In the first ten years of Chet Atkins’s association with Gretsch, Atkins had gone from an up-and-coming country musician to one of the most influencial figures in the music business. As a guitarist, his records were played by pop radio stations, and his distinctive finger-picking style was being copied by guitarists around the world. Moreover, he had begun producing records for RCA and was one of the architects of the Nashville Sound, the smooth, echo-laden productions that revived country music record sales in the early 1960s.

The growing notoriety of Gretsch’s Chet Atkins line was pushed into overdrive in 1964, when The Beatles appeared on American TV, featuring George Harrison playing a double-cutaway Country Gentleman. His choice of an Atkins model was no coincidence, as evidenced by his Atkins-style solo in the middle of the Beatles hit “All My Loving”.

Among vintage guitar collectors, the earlier single-cutaway of the Atkins Hollow Body (6120) is more popular than the double-cut, but thanks to The Beatles, the double-cutaway Country Gentleman is the most coveted version of that model.