Chet Atkins Left Behind A Fortune That Makes His Family Cry

Chet Atkins smiled softly, played beautifully, and never looked like a rich man. That was the trick. Behind the gentle face was someone who once said he didn't spend money, he invested it — and he meant it. Buildings on Music Row. Publishing rights. Land nobody thought about for thirty years. By the time he died in 2001, the pile was far bigger than anyone in Nashville expected. But the will came with conditions attached, and the people he left it to didn't agree on what to do with any of it. That's when things got difficult.