CHET ATKINS SPENT HIS FINAL YEARS DOING THE ONE THING HIS BODY WAS MAKING HARDER: PLAYING GUITAR. This one hurts quietly. Chet Atkins built his life on control — not loud, showy control, but the kind that lived in his fingers. One thumb keeping time, other fingers moving around it, every note landing with impossible grace. That was why they called him “Mister Guitar.” But by the late 1990s, Chet Atkins was fighting serious health problems. He had survived colon cancer years earlier and underwent