Watson of Deep Gap: A Retrospective- Ward 1975
Watson of Deep Gap: A Retrospective
by W. H. Ward
Appalachian Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1975), pp. 102-110
Watson of Deep Gap: A Retrospective
Among the legion who regard Arthel "Doc" Watson of Deep Gap, North Carolina, with mingled affection and awe, no story is dearer than the one about the time that Doc, blind from birth, re-wired his own house. The tale nourishes a suspicion harbored by most of us who have heard and seen him play guitar runs of bewildering speed and density while cleanly, scrupulously preserving the distinctness of every note: his hands can "see" with a clarity close to perfection. And it was this instrumental dexterity even more than his voice, an unusually smooth one and beautifully suited to the type of song with which he became associated, that brought him to prominence, then pre- eminence among the modern per- formers of old-time music. Aside from the simple fact of his talent, his early success came, I think, because he filled a need vaguely felt by many who were caught up in the Great Folk Revival of the early sixties. The Kingston Trio and most others of their ilk, for all their ability to wring maximum mileage out of enthusiasm, cleft chins, and sufficient command of their instruments to keep them two lessons ahead of those of us who were learning, were Burbank hybrids (the city, not the botanist). At the opposite end of the spec- trum, of course, were the Frank Proffitts, the "pure" performers with a total lack of polish and (by city standards) makeshift playing styles. Though accomplished ar- tists within their native traditions, the ethnic pickers and singers required some getting used to; and the major segment of the album- buying public, its tastes molded by studio music, did not find them appealing. Doc satisfied the ob- jections all around. Born and raised in the Appalachians, whose ways he had thoroughly absorbed, he held unimpeachable cultural credentials. A lifetime of exposure to rural American music in all its forms and ten years' practice at flat-picking an electric guitar with a country swing band had en- dowed him with an instrumental technique that was nothing short of astounding. What Earl Scruggs was to the banjo, Doc Watson was (and is) to the guitar.
A key figure in Doc's emergence was Ralph Rinzler, himself a fine musician, who came south to the Union Grove Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention looking for Clarence Ashley, banjoist with the Carolina Tar Heels in the twenties and thirties. Ashley told him about a fellow in Watauga County who was an exceptional picker, so Rinzler looked him up and persuaded him to come along to the home of Ashley's daughter. This trip is another bit of Watsoniana deserving of broad circulation, for, as Doc describes it, it becomes a mobile variation on the familiar vignette of the reluctant country musician and the urbanité who has stumbled across a diamond in the rough:
"I'd sat on the back of a pickup truck. ..and thumped on the banjo and talked with Ralph about the old-time music and how I grew up. By the time we got over to the house, Ralph was all excited and thought he'd discovered somebody. I had a lot of misgivings about it."
It was Rinzler who took Doc in hand professionally, booking concerts for him and negotiating his first two record contracts with Folkways and Vanguard. It was Rinzler too who first understood that Doc's musical breadth extended beyond the confines of folk material.
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Few who have followed Doc's career closely would deny that on his last several albums his sound has been appreciably different, both in terms of songs and instrumentation, from most of his earlier work. Certainly, his first fans did not foresee albums that would feature such tunes as Gershwin's "Summertime" and Hank Williams's country standard, "Kawliga." From the beginning, however, there were sufficient clues as to what directions Doc might take. In his liner notes to Doc's first records, for example, Rinzler carefully pointed out that his find was no sequestered rustic, but rather a man whose access to electronic media and whose years of experience with Jack Williams's country swing group had exposed him to all sorts of music. Doc himself readily concedes that a change in his public image has come about in recent years, but he asserts that there has been no alteration in what he terms "the scope of music that I love."
"There is a definite change in the way the records have gone," he admits, "because when I started in the early sixties I thought I had some kind of a certain image to live up to, and did, in one way, because there was a whole bunch of hard- core fans. ..that wanted the ethnic things and the old-timey sound."
Now, the same Doc Watson who enhanced his own legend by re-wiring his house has electrified his act; and, while even he is a little surprised that his adoption of an electric bass into his shows has produced no more adverse com- ment than it has, this move (as well as son Merle's occasional use of an electric pick-up attachment on his slide-guitar numbers) con- stitutes a major departure from the purism that customarily attends the performance of old-time music. Further, that Doc has clearly en- tered a new phase in his public career makes him at least a com- paratively moderate example of the tendency among the mainstays of the Folk Boom (Dylan and Baez come to mind first) to move on in the direction of orthodox country and rock. The first fruits of the Ashley circle's meeting with Rinzler (and his friend, folklorist Eugene Earle) were a pair of Folkways albums titled Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's (1961). This set, a classic of its kind (and still available), reunited the Carolina Tar Heels and showcased the talents of Ashley and his friends, including Doc Watson. Ashley himself acted as the "star" of the aggregation, and properly so. One of a number of folk performers, white and black, who achieved a measure of regional fame in the formative days of the record industry, faded into obscurity, then re-appeared in the closing years of their lives, Ashley was a fine hand at playing his banjo and singing from a repertoire that ranged from moun- tain balladry to medicine-show rousers. Indeed, Ashley's stylings of such tunes as "Little Sadie" and "The Coo-Coo Bird" live on in the versions since made better known by Doc, whose guitar work on these discs was far beyond what one commonly expects to hear in field recordings of local musicians.
Two years later, Folkways released The Watson Family, another step toward Doc's entry onto the scene as an individual master. Several of his vocalizations on this album - notably "Everyday Dirt," "Down the Road," and "The Lone Pilgrim" - stand as something of a "lost" body of his best work, for neither the Ashley set nor this record has ever achieved the audience it deserves. And, largely for sentimental reasons, Doc will not re-record many of the tunes he did with his late father-in-law Gaither Carlton, a fiddler of uncommon clarity and sweetness. Otherwise remarkable for its in- clusion of a local murder ballad sung by Mrs. Sophronie Greer, whose first husband's fratricide and death are recounted in the piece, the family anthology offers rare samples of Doc's mandolin and autoharp playing and puts his "church bass" to good use on a couple of interesting hymns per- formed by the entire group. Aside from his introduction to Rinzler, probably the most im- portant event in Doc's professional life was his move to the Vanguard label in 1964. Folkways is a highly respected organization, but one which the song is prone when per- formed in unadorned mountain style. Moreover, the detail in Doc's version, coupled with the in- formation in the liner notes that Doc's forebears had actually known the principals in the killing of Laura Foster, argued per- suasively for its genuineness and for his. Sing Out magazine recognized exactly the same mix of tradition and cosmopolitanism in "Omie Wise," "with its beautiful melding of old country singing and striking modern guitar." In ad- dition to capturing the full subtlety of Doc's voice for the first time (this disc was his initial studio- whose productions run to the scholarly and esoteric and are therefore not widely promoted in the general market. Vanguard, billing itself as a purveyor of "recordings for the connoisseur," had attained domination of the field by concentrating on "serious" folk artists who were still euphonic enough to sell albums in large quantities.
Doc Watson (1964), his first release under the new contract, was self-evident proof of how well he could deliver the ideal sound for Vanguard's clientele. A prime case in point was his lively presentation of "Tom Dooley," which wholly avoided the slickness of the Kingston Trio's rendition and the dreariness to recorded one), the album included a trail-blazing flat-picked "Black Mountain Rag" which was not only amazing in itself but also the beginning of a string of fiddle tunes which Doc has broken down for guitar, contributing in the process a new dimension to the in- strumental techniques of bluegrass. Though not so rich in truly memorable cuts, Doc Watson & Son (1965) was essentially more of the same. As Rinzler comments in its notes, "There isn't a song on this record that Doc didn't know twenty-five years ago." The album's contents, reaching from the music-hall melodrama of "Dream of the Miner's Child" to the bright playfulness of the Ap- palachian favorite "Groundhog," seemed merely to confirm the restrictive assumptions about Doc's style that his earlier work had encouraged. That both Vanguard and the artist himself saw Southbound (1966) as a depar- ture from the image he had brought with him from Deep Gap is plain from the little essay of Doc's which appears on the jacket. Mostly autobiographical, it also undertakes to outline his country- swing experience, prepare the faithful for the largely non- traditional character of the album, and assure them that the aberration is a temporary one. Recorded in a single day (during which Doc also taped part of his next release), Southbound is a study in polarities, for it features some extremely up-to-date "hot" guitar ("Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Windy and Warm") together with some of the most un- complicatedly pretty songs he has ever done (Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing On My Mind" and the traditional "Riddle Song" and "Alberta"). Significantly too, this collection marks the real arrival of Merle Watson, who wrote the title song and plays a competent lead guitar on four of the selections. Doc's promise to return in his next offering to his mountain roots was kept beautifully. To those who see balladry and the folk lyric as his native forte, Home Again! (1967) is his finest ever, a nearly perfect anthology which shows just how good authentic material can sound when treated with a blend of in- strumental sophistication and cultural integrity. Doc freely admits to having made some emendations in several of the texts, but his ear never plays him false and the spirit (as well as the narrative line) of each song remains inviolate. "Geòrgie," "Matty Groves," and "The F.F.V." are superior exam- ples of story-songs which, originating from such disparate sources as Renaissance Britain and the railroading days of the American South, found a haven in the minds of mountain people, who were willing to accept both libidinous outlaws and self- sacrificing engineers as their own. Singled out by the English folklorist A. L. Lloyd as a "masterpiece" of Doc's repertoire, "Matty Groves" is a ballad of extraordinary narrative complexity and cohesiveness. Starting with an incomplete version supplied by his friend Dolly Greer, Doc brought the text to its present state by drawing on his own imagination and the printed collections of Cecil Sharp and Vance Randolph. Using a tune he had heard from another friend, the operator of a small restaurant in his home area, he devised a two-fingered guitar accompaniment that interacts per- fectly with the story-line's drama of sexual intrigue and retribution. Outstanding among the album's lyrics are "Winter's Night" and "Pretty Saro," the latter proving conclusively that a cappella folksinging does not have to be a stark and unbeautiful affair.
As if to emphasize the foolishness of pigeonholing him, however, Doc next came out with a record which was less a step in the direction of the Nashville sound than a diving into it headlong. Good Deal! Doc Watson in Nashville (1968) surrounded him with an all- star corps of sidemen including Grady Martin, Tommy Jackson, and Floyd Cramer and afforded him the chance to flat-pick popular standards on the order of "Alabama Jubilee" and "Bye Bye Blues" against a background of unprecedented fullness. Then too, although the content of the record runs most typically to material from A. P. Carter, Roy Acuff, and others from the early days of commercial country music, there is also a leavening dash of tradition in Doc's banjo-frailing on "Shady Grove." Now, having given evidence of his ability to work with a full com- plement of musicians, he issued a reminder of how well equipped were he and Merle to go it alone: Doc Watson on Stage (1970). Roughly spanning the gamut of generic extremes at which he had previously touched since the beginning of his recording career, this two-disc set is highly pleasing in several ways. First, obviously, because it relies solely on the talents of two men with relatively simple acoustic instruments, it is a kind of tour de force, one which expresses the mystique of old-time music in general. Had every wall-plug in New York City gone dead suddenly, Doc and Merle Watson - on the stage at Town Hall - could (and no doubt would) have picked on, undeterred. Second, Doc and Merle are nice people and are best experienced in person, a situation ap- proximated as closely as possible by these records. Finally, and in view of current conditions perhaps not least importantly, the set is part of Vanguard's "twofers" series, which offers a pair of records for little more than the price of one. The collection is highlighted by Doc's "Brown's Ferry Blues" (the first I have ever heard that takes it up to the tempo where it sounds best), his fluent and sympathetic handling of a cowboy ballad called "When the Work's All Done this Fall," and a medley of "Salt River" and "Bill Cheatham," fiddle numbers he festoons with seemingly endless runs and executes at a pace which threatens to fuse his strings together. Except for The Essential Doc Watson (1973), another of the "twofers" which is mostly a selec- tion of cuts from the other albums, Doc's final offering on Vanguard was Ballads from Deep Gap (1971). Given equal billing with his father on this one, Merle displays a mastery of Scruggs-style banjo on "Alabama Bound" (not the familiar pop tune) and of old-time technique on Clarence Ashley's "The Cuckoo," where he employs Ashley's tricky upstroke to evoke the proper air of strangeness in this minor-key lyric. Altogether, the album was a fitting farewell to the organization under whose banner Doc had reached real fame and prosperity. Jimmie Rodgers's "My Rough and Rowdy Ways" is there, and in a form whose rhythmic regularity is an actual im- provement over the original. Doc's old favorites, the Delmore Brothers (a tape of whose songs he secured from Eugene Earle), are recollected in "Gambler's Yodel," while "The Lawson Family Murder" is a latter-day bough from the North Carolina homicide-ballad tradition of which "Tom Dooley" and "Omie Wise" form the root. For all his manifest joy in his craft, Doc will tell you frankly that he is in the "music business" to earn a living; and it was this con- sideration which took him to Poppy Records (a United Artists subsidiary) in 1972.
Despite Vanguard's elite position and its remunerative policy of keeping old releases in its catalog, Doc and his manager Manny Greenhill opted for Poppy's broader distribution system and have generally been happy with the decision. In fact, he credits his large increase in con- cert demands over the past few years to his participation in Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (1972), a three-record package in which he joined several other old-time and bluegrass luminaries to jam with United Artists' Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Though naturally reticent when asked to name the album of his that has pleased him most, Doc sometimes betrays the secret over the course of a conversation; for his first Poppy collection, Elemen- tary Doctor Watson (1972), contains a good number of the cuts he is willing to single out as his special favorites: "Worried Blues" and "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad" (both invigorated re- arrangements of songs from his earlier discs), the venerable Jimmie Rodgers's "Treasures Untold" (dedicated to Doc's wife Rosalee), and Merle's modernistic banjo-piece "Interstate Rag."
The son's development into a first-rate picker has unquestionably had a vast impact on his father, who is also his biggest fan. "Merle is a real student of the blues," as Doc says, and since his maturation as a performer, the pair have laced their repertoire with liberal samplings from the work of such black giants as Lemon Jefferson, Blind Boy Fuller, and Mississippi John Hurt. Then and Now (1973) has a distinctly bluesy flavor, and by no means only in its direct borrowings (for instance, "Match Box Blues" and "Corinna, Corinna") from black sources. Here the Watsons take up the banjo for one tune only, and Doc's overdubbing of harmony parts for his own singing leaves no doubt that a new day has arrived. A beautifully charted "If I Needed You" sets Doc's voice against a background of Watson guitars, Bobby Seymor's steel, and Chuck Cochran's string arrangement (violins now, not fiddles) to demonstrate that he still has his touch with songs which have only prettiness going for them. I confess that it was not until I had listened carefully to Two Days in November (1974) that I realized the single most important factor in shaping Doc's "new" sound: It is percussion. Jim Isbel's drums, although mostly unobtrusive and played more often with brushes than sticks, are just enough at times to push an arrangement across the thin line that separates genres. Thus, this album's "Lonesome Moan," a Lemon Jefferson blues, comes out rhythm- and-bues-verging-on-rock, and the guitar medley of "Little Beggar Man" and "Old Joe Clark" is con- verted to a country-swing hoedown that must recall Doc's days with Jack Williams to him. If Doc may be said to have a "theme song," it is probably "The Train That Carried My Girl from Town." He has recorded it at various stages in his development, and it has become a sort of stylistic barometer of his thinking at each stage. His performance of the song on Two Days is a brilliant one, even more unbelievably swift than ever before and paced by Merle's banjo, which seems to urge and goad the guitar on to the farthest limits of possible speed. And there, for the present, it stands. Doc Watson has never made a recording that is not well worth owning. Given his residuum of talent, he never will. Though what tack his music will take next is anybody's guess, he has plans to make his forthcoming album a survey of the ground he has covered already, an anthology of the styles that his still-expanding abilities (and if Doc can get better, anyone can) have embraced up to now. Merle, who programmed Two Days, will co-produce it and, no doubt, continue to have a crucial effect on and part in his father's experiments.
But whatever happens, Doc will still be Doc, and I am willing to forego making a symbol of the fact that the man who rode with Ralph Rinzler on the bed of a pickup truck now travels com- fortably to pácked-hall concerts in a fancy camper. I would rather point out that his new house, a handsome brick one with thick carpets and plenty of room, stands adjacent to the small frame one from which he and Rinzler depar- ted that day. If, in terms of music, there really is a difference be- tween the Doc Watson of then and the Doc Watson of now, they are at least close enough to find each other right next door.
W. H. Ward
By trade, W. H. Ward is Assistant Professor of English at Appalachian State University. By avocation, he is a student and performer of American folk music. By pleasant and inveterate habit, he is a Watson-watcher.