Doc Watson

Three guitarists rose above all others as towering influences on folk and country picking in the second half of the twentieth century: Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Arthel “Doc” Watson, the flatpicking master born in Deep Gap, North Carolina. Watson, unlike his two peers, reached middle age before attracting widespread notice. After his 1960 appearance on Folkways’ Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s, captured alongside family and friends, listeners stayed captivated by the quiet blind musician whose singing and playing conveyed unfiltered emotional truth. Countless later artists—among them Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, the late Clarence White, Emmylou Harris, and hundreds more—have openly credited Watson as a primary inspiration. His vast command of traditional American songs further enriched the folk and country repertoire. While Travis and Atkins began on acoustic instruments before shifting to electric, Watson was already performing electric guitar in a versatile local group that mixed rock, swing, country, and folk long before the early-sixties revival brought him wider recognition. That recognition arrived first through the Clarence Ashley sessions, which led directly to his acclaimed set at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. An archival recording of his 1963 Cambridge, Massachusetts, appearance later surfaced in 2018 as Live at Club 47. Folkways soon issued a solo album, and Vanguard followed with nearly annual releases throughout the rest of the decade. When folk interest faded, Watson’s profile surged again thanks to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1972 triple album Will the Circle Be Unbroken, which also featured Travis, Roy Acuff, and an array of other country legends. By then Watson’s son Merle, himself a gifted musician, had become a regular stage partner. Their duo earned two consecutive Grammys for traditional music in 1973 and 1974. The father-and-son collaboration lasted more than fifteen years until Merle’s fatal accident on the family farm in 1985. Watson resumed performing after the loss, highlighting his distinctive voice, instrumental command, and deep knowledge of traditional material, and remained an American treasure for decades afterward.

An early childhood illness in Deep Gap impaired blood flow to Watson’s eyes and left him blind at a young age. Music filled his surroundings; each Christmas brought a fresh harmonica. At ten his father presented him with a homemade fretless banjo that Doc played steadily for the next three years. Around the same period he entered the School for the Blind in Raleigh, North Carolina. At thirteen, after his cousin introduced him to the guitar, Watson took up the instrument; six months later he and his older brother Linney were busking on street corners with traditional songs. By his late teens he had learned fingerpicking from neighbor Olin Miller.

In 1941 Watson joined a band that broadcast regularly from Lenoir, North Carolina; an announcer’s on-air reference to “Doc” supplied the nickname that stayed with him. For the next six years he worked throughout the state. He married Rosa Lee Carlton, daughter of fiddler Gaither W. Carlton, in 1947. Although his father-in-law passed along numerous traditional numbers, Watson focused publicly on country material during the forties and supported himself in part as a piano tuner. In 1953 he became a member of pianist and railroad worker Jack Williams’s band, playing electric guitar across a broad range of country, rock, and pop. After eight years with Williams, Watson joined the Clarence Ashley String Band and traveled to New York for a Friends of Old-Time Music concert. The strong reception there secured an invitation to Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village.

That New York appearance signaled the rising momentum of the early-sixties folk revival, from which Watson emerged as a central beneficiary. Young audiences embraced his music, and on Ralph Rinzler’s advice he switched to acoustic guitar. His recording debut came in 1961 on Clarence Ashley’s Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s, earning immediate praise. Two years later his solo performance at the Newport Folk Festival was a highlight, and he released the first solo album, Doc Watson & Family. Beginning in 1964 he toured with son Merle on second guitar; the pair became inseparable collaborators and fixtures on the folk and traditional circuit. Even after the sixties boom subsided, Watson kept his following, and his prominent role on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1972 Will the Circle Be Unbroken introduced him to yet another generation. Then and Now captured the Grammy for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording in 1974; the following year Watson and Merle received the same award for Two Days in November.

The duo maintained an active schedule of concerts and recordings into the early eighties and collected further honors, including a 1979 Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance for “Big Sandy”/“Leather Britches.” Merle’s death in a 1985 tractor accident on the family farm halted Watson’s performances only briefly. He soon returned with guitarist Jack Lawrence and bassist T. Michael Coleman, who had been with him since 1974. Throughout the eighties and nineties Watson continued to record and perform to warm audiences, earning two additional Grammys—Best Traditional Folk Recording for 1986’s Riding the Midnight Train and 1990’s On Praying Ground—along with a North Carolina Award in Fine Arts. Home Sweet Home appeared in 1998 and Third Generation Blues in 1999. Watson maintained occasional performances into the twenty-first century until his death in May 2012 at age eighty-nine, following surgery at a Winston-Salem, North Carolina, hospital.