Folk and bluegrass pioneer Doc Watson is dead at 89.
This has not been a good year for musical legends. Charley Louvin is dead; Glen Campbell is retiring due to Alzheimer’s disease; Whitney Houston is dead; even disco is dead, thanks to the deaths of Donna Summer and Robin Gibb. Joining those ranks is the incredible folk music icon whose pick has been called running water by Bob Dylan and who reinvented the role of the guitar in bluegrass music due to his application of banjo style to flattop guitar. Doc Watson, born Arthel Lane Watson, is dead at age 89 following a fall in his Deep Gap, North Carolina, home and subsequent colon surgery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyQOCJ4SUSk“He is single-handedly responsible for the extraordinary increase in acoustic flatpicking and fingerpicking performance,” writes folklorist and musician Ralph Rinzler, who first recorded Doc Watson and Clarence “Tom” Ashley in 1960. “His flatpicking style has no precedent in early country music history.”
Indeed, Watson, who was a master of both flatpicking and fingerpicking guitar, was one of the most influential guitar players of the 1960’s, thanks to two appearances at the Newport Folk Festival (1963 and 1964), his recordings with his late son Merle Watson and Flatt & Scruggs, and his many guest appearances on other country albums. Watson racked up 7 Grammys in 33 years of recording, won the lifetime achievement Grammy in 2004, and was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton in 1997.
He accomplished all this despite being blind since before age one.
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