Nicknamed Doc by an announcer at a radio station where his group sometimes played, Watson joined a dance band in 1953, adding his electric guitar to its mix of country, pop, swing and square dance music. Watson’s new in-law helped him stockpile his repertoire of traditional songs. He also tuned pianos to help support a new family - in 1947 he married his teenage cousin Rosa Lee Carlton, daughter of noted fiddler Gaither Carlton. Watson and his brother Linney played on street corners in nearby Boone, and he later played in local country bands, developing a style influenced by Merle Travis, Eddy Arnold and Chet Atkins. He got his first guitar at 13 and steeped himself in the music he heard on the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts and records by such country pioneers as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.
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All those elements sort of interwoven, that’s what Buddy Miller does today.… Nothing is more definitive than Doc Watson’s appreciation for a broad spectrum of music in the Americana world.”Īrthel received a new harmonica every Christmas and when he was 11 his father made him a banjo, with the head formed from the skin of the family’s recently deceased cat. He played traditional country, he played what would be traditional folk, he played what was traditional bluegrass, he played gospel. “He played different styles of American roots music. “Doc Watson sort of defined in many ways what Americana has become,” Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Assn., told The Times. He is one of the prime sources of the hybrid, roots-conscious Americana genre, and a key influence on such noted players as Norman Blake, Tony Rice, Buddy Miller and Dan Crary.
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His example inspired a generation of musicians to explore obscure musical pockets, as well as to upgrade their instrumental technique toward the remarkably high standards he established. With his natural ease as a storyteller, his heartfelt baritone singing, his repository of material and his facility on guitar, Watson was a rare combination of authenticity and artistry.
Watson, 89, who recorded more than 50 albums and won seven Grammy Awards, died Tuesday at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., according to his representatives at Folklore Productions, a Santa Monica management company. Within a few years, Watson seemingly had been everywhere, as his prowess on guitar and his vast store of traditional Southern music made the blind musician an internationally celebrated artist. I’d never been nowhere like that before.”Īn earlier version of this obituary reported Watson’s date of birth as March 2, 1923.
“We borrowed a little station wagon from the late Clarence Ashley’s son and drove to California and back, and I remember thinking, ‘Lord, what a big old country this is.’ I was a mountaineer, just a country boy. “I remember the first trip we did,” Watson said in a 2008 interview. In 1962, Doc Watson and some of his musician neighbors set out from their home in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the journey of a lifetime, to perform at the Ash Grove folk club in Los Angeles.
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