Doc Watson, the virtuoso folk-guitar player whose real name was Arthel, died Tuesday in a hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was eighty-nine years old and had made more than fifty records. Before he was a year old he had gone blind from an eye infection, and he was educated at the Raleigh School for the Blind, in North Carolina. He was thirteen when he learned the chords to “When the Roses Bloom in Dixieland” on a guitar he had borrowed.
Watson’s mother, Annie, sang folk songs and sacred songs, and his father, General Watson, played the banjo. Doc Watson was in his thirties when he began to play in bands, mostly for dances. He played rockabilly and western swing tunes on a Les Paul. In 1961, a musicologist came to North Carolina to record Clarence Ashley, a neighbor of Watson’s. The story, perhaps only partly true, is that Watson led the musicologist to Ashley’s house and on the way, in the bed of a pickup truck, played the banjo. The musicologist recorded him, too. Watson made his first solo record in 1964 and from then on played at clubs in New York, at Carnegie Hall, at the Newport Folk Festival, and in Europe and Japan. He never cared for working on the road, saying it was scary for a country boy to be in the city and especially for one who was blind.
Watson was one of the first guitarists to play fiddle tunes. He did it because he often performed at country dances with bands that didn’t have a fiddle player. He was also adept at playing with finger picks and a thumb pick. The two styles require widely different techniques, and Watson was one of the very few musicians who could do both with authority. His tone was warm and clear. His right hand with a flatpick in it was a kind of jackhammer. He played with unfaltering time and excelled at showcase swing pieces such as “Sweet Georgia Brown.” He was deeply admired by other guitar players for his feeling and the precision of his playing. His singing voice was warm and resonant and a little bit nasal, but also perhaps a little too deep to persuade on all occasions. Sometimes, though, his voice fit a melody so precisely that the song didn’t sound right after when anyone else sang it. I am thinking of “Deep River Blues,” “Blue Railroad Train,” and “Tennessee Stud.”
Watson and his wife, Rosa Lee, had a son, Merle, and a daughter, Nancy. During the sixties, Watson performed with Merle, who also became a skilled musician. Merle died in 1985, when a tractor he was driving turned over on him. Grief-stricken, Watson gave up performing for a time, then began Merlefest, a bluegrass festival, in his son’s honor.
On “Raising Sand,” Robert Plant and Alison Krauss recorded a song Watson had written with Rosa Lee, to whom he was married for sixty-six years. The song was called “Your Long Journey,” and includes the lines
