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Talkin' guitar : a story of young Doc Watson
\"With lyrical text and ... illustrations, Robbin Gourley tells the story of a boy whose spirit and determination led him to become one of the most celebrated and beloved figures of folk, bluegrass, and old-time music\"--Dust jacket flap.
Book
OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW
Brimful of bonhomie and bulging with rustic virtuosity, Remedy is the best release yet from this youthful Americana septet, perfectly poised between old-time ways and modern values.
Newspaper Article
Hard-core music fans come out in the rain
Merlefest is a bluegrass music junkie's paradise. In case you don't know, it's the four-day music festival, held the last weekend in April at Wilkes Community College, begun by Doc Watson to remember the life of his son, Merle. This was its first year since Doc's death. \"Maybe they're wrong,\" we said. Sunday morning, we woke to clouded skies but no rain. \"Let's just go,\" we said. \"Who knows, we might get lucky.\" We raced to our first event -- Chatham County Line, a North Carolina bluegrass band featuring the son of my poet friend Dede. We took seats on wet chairs close to the front, popped open our umbrellas amid the sea of other umbrellas. Sometimes the rain came down so hard it drowned out the music. Now and then, I thought I saw a flash of lightning, but it didn't seem to bother anybody else, so I didn't pay attention.
Newspaper Article
Doc Watson: Flatpicker, Song Stylist, Messenger
Also reassuring to starving artists should be the notion that the North Carolina-born Watson, who lost his eyesight as a toddler after an infection, didn't record his debut album until 1964, when he was over 40 and had been simmering in North Carolina, perfecting his craft for over three decades. At the time when a bunch of college kids in New York were falling in love with so-called \"folk music,\" bringing a name to the American-born acoustic sounds created in the rural South, Watson had been playing backup to banjo player Tom \"Clarence\" Ashley, learning sounds that Ashley, born in 1895, inherited in rural Tennessee. Unlike the more guttoral, raw folk stuff created by players like Ashley, Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Dock Boggs, Watson at his best was a sunnier presence, less a conduit to the \"old weird America,\" as Greil Marcus famously described the raw American folk music of the 1920s and '30s, than the \"old resilient America.\" In Watson's hands, \"Whiskey Before Breakfast\" is one of the happiest, most wonderful guitar instrumentals you'll ever hear, a jaunt that seems to celebrate, not bemoan, a sip of rye before the morning coffee, as if he's frolicking toward the bottle.
Newspaper Article
BEACH MUSIC BRINGS DANCING TO YORKTOWN
The folk music world is mourning the loss of Doc Watson. The influential North Carolina guitarist and singer died Tuesday in Winston-Salem at age 89. Local folk musician Bill Gurley said he had great admiration for musician, who he said he met briefly a few of times over the years. The first encounter was in the late 1970s. \"I opened a show for him, I think it was in Richmond, and we were in the dressing room together. I was playing my banjo ... built for me when I was about 15 years old. Doc said he liked the sound of it, asked if he could play it ... Of course, I was thrilled that Doc Watson played my banjo. It was one of those scenes you'll always remember.\"
Newspaper Article
Doc Watson, 89, folk guitarist who influenced generations
His mountain music came as a revelation to the folk audience, as did his virtuoso guitar playing. Unlike most country and bluegrass musicians, who thought of the guitar as a secondary instrument for providing rhythmic backup, Mr. Watson executed the kind of flashy, rapid-fire melodies normally played by a fiddle or a banjo. His style influenced a generation of young musicians learning to play the guitar as folk music achieved national popularity. \"He is single-handedly responsible for the extraordinary increase in acoustic flat-picking and fingerpicking guitar performance,\" said Ralph Rinzler, the folklorist who discovered Mr. Watson in 1960. \"His flat-picking style has no precedent in earlier country music history.\" Quiet and unassuming offstage, Mr. Watson played down his virtuoso guitar playing as nothing more than \"country pickin.\"' He told interviewers that had he not been blind, he would have become an auto mechanic and been just as happy.
Newspaper Article
Singer Doc Watson is dead at 89
[Doc Watson], who was blind, played black blues, gospel and ragtime as easily as he played \"hillbilly\" songs and Celtic folk ballads - with the same finger-picking and flat-picking styles and the same rich baritone that often sounded slightly hoarse. In a 2002 interview for his \"Legacy\" set, Watson said he wanted to be remembered as \"just a good old, down-to-earth boy that didn't think he was perfect and that loved music. . . . I'm just one of the people.\"
Newspaper Article
Guitarist Doc Watson in critical condition
Watson's daughter, [Nancy Watson], told The Associated Press that the 89-year-old Watson fell Monday at his home. She said he didn't break any bones but that he was \"real sick.\" \"She saw what little good there was in me and there was little,\" [Doc Watson] said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2000. \"I'm awful glad she cared about me, and I'm awful glad she married me.\" \"He takes old music and puts his own creativity on it,\" [Wayne Martin] said. \"It retained its core, yet it felt relevant to people today.\"
Newspaper Article