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He attended North Carolina's school for the blind, the Governor Morehead School, in Raleigh, North Carolina. A fan in the crowd shouted "Call him Doc!", presumably in reference to the literary character Sherlock Holmes's companion, Doctor Watson.
By the time Watson reached adulthood, he had become a proficient acoustic and electric guitar player. 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. Also of pivotal importance for his career was his February 11, 1961, appearance at P.S. He subsequently began to tour as a solo performer and appeared at universities and clubs like the Ash Grove in Los Angeles.
Later life
Watson 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. Watson's earliest influences were country roots musicians and groups such as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. The first song he learned to play on the guitar was "When Roses Bloom in Dixieland", first recorded by the Carter Family in 1930.
In 1997, Watson received the National Medal of Arts from U.S. In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Watson played a Martin model D-18 guitar on his earliest recordings. In 1968, Watson began a relationship with Gallagher Guitars when he started playing their G-50 model. In 1974, Gallagher created a customized G-50 line to meet Watson's preferred specifications, which bears the Doc Watson name. During his last years, Watson played a Dana Bourgeois dreadnought given to him by Ricky Skaggs for his 80th birthday.
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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. After the folk revival waned during the late 1960s, 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.
Songs like "Girl in the Blue Velvet Band," "Old Joe Clark" and "Little Maggie" carry the listener away. Ending with "I Wonder How the Old Folks Are at Home" and "Home Sweet Home" gives this release a poignant twist. In 1986, Watson received the North Carolina Award and in 1994 he received a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award. He is a recipient of a 1988 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. In 2000, Watson was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in Owensboro, Kentucky.
Doc and Merle Watson : Home Sweet Home CD ( ***NEW*** Fast and FREE P & P
As popular as ever, Doc and Merle began playing as a trio with T. 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. In 1985, Merle died in a tractor accident on his family farm.
The couple had two children, Eddy Merle in 1949 and Nancy Ellen in 1951. In 1994, Watson teamed up with musicians Randy Scruggs and Earl Scruggs to contribute the classic song "Keep on the Sunny Side" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. Scrobbling is when Last.fm tracks the music you listen to and automatically adds it to your music profile. But since you're here, feel free to check out some up-and-coming music artists on SoundCloud or from the SoundCloud app. An eye infection caused Watson to lose his vision before his second birthday.
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. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Watson's fingerstyle and flatpicking skills, as well as his knowledge of traditional American music, were highly regarded. 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 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.
Two years later Merle Fest was inaugurated in remembrance of him. Watson hosted the annual MerleFest music festival held every April at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. The festival features a vast array of acoustic style music focusing on the folk, bluegrass, blues and old-time music genres. It was named in honor of Merle Watson and is one of the most popular acoustic music festivals in the world, drawing over 70,000 music fans each year. He was generally joined onstage by his grandson (Merle's son) Richard, as well as longtime musical partners David Holt or Jack Lawrence.
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, the same year. In 1953, Watson joined the Johnson City, Tennessee–based Jack Williams's country and western swing band on electric guitar.
The collection features audio interviews with Watson interspersed with music, as well as a complete recording of a live performance at the Diana Wortham Theatre in Asheville, North Carolina. The collection won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. Originally recorded in 1967 with additional material recorded in 1998, this is a tribute to the vast talent of Merle Watson, whose life was cut short in a tractor accident in 1985. These recordings are even more impressive when it is understood that they were made just five months after Watson started playing banjo. With this release, Merle Watson's place in traditional American music is defined and assured. Michael Coleman, Doc Watson gives these early recordings of his son's mastery a new life.
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, he 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 that same interview, Watson explained that his first high-quality guitar was a Martin D-18. Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform. In 1947, Watson married Rosa Lee Carlton, the daughter of popular fiddle player Gaither Carlton.
On June 19, 2007, Watson was accompanied by Australian guitar player Tommy Emmanuel at a concert at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. Watson also performed, accompanied by Holt and Richard, at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco in 2009, as he had done in several previous years. In 2002, High Windy Audio released a multi-CD biographical album of Watson's work, titled Legacy.
Another of Watson's favorites was his Arnold guitar, "The Jimmie", built by luthier John Arnold as a tribute to the famous 1926 Martin played by Jimmie Rodgers. In April 2013, Open Records released a multi-disc collection of unreleased recordings by Watson. The collection, titled Milestones, features 94 songs as well as stories, remembrances, and over 500 photographs. The collection was created by Watson's daughter, Nancy, and is being produced by ETSU Bluegrass and ETSU professor Roy Andrade. In a 1989 radio interview with Terry Gross on the Fresh Air show on National Public Radio, Watson explained how he got his first guitar.
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