I will leave it to other, more technically savvy Kossacks to post some video, but I wanted to salute one of our national treasures, the one and only Doc Watson, on the occasion of his 89th birthday. More below.
Arthel Lane “DOC” WATSON was born on March 3, 1923 in Deep Gap, NC and is 89 years old today. An eye infection caused the total loss of vision before his first birthday and he attended the Governor Morehead State School for the Visually Impaired. Doc credits his father, General (his actual name, not a title or honorific) Watson, for having the same expectations for Doc as his peers and sighted brother, Linny.
He bought a Stella guitar with money his father paid him for cutting down a row of old trees and he learned to play the banjo as well. His nickname was given by an anonymous member of his audience one evening when the announcer lamented the difficulty in pronouncing Doc’s given name and the audience member yelled, “Aw, just call him Doc”, perhaps a reference to Sherlock Holmes’ crime-solving partner.
In 1947 he married Rosa Lee Carlton, daughter of popular local fiddler, Gaither Carlton and this year marks 65 years of marriage for the couple.
Doc was playing an electric Les Paul guitar in a rockabilly band when folk musicologist, Ralph Rinzler, suggested he concentrate on acoustic guitar and banjo and Doc heeded his advice. He played finger-style guitar but his brilliance really shone through when he adapted fiddle tunes for his Gallagher guitar and played them in the flatpick style. This innovation had a profound effect on future generations of pickers like Norman Blake and Tony Rice. His warm, inviting baritone voice added to his performance cachet.
His appearances at the Newport Folk Festival and at Gerde’s Folk City in New York helped him ride the folk revival of the ‘60s and his work on the first Circle album, particularly “Tennessee Stud”, sustained him beyond that. Doc was pleased to learn when he came back home in 1964 after a tour that his son, Merle (named Eddy Merle, in honor of Eddy Arnold and Merle Travis) wanted to play music and travel with him. For the next 20 years they formed a duo that entertained live audiences around the world and resulted in numerous award-winning albums.
It all ended in 1985 when Merle died from a tragic accident, but Doc chose to carry on, and in 1988 various friends and fellow musicians who knew Doc and Merle set up two flatbed trucks on the grounds of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, NC and began the first of what this year will mark the 24th year of one of the largest folk festivals in the world, MerleFest, which annually draws around 75,000 people to this Blue Ridge Mountain town . Doc has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors in his distinguished career, including a National Medal for the Arts (1997), induction into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Honor (2000), and a Lifetime Grammy Award (2004). Doc continues to perform today, usually with longtime pickin’ partners Jack Lawrence, David Holt and Merle’s son and Doc’s grandson, Richard Watson.
Doc Watson is a national treasure who lives as humbly in Deep Gap, NC as did his family 89 years ago today.