Virtuoso of the flat-picked acoustic guitar. From Deep Gap, North Carolina, Watson,
with his vast repertoire of folk, country, and rockabilly songs, was one of the most
commercially enduring instrumentalists to emerge from the folk revival. From his first
New York concert in 1961 undl his semiredrement in the late 1980s, Watson performed
throughout the wodd, spending as many as 300 nights a year on the road and producing
more than two dozen recordings.
Watson was born in Stoney Fork, North Carolina, the sixth of nine children born to
Annie and General Dixon Watson. He contracted an eye disease as an infant that left him
blind before he was two years old. His musical education began at home with a new
harmonica in his holiday stocking each year and, at the age of eleven, a homemade banjo,
built by his fadier. When he was twelve years old, Watson purchased a $12.00 Stella
guitar and began to learn songs from the family’s collection of 78-rpm recordings of the
Skillet Lickers, the Carter Family, the Carolina Tar Heels, Jimmie Rodgers, Riley
Puckett, and Mississippi John Hurt.
Watson acquired the nickname Doc when he was eighteen years old. While preparing
to play for a remote radio broadcast at a furniture store, an announcer, deciding that
Arthel was too cumbersome for the air, called him Doc. The name stuck.
It wasn’t until 1953 that Watson became a successful working musician, teaming up
with Tennessee piano player Jack Williams in a country-western-rockabilly band. It was
during the 1950s that Watson, playing a Les Paul electric guitar, developed his skillful
flat-picking style, often playing fiddle leads on the guitar.
In 1960 folklorist Ralph Rinzler, while researching traditional musicians in North
Carolina, was introduced to Watson by legendary banjo player Clarence Ashley.
Impressed by Watson’s skill, Rinzler arranged for him to play at Town Hall in New York
City and at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1961. Soon after, Watson was
much in demand at concert halls, coffeehouses and festivals across the country.
In 1946 Watson married Rosa Lee Carlton, the daughter of accomplished mountain
fiddler Gaither Carlton. They had two children. Son Merle developed into an
accomplished guitarist, and in 1964, at the age of fifteen, he joined his father as
accompanist, road manager, and guide. For more than a decade, father and son were nearconstant musical and personal companions until Merle’s tragic death in a tractor
accidentin 1985.
To date (1995), Doc Watson has won four Grammy Awards, and in 1988 he was a
recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Henry Willett