Doc Watson:FOR ALMOST 50 years, Doc Watson, who has died aged 89, was the most illustrious name in traditional American folk music.
A superb, original guitarist and a singer of warmth and simplicity, he set countless musicians on the road to careers in folk music.
Watson grew up in Deep Gap in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He lost his sight after an eye infection in early childhood, and attended the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh. He was surrounded by music: his mother Annie sang and his father General Dixon Watson played the banjo. Numerous other relatives were musicians, singers or storytellers.
Doc first learned the harmonica and banjo, and at 13 began teaching himself on a guitar his father bought him. In his hands, the use of the guitar in American folk music expanded radically.
His folklorist friend Ralph Rinzler would later write that Watson was “single-handedly responsible for the extraordinary increase in acoustic flatpicking and fingerpicking performance. His flatpicking style has no precedent in early country music history.” In bluegrass, too, his adaptations of traditional fiddle tunes to the guitar allowed the instrument to go beyond rhythm-setting and take on a leading role.
Watson first came to the attention of folk music enthusiasts beyond his home region only as a supporting player. In 1960, Rinzler recorded the old-time banjo player and singer Clarence Ashley in a session with friends and neighbours including Watson. The result, two Folkways label LPs, Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s (Vol 12), alerted folk enthusiasts to the talent of the guitarist.
In 1961, Ashley, Watson and two other participants in the Ashley sessions, Clint Howard and Fred Price, gave a memorable performance at a concert in New York, staged by the Friends of Old-Time Music. In 1963 and in 1964, at Rinzler’s instigation, Watson appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. In 1963 he recorded his first solo album, for Vanguard.
For two decades, Watson’s companion on recordings and when playing live was his son, Merle, a gifted guitarist and banjoist. The Watsons were also sought as collaborators by other musicians.
Merle died in a tractor accident on his farm in 1985 at the age of 36, and for a time Watson found it hard to work, but he resumed with guitarist Jack Lawrence or with his own grandson, Richard, with whom he recorded Third Generation Blues in 1999.
Altogether Watson won seven Grammys, and a 2004 Grammy lifetime achievement award. He also received a National Heritage Fellowship and, in 1997, a National Medal of the Arts, presented by then US president Bill Clinton, who remarked: “There may not be a serious, committed baby boomer alive who didn’t at some point in his or her youth try to spend a few minutes at least trying to learn to pick a guitar like Doc Watson.”
The more than 50 albums to Watson’s name testify to the breadth of his musical interests and skills. He made several recordings of backwoods old-time music with members of his family, including his wife Rosa Lee and her father, fiddler Gaither Carlton.
Watson is survived by Rosa Lee; their daughter, Nancy Ellen; his grandchildren Richard and Karen and his brother David, as well as several great-grandchildren. – (Guardian service)
Doc (Arthel Lane) Watson: born March 3rd, 1923; died May 29th, 2012