Doc Watson (1923 to 2012) was a blind guitarist and singer from Deep Gap, North Carolina, who made the flatpicked fiddle tune a standard part of guitar playing. He recorded for more than fifty years, won seven Grammy Awards, and received the National Heritage Fellowship in 1988 and the National Medal of Arts in 1997. The IBMA put him in its hall of fame in 2000.
Why Watson matters
Before Watson, fiddle tunes belonged to the fiddle and the banjo. He played Black Mountain Rag and other fiddle tunes note for note on a flat-top guitar with a flatpick, at fiddle speed, and made it sound easy. That one idea gave the guitar a lead role in bluegrass and old-time music. Clarence White heard him in 1962 and changed his own playing. Tony Rice, Norman Blake, and every flatpicker after them built on the same foundation. If you play a fiddle tune on guitar at a jam, you are doing what Watson did first.
Life and career
Arthel Lane Watson was born on March 3, 1923, in Stoney Fork Township near Deep Gap, North Carolina. An eye infection took his sight before his first birthday. His father gave him a harmonica at age six and built him a banjo at age eleven. He attended the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh. He bought his first guitar, a twelve-dollar Stella, at thirteen. Around age eighteen he bought a Martin and paid it off by playing on the street. He got the name Doc at a radio show around that time, when someone in the crowd called it out because Arthel was hard to say on air.
Watson married Rosa Lee Carlton in 1947. Their son Eddy Merle was born in 1949 and their daughter Nancy in 1951. In 1953 he joined Jack Williams and the Country Gentlemen, a country and western swing band based in Johnson City, Tennessee. He played electric guitar with them for eight years.
In April 1960 folklorist Ralph Rinzler heard Watson at the Union Grove fiddlers convention, where he was backing banjo player Clarence Ashley. Rinzler recorded Ashley and Watson for Folkways. Watson made his New York debut in 1961 at a Friends of Old-Time Music concert. His 1963 set at the Newport Folk Festival made him a star of the folk revival. He recorded his first solo album, Doc Watson, for Vanguard in 1964. In 1965 he played the first multi-day bluegrass festival at Fincastle, Virginia. He recorded Strictly Instrumental with Flatt and Scruggs in 1966.
Merle joined his father as backup guitarist and road manager in 1965. Doc and Merle toured and recorded together for the next twenty years. In 1971 Watson played on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken, which brought him to a rock audience. He won his first Grammy in 1973 for Then and Now and a second the next year for Two Days in November with Merle.
Merle died in a tractor accident on the family farm in 1985. Watson kept playing with a larger group. In 1988 MerleFest began on the campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, as a memorial to Merle and a fundraiser for the college. He was a regular performer there for the rest of his life. He won later Grammys for Riding the Midnight Train, On Praying Ground, Legacy with David Holt, and Whiskey Before Breakfast with Bryan Sutton. He fell at home in May 2012, had surgery at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, and died there on May 29, 2012, at age 89.
Playing style
Watson used a flatpick for fiddle tunes and his fingers for blues and rag pieces. Both approaches came from the same right hand. On fiddle tunes he played the melody with strict alternate picking, down on the beat and up on the offbeat, at full fiddle tempo. He did not simplify the tune for the guitar. He played the fiddle’s notes, slides and all, and he kept the tone round and full on every one.
For songs like Deep River Blues he fingerpicked, with the thumb keeping a steady bass and the fingers picking the melody and chords on top. His rhythm playing behind a singer was plain and strong: a bass note, a strum, and a bass run into the next chord.
His guitars are part of the story. He played a Martin D-18 early on. From 1968 he played a Gallagher G-50 he called Ol’ Hoss, and Gallagher built a Doc Watson model starting in 1974. His baritone voice was as important as his hands. He sang plain, in tune, and without show.
Influences and legacy
Watson learned from records. He named the Delmore Brothers, Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Merle Travis, and Chet Atkins as early influences, and he studied Django Reinhardt and Nick Lucas as well. His wife Rosa Lee was a fiddler’s daughter. Clarence Ashley gave him his first wide audience.
His influence runs through every generation of flatpickers since. Clarence White saw him at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles in April 1962 and took his open-string syncopation into the Kentucky Colonels. Tony Rice and Norman Blake built on his fiddle-tune approach. Jack Lawrence played guitar beside him in his later years. Bryan Sutton shared his last Grammy. MerleFest, which draws crowds in the tens of thousands, carries his name and Merle’s.
Signature tunes and songs
Black Mountain Rag Deep River Blues Whiskey Before Breakfast Big Sandy/Leather Britches.
Essential recordings
Doc Watson (Vanguard, 1964) Then and Now (1973) Two Days in November, with Merle Watson (1974) Riding the Midnight Train (1986)
Awards and honors
Grammy Award, Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording, Then and Now (1973) Grammy Award, Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording, Two Days in November, with Merle Watson (1974) Grammy Award, Best Country Instrumental Performance, Big Sandy/Leather Britches, with Merle Watson (1979) Grammy Award, Best Traditional Folk Recording, Riding the Midnight Train (1986) NEA National Heritage Fellowship (1988) Grammy Award, Best Traditional Folk Recording, On Praying Ground (1990) National Medal of Arts (1997) Doc Watson Day declared by the North Carolina legislature (1998) International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame (2000) Grammy Award, Best Traditional Folk Album, Legacy, with David Holt (2002) Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) Grammy Award, Best Country Instrumental Performance, Whiskey Before Breakfast, with Bryan Sutton (2006) Honorary doctorate, University of North Carolina at Asheville (2009)
Watch and listen
Watson and Jack Lawrence play Black Mountain Rag. Watch the flatpick move in strict down and up strokes through the fast runs.
Watson plays and sings Deep River Blues with his fingers. Listen to the bass line stay steady under the melody.
What to learn from Watson
Learn Black Mountain Rag. It is the tune that defined flatpicking, and it forces you to play a fiddle melody with a flatpick across all six strings. Start slow and keep the pick direction strict: down on the beat, up on the offbeat, no exceptions. The technique to steal is his tone. Watson made every note the same size, whether it was a slow melody or a run at fiddle speed. Record yourself playing a tune and listen for notes that go quiet. Fix those before you add speed.
Sources
Arthel “Doc” Watson, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum Arthel “Doc” Watson, National Endowment for the Arts Awards and Honors received by Doc Watson, Doc’s Guitar Music legend Doc Watson dies at age 89, PBS NewsHour Smithsonian Folkways remembers Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson, Smithsonian Folkways About MerleFest, MerleFest Doc Watson, Wikipedia
Related players
See the guitar players hub and the guitar guide for more flatpickers. Clarence White and Tony Rice built on Watson’s fiddle-tune approach. Jack Lawrence played beside him in his later years, and Bryan Sutton shared his last Grammy.