I never understood the appeal, but I wasn't a fan of most country music either.
Dad said he played very clean and precise. Atkins also picked with his fingers, like my father.
What's interesting is that I was listening to a Dire Straits album in my bedroom as a teenager, and Dad asked, "Who is THAT? Their guitarist is really good!" So I told him, and I also started making audio-cassette copies of the albums so he could listen to them in his car. Which he frequently did, to my amazement.
I later learned that Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler (from Dire Straits) were friends and mutual admirers. Knopfler picked with his fingers too. I told my father about their friendship and collaborations. He said that he could tell long ago that Knopfler was a finger-picker too, so that part wasn't news to him.
Then I even later learned that Dad used to participate in some "local talent" radio show on weekends, not long after he'd married Mom, back in the late-40's or maybe the early-50's. Mom would listen to him sing and play guitar on the radio, but she soon became jealous because young girls were screaming in approval whenever Dad performed and it was getting worse each weekend. So she demanded that Dad stop doing it, worried about those girls, and he finally agreed to not perform anymore. I asked what the screaming was like, and she said, "It was just like the dumb girls screaming at Elvis or the Beatles, but obviously with a smaller crowd."
I wasn't born until they were in their 40's, so that was another time when stories about their younger days surprised me.
Dad briefly tried to teach me to play guitar when I was a kid, but he gave up on me pretty quickly since I showed little interest.
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