Merle Watson

Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music.

He won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

His fingerpicking and flatpicking skills, as well as his knowledge of traditional American music, were highly regarded.

The first song he learned to play on the guitar was "When Roses Bloom in Dixieland", first recorded by the Carter Family in 1930.

Watson said in an interview with American Songwriter that, "Jimmie Rodgers was the first man that I started to claim as my favorite."

Watson proved to be a natural musical talent and within months was performing on local street corners playing songs from The Delmore Brothers, Louvin Brothers, and Monroe Brothers alongside his brother Linny.

By the time Watson reached adulthood, he had become a proficient acoustic and electric guitar player.

In 1953, Watson joined the Johnson City, Tennessee–based Jack Williams's country and western swing band on electric guitar.

The band seldom had a fiddle player, but was often asked to play at square dances.

Following the example of country guitarists Grady Martin and Hank Garland, Watson taught himself to play fiddle tunes on his Gibson Les Paul electric guitar.

He later transferred the technique to acoustic guitar, and playing fiddle tunes became part of his signature sound.

During his time with Jack Williams, Watson also supported his family as a piano tuner.

In 1960, as the American folk music revival grew, Watson took the advice of folk musicologist and Smithsonian curator Ralph Rinzler and began playing acoustic guitar and banjo exclusively.

That move ignited Watson's career when he played on his first recording, Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's.

After the folk revival waned during the late 1960s, Doc Watson's career was sustained by his performance of the Jimmy Driftwood song "Tennessee Stud" on the 1972 live album recording Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Also of pivotal importance for his career was his February 11, 1961, appearance at P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village.

He then began to tour as a solo performer and appeared at universities and clubs like the Ash Grove in Los Angeles.

Watson would eventually get his big break and rave reviews for his performance at the renowned Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island in 1963.

Watson recorded his first solo album in 1964 and began performing with his son, Merle in the same year.

The trio toured the globe during the late seventies and early eighties, recording nearly fifteen albums between 1973 and 1985, and bringing Doc and Merle's unique blend of acoustic music to millions of new fans.

As popular as ever, Doc and Merle began playing as a trio with T. Michael Coleman on bass guitar in 1974.

Blind from a young age, he performed publicly both in a dance band and solo, as well as for over 15 years with his son, guitarist Merle Watson, until Merle's death in 1985 in an accident on the family farm.

Watson was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina.

According to Watson on his three-CD biographical recording Legacy, he got the nickname "Doc" during a live radio broadcast when the announcer remarked that his given name Arthel was odd and he needed an easy nickname.

A fan in the crowd shouted "Call him Doc!", presumably in reference to the literary character Sherlock Holmes's companion, Doctor Watson.

The name stuck.

An eye infection caused Watson to lose his vision before his second birthday.

He attended North Carolina's school for the blind, the Governor Morehead School, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In 1985, Merle died in a tractor accident on his family farm.

Two years later Merle Fest was inaugurated in remembrance of him.

Doc Watson played guitar in both flatpicking and fingerpicking style, but is best known for his flatpick work.

His guitar playing skills, combined with his authenticity as a mountain musician, made him a highly influential figure during the folk music revival.

He pioneered a fast and flashy bluegrass lead guitar style including fiddle tunes and crosspicking techniques which were adopted and extended by Clarence White, Tony Rice and many others.

Watson was also an accomplished banjo player and sometimes accompanied himself on harmonica as well.

Known also for his distinctive and rich baritone voice, Watson over the years developed a vast repertoire of mountain ballads, which he learned via the oral tradition of his home area in Deep Gap, North Carolina.

In a 1989 radio interview with Terry Gross on the Fresh Air show on National Public Radio, Watson spoke about how he got his first guitar.

His father told him that if he and his brother David chopped down all the small dead chestnut trees along the edge of their field, they could sell the wood to a tannery.

Watson bought a Sears Silvertone from Sears Roebuck with his earnings, while his brother bought a new suit.

Later in the same interview, Watson mentioned that his first high-quality guitar was a Martin D-18.

Watson's earliest influences were country roots musicians and groups such as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.