Doc Watson born 3 March 1923

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. For almost 50 years, Doc Watson was the most illustrious name in traditional American folk music. A superb, original guitarist and a singer of warmth and simplicity, he set countless musicians on the road to careers in folk music. Probably no folk performer of his time has inspired greater admiration and affection. 

Watson was born and grew up in the small community of Deep Gap in the Blue Ridge mountains of northwestern North Carolina. He lost his sight as a result of an eye infection in early childhood, and attended the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh. But he was always surrounded by music: his mother, Annie, sang; his father, General Dixon Watson, played the banjo. Numerous other relatives were musicians, singers or storytellers. 

Doc himself first learned the harmonica and banjo, then at 13 began teaching himself the guitar on an instrument bought for him by his father for just a few dollars. No investment in a young musician ever paid such dividends. In his hands, the use of the guitar in American folk music expanded radically. His folklorist friend Ralph Rinzler would later write that Watson was "single-handedly responsible for the extraordinary increase in acoustic flatpicking and fingerpicking performance. His flatpicking style has no precedent in early country music history." In bluegrass, too, his adaptations of traditional fiddle tunes to the guitar allowed the instrument to go beyond rhythm-setting and take on a leading role. 

Yet Watson first came to the attention of folk music enthusiasts beyond his home region only as a supporting player. In 1960 Rinzler recorded the old-time banjo player and singer Clarence Ashley in a freewheeling session with friends and neighbours, including Watson. The result, two Folkways label LPs of Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's, alerted folk enthusiasts to the talent of the guitarist, who until then had played chiefly in a local rockabilly band. In 1961 Ashley, Watson and two other participants in the Ashley sessions, Clint Howard and Fred Price, gave a memorable performance at a concert in New York, staged by the Friends of Old-Time Music. Then in 1963 and 1964, at Rinzler's instigation, Watson appeared at the Newport Folk festival, and in 1963 he recorded his first solo album, for Vanguard. 

                             

For two decades, Watson's companion on recordings and live was his son, Merle, a gifted guitar-player and banjoist. Often accompanied by the bass guitarist T Michael Coleman, they toured all over the world, playing at venues from concert halls to folk clubs, and made many albums, among them Doc Watson & Son, Doc Watson on Stage, Ballads From Deep Gap, Pickin' the Blues and Then and Now. The Watsons were also sought as collaborators by other musicians, notably the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for the triple LP Will the Circle Be Unbroken (1972), a record that revived their career, which had flagged after interest in folk music waned in the late 60s. 

Merle died in a tractor accident on his farm in 1985 at the age of 36, and for a time Watson found it hard to work, but he resumed with the guitarist Jack Lawrence or with his own grandson, Richard, with whom he recorded Third Generation Blues in 1999. Richard and Coleman also formed part of the band Frosty Morn with which Watson played in the early 2000s. A collaboration with the banjoist David Holt, Legacy, won a Grammy in 2002. Altogether Watson won seven Grammys, as well as a 2004 Grammy lifetime achievement award. He also received a National Heritage Fellowship and, in 1997, a National Medal of the Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton, who remarked: "There may not be a serious, committed babyboomer alive who didn't at some point in his or her youth try to spend a few minutes at least trying to learn to pick a guitar like Doc Watson." 

The more than 50 albums to Watson's name testify to the extraordinary breadth of his musical interests and skills. He made several recordings of backwoods old-time music with members of his family, including his wife, Rosa Lee, and her father, the fiddler Gaither Carlton, yet he could cross from that rugged milieu to a Nashville studio and work easily with country music's leading session musicians on albums such as Good Deal (1968), while on the 1995 album Docabilly he recalled his rockabilly days, 40 years on. 

In the last couple of decades, weary of the road, Watson had made fewer personal appearances. One booking he always kept, though, was the annual music event MerleFest, held in memory of his son at Wilkesboro, North Carolina, every April since 1988. 

On May 21, 2012, Watson fell at his home. He was not seriously injured in the fall, but an underlying medical condition prompted surgery on his colon. Watson died on May 29, 2012, at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center of complications following the surgery at the age of 89. He is buried in the Merle and Doc Watson Memorial Cemetery, Deep Gap, Watauga County, North Carolina, with his wife and son. 

(Edited from Tony Russell @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)