When Segovia died, a friend called late at night and said, “Doc Watson’s now the greatest living guitar player.” My response was, “What do you mean ‘now’?”
It’s hard to feel that has changed, despite the passing of that consummate flat-picking, seraph-singing native of Deep Gap, N.C. just last week. Today he was laid to rest, but his music travels on — in recordings and memories, but also in his many followers, imitators, disciples. Last week I was riding up and down Southwest Virginia’s Crooked Road, a series of country/folk/roots/old time music venues and historical sites, and from the Carter Family Fold to the Floyd Country Store Friday Jamboree, nobody could get far into a set without pausing to praise the eighty-none -year-old Arthel Watson, the healer who “cured” homemade music of its worst commercial taints, who arranged old mountain fiddle tunes for the guitar and who made the strings sparkle, feet tap and all our bones resonate in sweet agreement.
Blind at about the age of one year, Doc fell for the harmonica, banjo (with a cat skin head), swing guitar and fiddle, though the acoustic guitar and harnessed blues harp were his trademark. Those and his ever-astonishing ability to exude humility while shimmering with charisma, whether he was rendering a murder ballad, “The Cuckoo Bird” or the devout “Down in the Valley to Pray.”
Tributes already abound for the man who received Grammy Awards for seven albums and, in 2004, a lifetime achievement award, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to start hearing shouts that the Appalachians be renamed the Docalachians. When I listen to the clean, bright sound of him picking “Windy and Warm” or his dark honey voice on “Shady Grove,” I think I’d be happy to sign the petition. But, of course, he’d have none of it.
Doc’s first guitar was a Stella, which seems fitting, and I bet he’ll take to the harp like a swan to water. All this sorrow and admiration is a bit unusual for me, as I’m not much for hero worshiping, but I’m all in favor of recognizing what’s what. It’s as if we had an angel passing among us for a spell, pulsing inside a generous flesh-and-blood man of remarkable taste and timing, erudition and improvisational spark.
If you’re not already a fan, this is a good time to start getting enriched, even if your appetites lean toward blues, gospel, country or traditional. His albums are many and fine. I recommend you begin with the old ones from the seventies and early eighties, cut before his son Merle died in the mid-eighties. As a duo, they were unbeatable, but Doc stands alone as a virtuoso, and he played to the heart’s home.
