13023 DVD booklet - Stefan Grossman`s Guitar Workshop

Doc Watson
Rare Performances
1963-1981
featuring
Merle Watson
T. Michael Coleman
Clint Howard
Fred Price
Doc Watson
Rare Performances, 1963-1981
by Mark Humphrey
1968, Photo by Jerry Sudderth
This video documents the first two decades of Doc
Watson’s public life. It opens with a performance at an East
coast college and ends at an English folk festival. Venues
and audiences shift while the central figure remains immutably himself. Given such assured certainty, it’s surprising to
learn that Doc once doubted he could pull this off: “To be
honest,” Doc admitted to Art Coats (Pickin’, February 1975),
“when the opportunity to get into music professionally came
along for me in the early 1960s, I didn’t think I had that
much talent. But I needed a way to earn a decent living for
my wife and children. I loved to play music, and I just loved
to pick with people who enjoyed it. Then somebody said,
‘Well, you can make a couple of bucks at it.’ I said, ‘Well, I
don’t think I’m good enough at it, or will be good enough,
but I’ll sure try.’ That’s what got me into it. If I hadn’t been
handicapped, I probably would have been a mechanic or an
electrician or something like that, so I could go home at night.
Music would have been a hobby. I wouldn’t say that I wouldn’t
have picked a guitar, but I wouldn’t have made a profession
out of it. But the desire to earn a living got me into it and
love of the music made me work at it.”
2
Hard work went with the turf where Arthel L. Watson
was born on March 23, 1923. One of the nine children of
General Dixon and Annie Watson, he was born in Stoney Fork
Township, Watauga County, North Carolina but raised in Deep
Gap, where he still lives. Born with a condition restricting
blood flow to his eyes, an infection destroyed his corneas in
infancy. (Treatment by a quack doctor may have contributed
to the damage.) “I can vaguely remember somethin’ about
that the moon was round somewhere in my consciousness,”
Doc told Jean Stewart and Joe Wilson (Sing Out! Vol. 29/No.
1). “And I can remember where I could stand on my porch as
a little tiny fella and see the reflection of the light on the
frost on the ground, or could notice the glimmer of sunshine
on white horses and things that passed along close to the
house, but that was a long time ago...”
Music was a constant in Doc’s family, whether it was his
father singing hymns (he led the singing at the Mt. Paron
Baptist Church) or his mother singing old folk songs and ballads. Doc’s earliest musical memories are of church singing:
“To me as a little tiny boy,” he told folklorist A.L. Lloyd, “I
remember thinking it must sound like that in heaven, if we
ever get there.” More earthy sounds came from harmonicas
that arrived annually at Christmas: “I guess to play a little
straight country harmonica was like whistling,” Doc recalled.
“It just became a natural part of me.”
When Doc was six, the family acquired a used Victrola
and a cache of 78s from a maternal uncle. “We thought we
had the king’s treasure when he brought that thing in and
set it up and played a record or two,” recalled Doc, who would
30 years later accompany one of the men whose 78s were
among the “king’s treasure,” Clarence Ashley. Other records that
made an impression were those of the Carter Family, Jimmie
Rodgers, and such sacred singers as J.D. Vaughn’s Quartet. “If
Dad played the gramophone,” Doc told Lloyd, “I was sitting right
by it.”
At age ten, Doc was sent away to North Carolina’s State
School for the Blind at Raleigh. Along with the inevitable
homesickness, Doc encountered some bitter and belittling
caretakers: “They should have been in an institution,” he once
remarked, “rather than controlling little children, especially
blind people.” Suspended for smoking in seventh grade, Doc
adamantly refused to return to the State School for the Blind.
(“I learned to figure my way out of a paper bag there at least,”
3
1963, Newport Folk Festival. Photo by David Gahr
John Cohen, Clarence Ashley, Doc Boggs & Doc Watson
he admits.) He continued his education at home via Talking
Books (“they had battery-driven Talking Books for people that
really lived up in the country”) and obtained some valuable
lessons in self-confidence from his father. “I had what some
people refer to as a complex,” Doc told Art Coats. “If it hadn’t
been for my Dad putting me on the other end of a crosscut
saw and teaching me that I was of some benefit other than
just to sit around in the corner somewhere, I don’t think I
would have had much incentive in life to do anything.”
Further incentive came in the form of a banjo General
Dixon made for his 11-year-old son. An ailing cat gave its life
to become a banjo head, and young Doc was “the proudest
fellow you ever seen when I learned to play the first tune on
that thing.” General Dixon told Doc: “Son, pick me a tune on
that thing. I want you to learn to pick it real good. It might
help you get through the world.” At age 13 (the same year
his father tested him on the saw), Doc got his first guitar, a
Stella: “one of those ten-dollar guitars,” he told Gary Govert
(Carolina Lifestyle, August 1983), “a pretty good little thing
to learn on, but hard to fret as a barbed wire fence.” Nonetheless Doc was soon playing Carter Family songs (When
Roses Bloom in Dixieland was his first triumph on guitar)
and working out brother duet songs with an older brother,
Linney, in the manner of such popular duos as the Monroe
and Delmore Brothers.
The fact that several influential Southern singer-guitarists (Riley Puckett, Rev. Gary Davis, and Blind Willie Johnson
4
among them) were, like Doc, blind has led to the notion that
blindness and a heightened sense of hearing contributes to
musical ability. Asked about this by Joe Wilson, Doc said of
his blindness: “It probably was a deterrent in some ways
because I couldn’t look at the page and learn the chords. I
had to learn by sound...So the way I get some of the chords
is, well, unreasonable...I don’t finger them right. In other
words, it would have been a lot easier if I’d have learned
properly.”
But Doc persisted and became increasingly involved with
the guitar. When he was 17 he purchased a Sears Silvertone
model with money earned chopping wood. A year later he
had traded up to a Martin D-28 earned by ‘street busking’: “I
played on the street nearly every Saturday when the weather
was warm at a cab stand in Lenore, South Carolina,” Doc
told Jon Sievert (Frets, Vol. 1/No. 1, March 1979). “Sometimes I’d make as much as $50.00 and I paid that guitar off
in four or five months.” Doc did a lot of ‘busking’ between
age 18 and 25: “I ain’t ashamed of this because I had to do
it,” he told Art Coats. “I used to pick some on the street in
different places, especially along the back lots where they
would have taxi stands. Them ol’ boys wanted you to come
and pick, ‘cause it got them a whole lot of customers – and
you could make a couple of bucks.”
At 18, Doc was playing in a group which appeared on
radio broadcasts from a furniture store where patrons enjoyed a live show while browsing for furnishings. When the
announcer found Arthel a mouthful and wondered aloud
what else to call the band’s guitarist, a young lady in the
store suggested, “Call him Doc.” The name has stuck.
In 1947 Doc married Rosa Lee Carlton and faced the
daunting prospect of raising a family. “Rosa Lee grew the
awfullest vegetable gardens you ever seen over summer to
help feed us,” Doc told Gary Govert, “and I tuned up a few
pianos now and then.” Around 1953 Doc started working in
a band with Tennessee piano player Jack Williams. He
swapped his Martin D-28 for a Gibson Les Paul Standard
and entertained at such venues as the Mountain Home
Veteran’s Hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee. It was Doc’s
steady gig for the better part of a decade. Along with pop
and country hits of the era, Williams’ band sometimes had
to deliver ‘old time’ fiddle tunes for square dances. Without
a fiddler the job of playing these tunes fell to Doc, who
5
worked out much of his famous acoustic flatpicking style on
a Les Paul!
While Doc was playing rockabilly in the country, city folks
were warming up to the folk songs he had heard as a boy.
The roots of the urban ‘folk boom’ can be traced to the early
1950s hits of the Weavers (Goodnight Irene, On Top of Old
Smoky). Later the Kingston Trio’s groundbreaking Tom Dooley
threw down the commercial gauntlet in 1958 for the early
1960s success of groups like Peter, Paul & Mary. But a few
urban aficionados were looking for truer folk music as played
by people who had grown up, as had Doc, hearing this music in their families and communities. One of these fans was
musician-folklorist Ralph Rinzler, who, in the company of collector-discographer Eugene Earle, went looking for Clarence
Ashley in 1960 and found his accompanist to be the unknown Doc Watson.
Rinzler’s detailed account of his remarkable discovery
appears in his notes to The Original Folkways Recordings of
Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley: 1960-1962 (Smithsonian/
Folkways CD SF 40029/30). Doc initially had misgivings about
Rinzler’s refusal to record Ashley with an electric guitar accompanist, but the two men gradually warmed to one another when they discovered their common love for old time
country. “Now Ralph, he really bent over backwards to help
me,” Doc later remarked. Rinzler brought Doc to New York
City in the Spring of 1961 for a concert appearance as a
member of Ashley’s stringband (not, incidentally, playing a
1963, Newport Folk Festival. Photo by David Gahr
Clarence Ashley & Doc Watson
6
1970, Photo by Jerry Sudderth
Les Paul). Doc’s first solo appearance was at Gerde’s Folk
City in December 1962. In November 1963, noted folk promoter Harold Leventhal, who managed the Weavers, presented Doc in concert at Town Hall with Bill Monroe and his
Blue Grass Boys. (On hearing Doc, Monroe commented: “I
can hear my brother Charlie, the Delmore Brothers and Riley
Puckett in there.”) It was also during his 1963 New York City
trip that Doc cut his first solo album for Vanguard. Rinzler’s
comments in a Sing Out! profile (Vol. 14, No. 1, FebruaryMarch 1964) were prophetic: “Doc’s impact as a soloist will
surely be profoundly felt, for there is hardly an artist in folk
and/or country music who combines musical integrity with
such total mastery of technique on several instruments, and
such warmth and honesty of presentation.”
Doc’s impact wasn’t exclusively as a soloist. The performances here show him in the company of his old Ashley
accompanists, singer-fiddler Fred Price and singer-guitarist
Clint Howard, and, of course, that of his son Merle, who first
appeared with his father at age 15 in 1964. With the addition of electric bass guitarist T. Michael Coleman, who joined
the Watsons in 1974, we witness a shift in Doc’s performance
style from the early folk revival days to that of the rowdier
bluegrass festival era of 1970s-80s. “I think I’ve pushed Dad
to get a little more progressive,” Merle told Gary Govert in
7
1983. “He was really hung up on that traditional thing, and
was afraid he’d lose all his followers if he played what he
really wanted to for years.” Doc told Rick Gartner (Frets, August 1983): “When I got into the folk revival of the 1960s,
Ralph Rinzler told me, ‘Doc, now when you get your foot in
the door you can expand your sets and play some of the
other things that you enjoy playing, but during this period
play the traditional music. Lean on it.’ That we did, and we
barely got through the slump of the late 1960s and early
1970s.” The folk revival had died by then, but the ‘back-tothe-roots’ phase of the counterculture embraced Doc after
his appearance on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s influential 1971
triple album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. For Doc, who performed songs from a deep well of family tradition in the company of an immensely talented son, that question need never
have come up.
The Performances
1979, Doc Watson, T. Michael Coleman & Merle Watson
Deep River Blues
Alton and Rabon Delmore, one of the best and bluesiest
of the early country brother duos, introduced this song in
the 1933 as I’ve Got the Big River Blues. Augmenting the
close vocal harmony characteristic of brother duos was Alton’s
standard guitar and Rabon’s tenor guitar, a sound which fascinated Doc. He wanted to achieve a semblance of the tenorstandard guitar blend of the Delmores on a single instru8
ment, and the result was this arrangement of Deep River
Blues. It wasn’t an overnight success, however: Doc reckons
it took the better part of a decade. The means to his end
suggested itself when Doc, along with a young Chet Atkins
and many other aspiring Southern guitarists, began listening
in rapt awe to Merle Travis’ performances on Cincinnati’s WLW
in the 1940s. ‘Travis picking’ was then a new sound, and
Merle’s ability to pick a treble melodic line and a bass rhythm
simultaneously seemed little short of magical.
Doc recognized it as the solution to his problem; he may
even have heard Travis pick something like this on those occasions when he, Grandpa Jones, and the Delmore Brothers
teamed up as the Browns Ferry Four on radio. Always eager
to credit his mentors, Doc often told concert audiences about
his efforts as a fledgling Travis picker and how long it took
him to achieve satisfactory coordination and separation of
his surrogate tenor (fingers) and standard (thumb) guitars.
This 1963 performance was on the Hootenanny television variety show hosted by Jack Linkletter. The show usually presented collegiate folk acts and gained some notoriety when it declined to present Pete Seeger (Hootenanny
was subsequently boycotted by Joan Baez). This writer, ten
years old at the time, saw this performance of Doc Watson
and had Deep River Blues ringing in his head for a long time
afterward. I didn’t remember the name of the performer or
know anything about his music, just that it seemed more
intriguing than anything else I’d ever heard on Hootenanny!
1963, Newport Folk Festival. Photo by David Gahr
Fred Price, Clint Howard & Doc Watson
9
At least a couple of years
passed, the song and its
distinctive guitar accompaniment still ringing in my
head, before my guitar
teacher, who often played
me music he thought I
ought to hear, casually produced a copy of Doc’s first
Va n g u a r d a l b u m a n d
played Deep River Blues
for me. That was what I’d
been looking for, and luckily my teacher knew someone who could unravel
some of Doc’s fingerstyle
mysteries for me. Thanks,
D r.
Fr o s t
and
Bill
Cheatwood, wherever you
are.
Nine Pound Hammer
Bill and Charlie Monroe recorded Nine-Pound Hammer
Is Too Heavy at their initial Bluebird recording session in 1936.
Merle Travis included it in his famous 1946 Folk Songs of the
Hills session and can be seen performing Nine Pound Hammer on Merle Travis: Rare Performances/1946-1981 (Vestapol
Video 13012). Folklorist Archie Green calls it “a railroad-construction and levee-building work song widely scattered in
black and white tradition.” Before Travis or even the Monroe
Brothers, Al Hopkins & His Buckle Busters had recorded the
song for Brunswick in 1927. The trio of Doc, fiddler-singer
Fred Price and guitarist-singer Clint Howard (the lead voice
here) perform it with old-time stringband abandon.
Daniel Prayed
Daniel has long been a favorite figure of religious folklore and folk song. Here Price sings lead, Howard tenor and
Doc bass in a stirring a cappella portrait of faith tested and
rewarded. Rinzler wrote: “Doc, Clint and Fred recalled singing this at church in their younger days and refreshed their
memory from The Best of All, a shape-note hymnal.”
10
St. James Hospital
One of the most widespread and endlessly revamped
Anglo-American ballads, this was Streets of Laredo in the
Wild West and St. James Infirmary Blues to African-Americans. Despite myriad changes of place and tune, all variants
kept at their core a dying man’s request for a fancy funeral.
The female pallbearers were initially whores, not maidens,
for Doc’s dying cowboy had begun life in 18th century British broadsides as a rake (often a soldier) brought down by
syphilis. Doc learned St. James Hospital from a Pete Seeger
album, American Folk Songs and Ballads. Doc’s rippling minor-keyed guitar arrangement is quite unlike anything else
in his repertoire.
Shady Grove
“I learned Shady Grove from my dad,” Doc noted in The
Songs of Doc Watson (Oak Publications, New York, 1971). “I
may have learned a couple of verses from Clarence Ashley,
but my dad is mainly responsible for teaching me the song.”
Doc added that he associated the song with his wife and
pleasant childhood memories. “That’s what Shady Grove
means to me,” he said, “happiness.” Here’s a rare opportunity to witness Doc’s command of the banjo. He often per1967, Photo courtesy Berkeley Folk Festival
11
formed this song with guitar accompaniment (see Doc
Watson: Rare Performances, 1982-1993, Vestapol Video
13024).
Black Mountain Rag
The tune’s fiddling composer, Leslie Keith, sometimes
called this Black Mountain Blues. Much as Doc admired Keith,
he says later versions by fiddlers Tommy Jackson and Curly
Fox more directly inspired his celebrated adaptation for guitar: “My arrangement on the guitar is closer to theirs than to
the original because some of the things Leslie Keith did in
the old-time fiddle style I just couldn’t find on my guitar,”
Doc observed. This tune was the first fiddle tune Doc played
on guitar. It may also be the most imitated of Doc’s instrumental arrangements, the national anthem of flatpickers.
Stack O’ Lee Blues
Tom Dooley
Murdered women
inspired their share of
ballads: Laurie Foster
keeps the fated company of Omie Wise,
Pearl Bryan, Poor Ellen
Smith and Pretty Polly.
Doc learned this ebullient version of Tom
Dooley from his grandmother, who actually
knew Tom’s parents.
According to Watson
family lore Dooley was
12
1968, Photo by Jerry Sudderth
The folk revival brought together many of the finest exponents of different traditions at events like the Newport
Folk Festival. It was there Doc came to know and love Mississippi John Hurt, the source of this version of Stack O’ Lee
Blues. There were, of course, many, including one which
became a pop hit for Lloyd Price in 1959. Hurt’s original saga
of this bad man was waxed for Okeh in 1928, and Doc’s
rendition, with fine fingerpicking by Merle, is
faithful to its spirit.
Southbound
A teenaged (and homesick) Merle Watson wrote this
country boy’s lament while he and Doc were in New York
City for an extended stint. Merle’s fingerpicking and the song’s
gently bluesy lilt suggest the deep impression John Hurt made
on both the Watsons.
Way Downtown
Grand Ole Opry pioneers Uncle Dave Macon and Sam
McGee recorded a version of this song in 1926 as Late Last
Night When My Willie Came Home. Doc probably heard the
irrepressible Macon perform this on Opry broadcasts but
learned the verses of his version from a cousin, Dudley
Watson. As an example of how Doc’s performance style
evolved, compare this stops-out 1978 rendition with one from
1967 in the company of Clint Howard and Fred Price on Legends of Old Time Music (Vestapol Video 13026).
13
1981, Nancy & Eddy Merle Watson. Photo courtesy Rosa Lee Watson
innocent of the Civil
War era crime for
which he was hung:
a jealous woman is
believed to have
committed the murder to which Dooley
became an accomplice. (Further thickening the plot, the alleged murderess
later married the
Sheriff Grayson who
saw to Dooley’s undoing!) Whatever the
facts, the Kingston
Trio’s 1958 revamping of Frank Profitt’s
version put the spurs
to the nascent urban
folk boom and led
indirectly to the discovery and appreciation of artists like Doc. Dooley was said
to have been a fine fiddler, which Doc reckons inspired the
sprightly tune he sings.
1967, Photo courtesy Berkeley Folk Festival
Lonesome
Road
The stark simplicity of this song reflects
the mingling of AfricanAmerican blues with
ancient Anglo-American modes: the tune is
built on four notes but
the occasional emphatic use of a fifth
makes it penta-tonic.
Gaither Carlton likely
sang it with his fiddle
closely tracing his vocal line. The lyrics suggest a creative cobbling
of various elements:
“ Th e l o n g e s t t r a i n /
Georgia line” verse is
found in several folk
blues, In the Pines
among them. The “best
of friends” verse suggests the more florid lyricism of Victorian songs, many of which had passed into folk tradition by
Carlton’s time. And the “lonesome road” is itself an archetype heard in many forms, including Henry Whitter’s
trailblazing 1924 hillbilly recording, Lonesome Road Blues,
or Rosetta Tharpe’s Swing-era Lonesome Road recorded with
Lucky Millinder’s Orchestra. (Despite very different tunes,
Tharpe’s Lonesome Road and Watson’s begin with the same
verse.) Stripped to essentials, Watson’s music was seldom
more affecting than this.
Medley: Nancy Roland/Salt Creek
Two fleet fiddle tunes meet their match in three superb
guitarists. The addition of Cliff Miller to the Watson family
team allowed for some sparkling ‘three-way’ picking on Salt
Creek. The revived interest in Western Swing, where such
section work between electric and steel guitars was pioneered, may have inspired this rousing ensemble arrangement.
14
I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground
Doc’s reference to this as a ‘courtin’ song’ implies every
song had its purpose. This one, learned from an uncle, aimed
to chip away at female reserve with whimsy. (Freudian folklorists could surely read a double-entendre into the song’s
mountain-boring mole.) Doc’s frolicsome five-string nicely
abets the innocently wishful (or subliminally salacious) lyrics.
Sweet Georgia Brown
The theme song of the Harlem Globetrotters and a favorite guitar jam tune for decades (Django Reinhart and Oscar Aleman both waxed it in the 1930s-40s), Sweet Georgia
Brown shows the way in which country guitarists integrated
swing into their repertoire. Doc was probably wowing his
Carolina neighbors with this 1925 pop tune long before he
learned of any urban interest in their old folk songs. The improvisatory break he takes is a nice contrast to the more set
arrangements played on Doc’s fiddle tunes.
Peach Pickin’ Time Down in Georgia
Legendary Georgia fiddler Clayton McMichen wrote this
and accompanied Jimmie Rodgers on the classic 1932 recording. It subsequently became among the most covered
of Rodgers’ songs and a favorite of Doc’s, who first heard
Rodgers’s songs on his family’s Victrola when he was ten.
“Jimmie has been a favorite of mine ever since,” Doc told
Mitchell A. Yockelson (“An Interview with Doc Watson,” Old
Time Country, Vol. VI No. III, Fall 1989). “Jimmie didn’t have
a bigger fan than me.” The jaunty song frames some inspired
picking by the Watsons, most notably Merle’s clean dobrolike slide lines. “Merle learned to play some backup on some
of Jimmie’s songs and some real beautiful slide,” Doc recalled. “(Merle) Actually invented his own style for playing
slide guitar.” (Merle’s slide was a Sears & Roebuck 5/8-inch
socket wrench.)
Will the Circle Be Unbroken
In 1935, the Carter Family recorded Can the Circle Be
Unbroken (Bye and Bye). Though not the first, A. P. Carter’s
version of the song became the standard. 36 years and a
couple of generations later, California’s Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
came to Nashville with an olive branch from their side of the
15
‘generation gap’ and gathered several of Nashville’s legendary old guard for an epochal recording session. This unlikely
alliance of roots-digging youth and firmly-rooted elders had
as its symbolic centerpiece Mother Maybelle Carter and this
song. Doc’s presence on the three-Lp Will the Circle Be Unbroken album was a career coup which brought his music to
a wider audience than ever before. The performance of the
song here offers dulcet slide from Merle and a study in Doc’s
magnanimity: how many stars would invite their pilot onstage
for a turn at the mike?
Rain Crow Bill
Henry Whitter, a Virginia-born singer-guitarist-harmonica
player, recorded a number of solo harmonica showpieces
along with such influential songs as The Wreck of the Southern Old 97, considered country music’s first hit record. Whitter
recorded Rain Crow Bill in 1923 and again in 1927 following
the advent of electrical recording. The tune became widely
popular and much-emulated by legions of harp-blowers
across the South, including the young Doc Watson. “A harmonica was give to Doc every Christmas as far back as he
can remember,” wrote Ralph Rinzler. Rain Crow Bill is thus a
glimpse of some of Doc’s earliest music.
Tennessee Stud
Arkansas schoolteacher Jimmy Driftwood was suddenly
a hot songwriter in 1959 when Johnny Horton made a number one hit of his historical ballad, The Battle of New Orleans. That same year ‘the Tennessee Plowboy,’ Eddy Arnold,
had a lesser hit with Driftwood’s saga of the Tennessee Stud.
35 years later Johnny Cash revived the equine epic in his
celebrated 1994 album, American Recordings, and this song
has long been a favorite of Doc’s. It was among his featured
performances on the Will the Circle Be Unbroken album.
Medley: Big Sandy/Bill Cheatham
Here’s further proof (if any were needed) of Doc’s adroit
mastery of flatpicked fiddle repertoire. “I’d made up my mind
that I couldn’t play the fiddle,” Doc told Jon Sievert (Frets,
Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1978) “ but I wanted to play with the
same kind of bounce and rhythm that the fiddle did so I
started working them (fiddle tunes) out on guitar. You can’t
do the same things that are done on the fiddle but you can
16
1984, Photo by Lynn Worth
do the tunes to where
they are pretty...I hadn’t
heard anyone else do
that on a guitar before,”
Doc recalled, and neither had anyone else.
A-Rovin’ On a
Winter’s Night
Doc has called this
“just about one of the
prettiest old-time love
songs that you could
hope to find anywhere.”
Recalling the night
Ralph Rinzler recorded
it from the singing of a
distant cousin, Dolly
Greer, Doc cited a near-by chorus of frogs and whippoorwills
seeming to accompany the plaintive ballad. “I had never heard
it before,” he said in The Songs of Doc Watson, “and I thought
it was so beautiful.” In the notes of the album with Greer’s
recording (The Watson Family Tradition, Topic 12TS336), English folklorist A. L. Lloyd wrote that the song is “sometimes
called The False True Lover. It is made up of a sequence of
lyrical verses like aphorisms, liable to float from song to song.
In this case the ‘floaters’ are grouped round the famous shoeglove-father dialogue that is such a memorable part of the
old Scots ballad, The Lass of Roch Royal (Child 76), a dialogue that forms the centre-point of so many American love
lyrics from Maine to Mississippi.” Here both Watsons do some
effectively subdued fingerpicking.
Black Mountain Rag
Closing with the flatpickers’ national anthem is an appropriate final note for this look at Doc’s first two decades in
the spotlight. If you compare this ‘encore’ with the Black
Mountain Rag of a decade or so earlier on this video you
may find subtle differences emblematic of Doc’s knack for
staying consistent while gathering no moss.
For help with background material, thanks to
Mary Katherine Aldin, Eugene Earle and Ed Kahn.
17
Recording Information
Hootenany (1963)
Deep River Blues
Seattle Folklore Society (1967)
Nine Pound Hammer
Daniel Prayed
Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest (1967)
St. James Hospital
Homewood, Los Angeles (1970)
Shady Grove
Black Mountain Rag
Stack O' Lee Blues
Tom Dooley
Southbound
Austin City Limits (1978)
Way Downtown
Lonesome Road
Medley: Nancy Roland/Salt Creek
I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground
Sweet Georgia Brown
Peach Pickin' Time Down In Georgia
Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Raincrow Bill
Tennessee Stud
Cambridge Folk Festival,
England (1981)
Medley: Big Sandy/Bill Cheatham
A Roving On A Winters Night
Black Mountain Rag
18
The world of American folk music was immeasurably
enriched by the discovery of North Carolina's Doc Watson in
1960. He arrived in time to play an active role in the then
booming folk revival, where he showed a generation of guitarists
how to play traditional music with fresh drive and imagination.
After Doc, the old ‘strum-and-sing’ method no longer sufficed.
This collection of rarely seen video performances illustrates
the power and range of Doc's talents and the evolution of his
performance style. His music ranges from flatpicking guitar
instrumentals, a harmonica solo, a capella gospel singing, frailing
banjo to fingerstyle guitar and warm vocals. The tapestry of
sounds Doc wove during his first two decades performing outside
North Carolina – the Big Picture – unfolds in these enduringly
and inspiring performances.
Tunes include: Deep River Blues, Nine Pound Hammer,
Daniel Prayed, St. James Hospital, Shady Grove, Black Mountain
Rag, Stack O' Lee Blues, Tom Dooley, Southbound, Way
Downtown, Lonesome Road, Medley: Nancy Roland/Salt Creek,
I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground, Sweet Georgia Brown, Peach
Pickin' Time Down In Georgia, Will The Circle Be Unbroken,
Raincrow Bill, Tennessee Stud, Medley: Big Sandy/Bill Cheatham,
A Roving On A Winters Night and Black Mountain Rag.
Running time: 60 minutes • B/W and Color
Front photo by David Gahr
Back photo by Jim Crouse & Janet Thompson
Nationally distributed by Rounder Records,
One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140
Representation to Music Stores by
Mel Bay Publications
© 2002 Vestapol Productions
A division of
Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, Inc.
VESTAPOL 13023
ISBN: 1-57940-955-5
0
1 1 6 7 1 30239
3