Doc WatsonRare Performances1982-1993featuringMerle WatsonRicky SkaggsT. Michael ColemanMark O’ConnorTony RiceSam BushJerry DouglasJack LawrenceDavid GrismanBela Fleckand others

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Doc WatsonRare Performances 1982-1993

by Mark Humphrey

Arthel ‘Doc’ Watson is nothing if not resourceful. In 1957he did the complete electrical wiring of his house. That wouldbe no mean feat even if Doc weren’t blind, a fact which hasseldom stood in his way. “Electronics I’ve loved ever since Iwas a little bitty boy,” Doc told Gary Govert (Carolina Lifestyle,August 1983). “I used to play with T Model coils, car hornparts, magnets, you name it. What little I learned...most of itwas from getting shocked and experience.” Shocks and ex-perience, Doc has found, are great teachers. “Most blindpeople,” Doc told Jean Stewart (Sing Out! Vol. 29/No. 1) “arepretty well normal or they can be made so with the rightenvironment and reasonable training.” Despite some discour-aging experiences at North Carolina’s State School for theBlind, Doc’s family gave him the right environment. “The bestthing my Dad ever did for me in my life,” Doc told Jon Sievert(Frets, Vol. 1, No. 1, March 1979), “was to put me at one endof a crosscut saw. He put me to work and that made me feeluseful.” And Doc’s siblings didn’t offer undue protection: “Iwent out and climbed trees and fell out just like the rest ofmy brothers did.”

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It’s just as well, for Doc grew up in a rugged country andin a desperate era (the Depression) when special treatmentwas a luxury few could afford. Born in 1923, Doc was one ofthe nine children of General Dixon and Annie Watson. Thefamily traces its lineage to a Scots immigrant, Tom Watson,who homesteaded three thousand acres of North Carolinaland in the 1790s. By General Dixon Watson’s time little ofthat bounty was left for him and his offspring, but the familywas rich in music and local folklore. Doc’s great-grandmotherknew the woman alleged to have been the real culprit in thecelebrated case of Tom Dooley. Ballads of similar local ca-lamities (The Triplett Tragedy) along with ancient supernaturalones (The House Carpenter) once enlivened the pre-video/radio evenings in Deep Gap, North Carolina. So too did thefoursquare harmonies of the shape note hymnals and theless pious tones of banjos, fiddles, and harmonicas. Adjoin-ing the Watson clan were sundry musical neighbors and in-laws: Doc gained a remarkable song resource and old timefiddler in father-in-law Gaither Carlton when he wed his teen-aged daughter, Rosa Lee, in 1947. The wealth of traditionalmusic current in the Watson family in the early 1960s wasdocumented in no fewer than four albums: The Doc WatsonFamily (Smithsonian/Folkways CD SF 40012), The WatsonFamily Tradition (Topic 12TS336), Doc Watson & Family: Trea-sures Untold (Vanguard VCD 77001), and the Doc WatsonFamily: Songs From the Southern Mountains (Sugar HillSHCD-3829).

Growing up with a hymn-singing father, ballad-singingmother, and banjo-beating brothers gave Doc ample encour-agement to express himself musically. When Doc was six,further encouragement arrived in the form of a Victrola whichplayed the songs of the Carter Family and such regional fa-vorites as Clarence Ashley, with whom Doc would work inlater years. By 1939, the year the Watson family acquired abattery-set radio, radio had become a third important influ-ence on the development of Doc’s repertoire. When his sonwas born a decade later, Doc named him for two of his radiofavorites, Eddy Arnold and Merle Travis.

The harmonica was Doc’s first instrument, though hewould tell folklorist A.L. Lloyd: “I must have worried Mama alot. Everything that had a musical tone, if it was a pot or acow-bell, I was always tapping on it to see what it soundedlike.” His first stringed instrument was a banjo his father made

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for Doc at age 11: “He carved the neck out of maple andmade little friction tuning pegs like dulcimers have,” Doc toldJon Sievert. “When he got the hoop done he stretched agroundhog hide over it, but that just didn’t work right. It wastoo stiff and didn’t give a very good tone. We solved the prob-lem, though, when Granny’s 16-year-old cat passed on. Thatmade one of the best banjo heads you ever seen...”

Two years after he first rapped Rambling Hobo from thefeline five-string, Doc got his hands on the instrument withwhich his name has since become synonymous. His brother,Linney, had borrowed a guitar from a neighbor and Doc wastrying his hand at it. “Dad noticed,” he recalled, “and said if Icould play a tune by the time he got home from work thatnight, he’d go to town and buy me one of my own.” Doc metthe challenge with a rendition of the Carter Family’s Whenthe Roses Bloom in Dixieland, though he had a head starthis dad wasn’t aware of: he’d already picked up a few chordsfrom a friend at the State School for the Blind. Like ElizabethCotten and many other guitarists who started playing in thefirst half of this century, Doc’s first guitar was a Stella pur-chased, he recalls, from Rhodes & Day’s in North Wilkesboro,North Carolina.

While the prominence of sightless Southern guitarists(Blind Willie McTell, Rev. Gary Davis, and Riley Puckett, toname only a few) has led some to speculate that the blindhave special musical aptitude, Doc contends he went aboutit the hard way. “For me,” he told Josh Alan Friedman (Ameri-

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can Way, April 15, 1988), “it was a matter of learning dis-tances from one point to another and how far you jump...Myhand has to approximate distances, say from the third fretup to the seventh, make that jump. I do miss occasionally.”

Doc was jumping in public by the time he was 18, theyear he got the Doc moniker after a radio announcer stumbledon Arthel. Sometime he played in bands, though he alsosoloed on the streets. “When they’d hear a couple of tunes,”Doc recalled of his ‘busking’ days, “they’d throw you a quar-ter or a 50-cent piece and come up and say, ‘Play me an-other one, son.’” Doc earned enough this way to buy a Mar-tin D-28, an instrument he eventually traded for a Les Paulwhen he began working in the band of piano-player JackWilliams. “I played an electric guitar during the 1950s,” Doctold Friedman, “a local dance band. We didn’t do any recordsor TV shows. Friday and Saturday nights, sometimes I’d bringhome 30 or 40 bucks. I used a Les Paul, got in a lot of goodtechnical practice on that thing. Had to do a lot of leads forsquare dancing. I tuned a few pianos during the week andtook some charity from the State of North Carolina. It was agood, proud day when I got started in the folk revival of the1960s and wrote and told ‘em I didn’t need it anymore; helpsomebody else with it.”

Doc’s start in the folk revival resulted from an accidentof the ‘right place/right time’ variety. Musician-folklorist RalphRinzler and collector-discographer Eugene Earle had goneSouth to find Clarence Ashley in Shouns, Tennessee. Ashleywas known to collectors of vintage ‘hillbilly’ recordings forhis 1929-33 solo efforts and appearances in such stringbandsas the Carolina Tar Heels. Though Ashley would eventuallyreturn to the five-string banjo with which he made his earlyrecords, at the time Rinzler and Earle located him he wasbanjoless and offered to sing to the electric guitar accompa-niment of Doc Watson. That wasn’t at all what the folkloristshad in mind! It took some persuasion, but in time Rinzlerhad Watson frailing banjo and playing the old songs of hisfamily tradition on acoustic guitar. Rinzler and Earle were asimpressed by the discovery of the unknown Watson as theywere by their rediscovery of Ashley, finds which were sharedwith the Friends of Old Time Music at an historic 1961 NewYork City concert featuring Ashley, Watson, singer-fiddler FredPrice and singer-guitarist Clint Howard. (Separately, Ashleyand the Watson-Price-Howard trio can be seen on Vestapol

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Video 13026, Legends of Old Time Music). Doc graduallyemerged from this company as an unforeseen blend of tra-ditional repertoire and instrumental innovation. His 1963-64 appearances at the Newport Folk Festival were sensa-tions: no one had heard anything quite like Doc’s flatpickingof fiddle tunes before. “In the early 1960s,” Dan Crary toldArt Coats (Pickin’ February 1975), “guitar and folk music waspretty much somebody on a nylon-stringed guitar doing somegroovy strums. All of a sudden here comes Watson playingall this beautiful, clean, driving stuff with a flat pick. Peoplewere literally on the floor gasping for breath.”

Following a 1964 debut at the Berkeley Folk Festival,Merle Watson became an increasingly integral part of hisfather’s career and music. Merle first distinguished himselfby some clean John Hurt inspired fingerpicking to which helater added a distinctive slide guitar style. “He didn’t startworkin’ on the slide guitar till the early 1970s,” Doc told JeanStewart, “when he heard the Allman Brothers Band. He heardDuane Allman play electric slide guitar and he said to meone night, ‘Daddy, do you reckon them licks could be turnedto traditional music?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, if you put your mindto it you can do it.’ That was all he needed. He grabbed aCraftsman socket wrench and stuck it on that finger and wentto work on it!” Joined by electric bass guitarist T. MichaelColeman in 1974, the Watsons enjoyed tremendous successon the bluegrass festival circuit in the 1970s-80s. This fol-lowed some lean years in the late 1960s-early 1970s as the

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folk revival waned and psychedelia reigned. Doc’s salvationcame in 1971 when he was invited to participate in the NittyGritty Dirt Band’s influential longhairs-and-hillbillies summit,Will the Circle Be Unbroken. The album effectively gave Doc’scareer a new lease on life (and a new record label, UnitedArtists, after many years on the folk-oriented Vanguard).

Twenty years after his discovery at the side of ClarenceAshley in Shouns, Tennessee, Doc Watson gave a concert onthe lawn of Jimmy Carter’s White House. He had indeed comea long way from the meager circumstances (“charity fromthe State of North Carolina”) in which he had been discov-ered. Grammy awards, international tours, and acclaim insuch disparate publications as Playboy and People had fol-lowed him from Deep Gap. In 1985, 22 years since his New-port Folk Festival debut, Doc and Merle played at the firstNewport Folk Festival since 1969. The reborn Newport Festi-val triumph was one of the last shared by the father-son team:Merle Watson died in a farm equipment accident on October23, 1985.

Following the devastating loss of his son and musicalpartner, Doc instituted a celebration of his music and memoryin 1988, the Merle Watson Memorial Festival at Wilkesboro,North Carolina. The annual festival has since become one ofthe outstanding music events of the Southeast. Along withappearances by both bluegrass and country stars, it has be-come a now rare opportunity to hear Doc Watson, who hasaccepted few touring dates in recent years. Perhaps both thespecial circumstances of the festival and the relatively re-laxed local environment contributed to Doc’s spirited ‘lion inwinter’ performances at the Merle Watson Festival in the goodcompany of (among other great pickers) Tony Rice and RickySkaggs. As to whether Doc will ever entirely Lay Down MyOld Guitar, in the words of a Delmore Brothers song he usedto sing, we can only speculate based on his comments: “Agood guitar is like a friend,” he told Josh Alan Friedman.“Sometimes when you’re lonely, bored or depressed, you pickthat guitar up and play and all at once, it’s gone. It’s like aconversation with a good friend, I imagine. You play an oldsong, and you remember all kinds of wonderful things.”

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The Performances

New River TrainLike many of the traditional songs in Doc’s repertoire,

this one may be a distillation gleaned from several sources.“New River Train originated in southern Virginia, probably inthe 1880s,” writes Norm Cohen in Long Steel Rail: The Rail-road in American Folk Song (University of Illinois Press, Ur-bana, 1981). Cohen believes the song referred to an exten-sion begun in 1883 of the Norfolk and Western Railway alongthe New River, which runs north-south from North Carolinaacross Virginia and part of West Virginia. Henry Whitter, whoplayed guitar and (like Doc) blew harp in a rack, first re-corded New River Train in 1923. “Whitter hailed from Fries,near the New River and on the N&W branch to Galax,” writesCohen. The song was subsequently recorded by Kelly Harrell,Ernest Stoneman, and, at their 1936 debut recording ses-sion, Bill and Charlie Monroe. Doc’s rollicking ride on theNew River Train features some wonderfully fluid fingerpick-ing from Merle, who was much indebted to Mississippi JohnHurt’s influence. Doc’s instrumental break finds him quotingone of his own best known phrases, the part of Black Moun-tain Rag Janet Smith once likened to tumbling dominos: “Hespins off an outrageous row of fast notes that sound likehe’s had them standing in line waiting for the first one to betipped over.”

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Shady GroveIn concert, Doc often introduced this song as one “I

learned from my hard working Dad.” Along with GeneralWatson, Doc’s version of Shady Grove owes something toClarence Ashley, who performed it during the period Docworked with him. “Shady Grove has been widely collectedthroughout Appalachia,” wrote Ralph Rinzler, “but it was notcorrespondingly represented in the recorded repertoire ofthe 1920s and 1930s.” Perhaps it was already deemed anantique even by the standards of that era: the modal ‘hill-billy’ tunes that found their way onto commercial recordstended to have a tinge of the newer blues sound mixed withtheir Anglo-Celtic roots. Shady Grove is unabashedly pre-blues in the way it uses the Dorian mode (a flat third andflat seventh with—here anyway—the sixth tone entirely omit-ted). This performance shows the subtle weaving of Merle’sfingerpicking into the fabric of Doc’s flatpicked lead lines.Doc first learned this song on banjo. For an example of the‘old timey’ Shady Grove on the five-string, see the 1970 per-formance of it on Vestapol Video 13023, Doc Watson: RarePerformances, 1963-1981.

Going to ChicagoManuel Greenhill, Doc’s longtime manager, believes the

source of this archetypal blues to be a Jimmy Rushing re-cording with Count Basie’s band. He speculates that Doc mayhave actually learned the song from Merle, who was some-thing of a blues collector. Certainly father and son both dem-onstrate a great affinity for the idiom in their picking and inDoc’s singing and spirited harmonica solo.

Blue Yodel No. 12Jimmie Rodgers recorded this, the penultimate title in

his ‘blue yodel’ series, at his final heroic round of recordingsessions in May 1933. “I really enjoyed that good solid strumhe laid on his guitar behind his Blue Yodels,” Doc told MitchellA. Yockelson (“Interview with Doc Watson,” Old Time Coun-try, Vol. VI No. III, Fall 1989). “There’s something about that;it had personality. It just stood on its own feet on the records.”Doc credits the influence of Rodgers’ relatively simple runswith setting him on the path to mastery of the flatpick: “Istarted off playing with a thumb lead, Maybelle Carter style,”Doc told Jon Sievert (Frets, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1979). “Then

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when I began to listen to Jimmie Rodgers I figured out therewas something being done there besides the thumb and fin-ger. So I got me a pick and started working on it.”

While Rodgers’ remarks about women would win noprizes for political correctness today, they expressed his‘rounder’s’ world view with wit and frankness which doubt-less contributed (alongside his yodeling punctuation) to hisDepression-era popularity. Doc not only conveys Rodgers’rowdy spirit but delivers some crisp guitar lines which farexceed the Singing Brakeman’s effective but limited abili-ties. Merle’s slide guitar superbly augments this evocation ofRodgers’ pioneering blend of country and blues. Few slideguitarists have ever been as clean or as accurate as Merle,who hit the notes with a singing clarity usually associatedwith lap-style dobro players. Merle, who cited Duane Allmanas the inspiration for his taking up slide guitar in 1973, useda Sears & Roebuck 5/8-inch socket wrench as a slide.

Sleep, Baby, SleepFurther evidence of Jimmie Rodgers’ impact on Doc ap-

pears in this “moldy fig from the nineteenth century stage,”the description laid on this song by Rodgers biographer NolanPorterfield. Composed in 1869, Sleep, Baby, Sleep was oneof the two songs Rodgers chose for his 1927 recording de-but. As Doc ably demonstrates, it was a dreamily sentimen-tal ‘yodeling’ showpiece and had been used as such on recordas far back as 1920. Doc and Jack Lawrence play things nicelyclose to the vest here, showing Doc's good taste in layingback when the material calls for it.

You Must Come in at the DoorThe Los Angeles-based Western vocal group the Sons of

the Pioneers recorded a version of this (penned by foundingPioneer Tim Spencer) in 1937 and again (as Too High, TooWide, Too Low) in 1947. Except for the refrain, it doesn’t muchresemble Doc’s song. Manuel Greenhill believes Doc’s ver-sion was derived from a recording by the Stamps-BaxterQuartet to which Doc subsequently added his own verses.Doc lets Jack Lawrence do the flatpicking while he spins somesprightly Travis-style fingerpicked lines.

Dear Old Sunny South by the SeaAnother page from the Jimmie Rodgers songbook, this

came from the pen of Ellsworth T. Cozzens, the maternal

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uncle of dobroist Mike Auldridge. The connection to Auldridgeis noteworthy because Cozzens has the distinction of beingthe first acoustic steel guitarist to appear on Rodgers’ re-cordings. The original 1928 recording of this song was theinstruments’ debut in Rodgers’ oeuvre. Doc’s version movesat a brisker clip than the original, though both offer somespirited yodeling.

Amazing GraceJohn Newton’s celebrated 1779 hymn enjoyed the secu-

lar distinction of becoming an international pop hit for JudyCollins in 1971. Doc’s moving a cappella performance re-calls the sounds he heard on Sundays as a boy, while thesolo harmonica introduction suggests bluesier music he madeon other days. “Every Christmas as far back as I can remem-ber,” Doc once said, “Santa Claus slipped a harmonica intothe big old stocking that I’d get to hang up on the mantlepiece.”

Foggy Mountain TopBill and Charlie Monroe recorded their version of this

Carter family song in 1936. In 1964, Doc had the pleasure ofrecording it with Bill Monroe ( Bill Monroe ~ Doc Watson:Live Duet Recordings, 1963-1980, Smithsonian Folkways SFCD 40064). This 1992 performance has Ricky Skaggs takingMonroe’s parts on harmony vocals and mandolin. Both Docand Ricky deliver fleet picking and sweet singing.

What Is a Home Without LoveLike the previous song, this was waxed at the Monroe

Brothers’ influential 1936 debut recording session. Writtenby Charlie Monroe, it was revived in 1956 by the Louvin Broth-ers for their Tragic Songs of Life album. Doc and Ricky applythe right balance of wistful restraint to this sentimental clas-sic.

Nine Pound HammerNine Pound Hammer Is a Little Too Heavy is the title Bill

and Charlie Monroe gave this when they recorded it (alongwith the previous two songs) at their initial Bluebird sessionin 1936. It was something of a chestnut already, having beenwaxed in 1927 by Al Hopkins & His Buckle Busters. MerleTravis cut his celebrated version in 1946 and can be seenperforming it on Vestapol Video 13012, Merle Travis: RarePerformances/1946-1981. Folklorist Archie Green calls Nine

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Pound Hammer a “railroad-construction and levee-buildingwork song widely scattered in black and white tradition.” Docand Ricky obviously have fun with it, as did Doc in a trio withFred Price and Clint Howard in an earlier rendition of thesong seen on Vestapol Video 13023, Doc Watson: Rare Per-formances, 1963-1981.

Riding On That Midnight TrainRalph Stanley wrote this bluegrass classic first recorded

by the Stanley Brothers in 1959. “Bluegrass,” Doc told MichaelBrooks in a 1972 Guitar Player interview, “is part of old timeycountry music, but it just progressed into a little differentsound.” Doc’s version of bluegrass is ably abetted here byformer Clinch Mountain Boy Ricky Skaggs, vocal and mando-lin, Tony Rice, guitar, Jerry Douglas, dobro, Mark O’Connor,fiddle, and David Grisman, mandolin. Doc recorded this onthe Sugar Hill album, Riding the Midnight Train, which claimedthe 1986 Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Recording.

Fire Ball MailRoy Acuff rode the Wabash Cannonball to stardom in

1936 and enjoyed a string of train-related hits through the1940s, of which Fred Rose’s Fire Ball Mail was among themost spirited. Here the song provides a framework for aninstrumental ‘jam’ in which Doc is joined by the ‘twin man-dolins’ of Roland White and Tim O’Brien, the dobro of JerryDouglas, the fiddle of Mark O’Connor, the banjo of Bela Fleck,and the guitar of Jack Lawrence, an extraordinary stringbandof young and senior players showing their shared love for acountry classic. Where would our music be without trains?

Rock Medley: Love Me/Tutti Frutti/Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’On”

For Doc’s devout folk fans, it was hard to believe he hadonce paid the rent with music such as this! For Doc, it hadbeen equally hard in 1960 to believe that folk songs deemedpassé in his community for a generation were suddenly indemand among young urban collegiates. As time passed, rock‘oldies’ became folk songs of a sort and Doc could publiclyown up to enjoying some of the songs he used to play on aLes Paul in Jack Williams’ band the Country Gentlemen (notthe well-known bluegrass band of the same name). This trioof toe-tappers were hits for Elvis, Little Richard and Jerry Lee

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Lewis in 1956-57. Ever one for casual surprises, Doc closeswith a nice instrumental quotation from Count Basie’s 1942hit, One O’Clock Jump (original title: Blue Balls).

Shake Rattle & RollWriting in Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n Roll (Charles

Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1984), Nick Tosches called BigJoe Turner’s 1954 recording of Jesse Stone’s Shake, Rattleand Roll a “perfect record. Its lyrics were lascvious, but notquite dirty enough to stop it from getting airplay.” Even so,Bill Haley cleaned it up slightly for his 1955 hit with his Com-ets, the version which became best known (and which Docreprises here). Doc obviously had a great time playing offsome hot pickers: Jack Lawrence, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Dou-glas, and at the ivories the man with whom Doc doubtlessfirst played this song in the 1950s, Jack Williams.

Make Me a Pallet On Your FloorMississippi John Hurt first recorded this in 1928 as Ain’t

No Tellin’ (no pallet appeared in his original version). Thesuspicion that the genteel Hurt had cleaned up the song isconfirmed by the unexpurgated Make Me a Pallet On theFloor recorded by Jelly Roll Morton for the Library of Con-gress in 1938 (it appears on Jelly Roll Morton: AnamuleDance: The Library of Congress Recordings, Volume 2,Rounder CD 1092). Doc’s version is essentially the one Hurtperformed in the 1960s. His fingerpicking filters Hurt’s stylethrough Merle Travis’ in a distinctly Watsonian way: hints ofDoc’s Guitar waft through the accompaniment.

In the Jailhouse NowThe 1928 original was one of Jimmie Rodgers’ most

popular recordings, so much so that he cut a sequel (In theJailhouse Now—No. 2) two years later. The song was a pe-rennial: Webb Pierce had a number one country hit with Inthe Jailhouse Now in 1955, and Rodgers’ label, RCA, thenreleased Rodgers’ own 25-year-old sequel with overdubbingby Chet Atkins and Hank Snow. The Father of Country Musicmade the country Top Ten nearly 32 years after his death!Johnny Cash made In the Jailhouse Now a hit again in 1962;Sonny James had as hit with it as late as 1977. Doc obviouslyrevels in the song’s wry ‘rounder’ humor.

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Going to ChicagoThe blues are universal and transgenerational, as Doc

proves in duet with his grandson.

Life Gits Tee-Jus, Don’t It?Carson J. Robison was a prolific songwriter (Barnacle

Bill the Sailor was among his many copyrights) who scoreda novelty hit in 1948 with Life Gits Tee-Jus, Don’t It? (He hadless success with 1949’s sequel, More and More Tee-Jus, Ain’tIt?) Doc’s ear for downhome wit attracted him to this whim-sical piece of hillbilly fatalism, a wry note on which to closethis collection of rare performances by Doc.

Thanks to Mary Katherine Aldin and Manuel Greenhillfor their help with background material.

DiscographyRemembering Merle Sugar Hill 3800

My Dear Old Southern Home Sugar Hill 3795On Praying Ground Sugar Hill 3779

Portrait Sugar Hill 3759Riding The Midnight Train Sugar Hill 3752

Pickin' The Blues Flying Fish 252Down South Sugar Hill 3742

Doc Watson Favorites Liberty 10201Doc & Merle Watson's Guitar Album Flying Fish 301

Red Rocking Chair Flying Fish 252Reflections (w. Chet Atkins) RCA AHL1-3701Old Time Music At Newport Vanguard 79147

Country Music & Blue Grass At Newport Vanguard 79146Old Time Music At Clarence Ashley's

Folkways 2359 &2355The Watson Family Folkways 2366

The Doc Watson Family Folkways 31021Bill Monroe & Doc Watson Folkways 40064

Doc Watson On Stage Vanguard 9/10Ballads From Deep Gap Vanguard 6576

Good Deal Vanguard 79276Home Again Vanguard 79239Southbound Vanguard 79213

Doc Watson & Son Vanguard 79170Doc Watson Vanguard 79152

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Recording Information

Doc & Merle WatsonUniversity Of Alabama PBS, 1982

New River Train • Shady GroveGoing To Chicago • Blue Yodel No. 12

Doc Watson & Jack LawrenceNorth Carolina PBS, 1990

Sleep Baby Sleep • You Must Come In At The DoorDear Old Sunny South By The Sea • Amazing Grace

Doc Watson & Ricky SkaggsMerle Watson Festival April, 1992

Foggy Mountain Top • What Is A Home Without LoveNine Pound Hammer

Doc Watson & FriendsMerle Watson Festival April, 1992

Riding On That Midnight Train • Fire Ball MailRock Medley: Love Me,Tutti Frutti &

Whole Lot Of Shakin' Goin' OnShake Rattle & RollDoc Watson

North Carolina PBS , 1993Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor • In The Jailhouse Now

Going To Chicago • Life Gets Tee-jus, Don't It

1963, C

lint How

ard, Fred Price & D

oc Watson

Photo by Dave Gahr

Vestapol 13024

By the time of this video's opening performance, Doc Watson hadalready been performing for urban audiences for more than 20 years.During that span he had effectively redefined the role of the acousticguitar in American folk music, showing that professional skill anddynamics were not incompatible with a deep commitment to musi-cal traditionalism.

Doc's accompanists as well as his songs here are an eclecticgroup ranging from his 1950s musical partner, pianist Jack Williams,to his son Merle (seen playing exquisite slide guitar), to Ricky Skaggs(singing and playing mandolin in a Monroe Brothers style set) to astellar stringband featuring Mark O'Connor, Tony Rice, Bela Fleck, DavidGrisman and Jerry Douglas. This collection ends with a solo set fromDoc which brings his music full circle to the straightforward simplic-ity with which it was first presented during the 1960s folk revival.Much had changed in the intervening 30 years, but the earthy integ-rity of Doc Watson's music had not.

Tunes include: New River Train, Shady Grove, Going To Chicago,Blue Yodel No. 12, Sleep Baby Sleep, You Must Come In At The Door,Dear Old Sunny South By The Sea, Amazing Grace, Foggy MountainTop, What Is A Home Without Love, Nine Pound Hammer, Riding OnThat Midnight Train, Fire Ball Mail, Medley: Love Me & Tutti Frutti,Shake Rattle & Roll, Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor, In The JailhouseNow, Going To Chicago and Life Gets Tee-jus, Don't It.

ISBN: 1-57940-959-8

Running time: 60 minutes • ColorFront photo by Peter FigenBack photo by David Gahr

Nationally distributed by Rounder Records,One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140

Representation to Music Stores byMel Bay Publications

© 2002 Vestapol ProductionsA division of

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