Doc Watson

Doc Watson – Live at Club 47 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:31 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Yep Roc Records

Long acknowledged as Americas premiere folk guitarist, Arthel Lane Doc Watson was born in what was then the tiny rural community of Deep Gap, North Carolina in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains on March 3, 1923. Surrounded by music and musicians, Doc and his siblings grew up listening to hymns, murder ballads and down home string band music, all of which would later find places in his own repertoire. In 1953, Doc formed a honky tonk dance band with pianist Jack Williams called Jack Williams and his Country Gentlemen. Their repertoire consisted primarily of rockabilly, country and western, pop standards and square dance tunes, and Doc played electric guitar in this ensemble. To fill occasional square dance requests, Doc learned to flatpick fiddle tunes on the guitar, as Joe Maphis had done in the 1930s. Unlike his contemporaries Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, who started their professional careers playing acoustic guitars and later switched to electric, Doc began on electric and later made the transition to acoustic with the advent of the folk revival of the Sixties. Although he continued to work with Williams playing country and pop music, Doc never stopped playing traditional mountain music with his family and friends at home. These included Clarence Tom Ashley, Docs father-in-law Gaither Carlton, and two other neighbors, fiddler Fred Price and guitarist Clint Howard, all of whom would travel and record with Doc in the future. It was in these comfortable home surroundings that Doc was first discovered and recorded by folklorist Ralph Rinzler and collector and discographer Eugene Earle, who were on a collecting trip through North Carolina looking for traditional artists to record. Once these field recordings were released, as Old Time Music at Clarence Ashleys Vol. 1 (and later Vol. 2) on Folkways Records, Docs reputation grew, and he soon began playing for enthusiastic urban audiences farther from home. Rinzler presented Doc in concert in New York.

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Doc Watson – Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 36:29 minutes | 319 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton is a new album of old-time music produced from archival recordings by two legendary musicians. These largely unheard tapes were recorded at Doc Watson’s two earliest concerts, presented in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1962. Those shows were among the rare appearances Doc’s father-in-law, fiddler Gaither Carlton, made outside of North Carolina. The instrumental pieces, including Gaither’s signature tune “Double File,” include intricate musical interactions developed through years of family music-making. On the songs and ballads, Doc’s instantly recognizable baritone voice is accompanied by his own guitar and Gaither’s fiddle, or by the traditional combination of fiddle and banjo. Shortly after these recordings were made, Doc Watson embarked on a career as one of America’s premier acoustic guitarists, earning the National Medal of Arts and eight Grammy Awards.

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Doc Watson – Pickin’ The Favorites (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 53:26 minutes | 300 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Delta Music – Concert Archive

In the latter half of the 20th century there were three pre-eminently influential folk/country guitar players: Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Arthel “Doc” Watson, a flat-picking genius from Deep Gap, North Carolina. Unlike the other two, Watson was in middle age before gaining any attention. After 1960, though, when Watson was recorded with his family and friends in Folkways’ Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s, people remained in awe of this gentle blind man who sang and picked with a pure and emotional authenticity. The present generation, folkies and country pickers alike, including Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, the late Clarence White, Emmylou Harris, and literally hundreds of others, acknowledge their great debt to Watson. Watson provided a further service to folk/country by his encyclopedic knowledge of many American traditional songs. While Travis and Atkins started on acoustic guitars and moved to electric, before Watson’s “discovery” during the folk revival in the early ’60s, he played electric in a local all-purpose band that played current rock, swing, country, and of course folk music. He gained recognition gradually, first from the Clarence Ashley album, which led to a rave performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. (An archival album of a 1963 performance by Watson in Cambridge, Massachusetts saw release in 2018 under the title Live at Club 47.) Folkways soon recorded an album of Watson, followed in 1964 by a series of albums by Vanguard, nearly one a year through the decade. No sooner had interest in folk music waned than Watson was back in great demand because of the three-disc Will the Circle Be Unbroken, a watershed album in 1972 that was created by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. It featured Watson, Travis, Roy Acuff, and a who’s who of country greats. Merle, Watson’s son and a talent in his own right, began appearing with his father regularly. The result was good enough for them to win two Grammys for traditional music, in 1973 and 1974. Father and son played beautiful music together for over 15 years, until Merle died tragically on the family farm in 1985. Following his son’s death, Doc continued with his appearances, showcasing his beautiful voice, his great instrumental talent, and his mastery of traditional material. He was an American treasure.

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