, in fact, since I was the ripe young age of 17,” wrote Harrison in the liner notes to Atkins’ album. “Since then I have lost count of the number of Chet’s albums I have acquired, but I have not been disappointed with any of them. For me, the great thing about Mr. Atkins is not the fact that he is capable of playing almost every type of music but the conviction in the way he does it.”
Source: Tina Benitez-Eves/americansongwriter.com
