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Margaret Fields and the First Chet Atkins Fan Club
Margaret Fields founded the first Chet Atkins fan club in 1950. The oldest of 6 children (five brothers), she grew up in New Albany, Indiana listening to her father's Philco Radio and subsequently writing to and corresponding with a lot of her idols, Merle Travis and Pee Wee King among them. Around 1946 at the age of 15 she started listening and writing to Chet and after about ten cards he responded with a typewritten letter and a photo. She had asked several times about starting a fan club and she recalled that he was with KWTO in Springfield Missouri at the time.
Initially not interested and adverse to the idea, Chet eventually realized the benefits of a club and gave Margaret, and her husband Don, the go ahead to start one. She was married to Don Fields by this time and living in Lexington, Kentucky. A year later they moved to Louisville. They became friends of Chet's entire family and saw them through some very lean years.
Almost immediately the club was a success and the newsletters and promoting helped give Chet the boost his career badly needed. Living in Louisville she used to travel to Nashville about every six weeks. Two years later she started the first of many fan club conventions in Nashville which coincided with the annual country music disc jockey convention that started in 1951.
The (Chet Atkins) “conventions” essentially grew out of several of those trips when other fans heard about them and expressed interest in attending and meeting up. At the first one she said Chet’s show at WSM had been cancelled and he came down and asked where they were all staying, after which he joined them, played, shared guitar stories and answered questions in the hotel room until 2:00am.
The conventions, meetings, parties and shows were held in hotels, studios, and often included front row seats to the Opry. As can be expected this gave Margaret and the members almost unprecedented access and privy to a plethora of established and up and coming artists.
She recalled meeting Elvis, Scotty and Bill in November of 1955 at the disc jockey convention only weeks before Elvis signed with RCA. She said Elvis gave them each a Sun record and an 8x10 photo. She kept the Sun record for years and sold it later on Ebay for $750.
She said he wasn’t popular with a lot of the men and she herself was not really a big fan at first. She recalled though that during a subsequent convention she and the other the women slipped out to watch him in the film “Loving You.”
While at one of Chet’s fan club parties she remembers Chet asking her to open the back door because of the heat and not let anyone in. Two boys approached saying they were friends of Chet but she told them "sorry I don't care who you know, it is a private party" and shut the door.
She was surprised later at the pre-Opry show at WSM when those two boys came out to perform and said, "We want to dedicate this to the lady in front who threw us out of Chet Atkins party today." She said, “to make it even worse Lightning Chance pulled me out of my seat in the front row and started dancing with me! The Everly Brothers and their parents were at every party afterwards.”
By 1960 the club had over 200 members, had held 8 conventions and published 23 newsletters but stress, strife and responsibilities took their toll. She said the club went from 1949 until 1962. No one wanted to take it over because they knew we put in a lot of money. Chet only furnished photos. Eventually her and Don dropped out and moved to Lexington but remained friends with Chet and his family long after.
Years later, the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society virtually picked up where Margaret left off. At 84, she is now a member of the CAAS and they’ve since published articles about her along with some of her photos in their newsletter(s). She currently has around 250 photos of Chet and the club, which she said will one day belong to Chet’s daughter Merle, and 300 or more of others that she has no idea what she'll do with.
Several of her photos, those with Elvis at least, have made the rounds over the years amongst fans, always uncredited and at times in the case of one with the club’s secretary, Norva Baker, mistakenly confused with Mae Boren Axton.
page added June 25, 2015 Special thanks to Margaret and the CAAS publications for their assistance with her story for this page and to Margaret for allowing us to share some of her photos.
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All photos on this site (that we didn't borrow) unless otherwise indicated are the property of either Scotty Moore or James V. Roy and unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited. |
