Blind but Now I See

Nonfiction
Music awash on our shores

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson 

368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

American music takes multiple forms—classical, jazz, show tunes, big band music, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, and more—and most of these genres have evolved by blending into one or more of the others. But there is one genre, entirely American now, that owes its origins to the Celts, Scots, and Brits who brought their music as they washed up on these shores. It’s the music of the South and the Appalachian Mountains, and it is the music of Doc Watson.

I knew the styles of the music but had never really connected with the people who played it ... I just had this sound ringing in my ears of this beautiful pentatonic, archaic-sounding music sung in a vocal style that left Frank Sinatra far behind.

So said Ralph Rinzler on first hearing Doc play. Rinzler, a young folk aficionado, was instrumental in bringing Watson out of the hills of western North Carolina to perform on a New York City stage. This occurred in 1961, at the initial wave of the folk music revival. Watson’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” at that performance created a sensation, making the old hymn once again part of the American songbook and identifying Watson as an icon of acoustic instruments and traditional singing.

Rinzler soon became a combination of representative, agent, manager, and friend to Watson, even pressuring him to maintain the purity of his repertoire when Watson wanted to incorporate other genres into his performances.

The musical wizard known as Doc was born Arthel Lane Watson in 1923, near Deep Gap, North Carolina on the family farm, a few meager acres of the three thousand passed down from David Watson, a Scotsman who came to America to fight the British “in exchange for the promise of land, should the Americans prevail in their struggle.”

Possibly as a result of an injury from an ill-measured dose of silver nitrate eye drops meant to prevent post-natal infection, Doc has never been able to see, but the blind youngster grew up without being coddled. He was allowed to run free across fields and farmland with his brothers and sisters, and he pitched in with chores, right down to being stationed at one end of a cross-cut timber saw. Like some who are blind, young Doc learned to listen. He calls it “sound radar,” a skill so highly developed that he can easily memorize music, or diagnose a car engine flaw simply by hearing it run.

Kent Gustavson’s biography is filled with such minutiae about hill country life, about the music and musicians of Appalachia, about Doc’s short sojourn at the Raleigh School for the Blind, and about the Watsons and related families.

Gustavson is a music professor at Stony Brook University in New York, and his knowledge, passion, and expertise offers readers a thorough insight into the magic that Watson makes. He chronicles Watson’s career from local dances and juke joints to appearances on small town radio stations. It was prior to a broadcast performance in a furniture store, in fact, that Doc earned his nickname. The host didn’t think “Arthel” came across well on the airwaves, and a young woman in the audience yelled out, “Call him Doc.” And so it was.

Watson married, had two children, lived off the land, a state pension, and his meager earnings from playing music at dances and picnics across the hills and hollers, in churches, and juke joints, but it wasn’t folk music then. It was “ ... America’s other traditional folk music ... rockabilly ... music that transformed Doc Watson from a street musician ... to a professional musician who could support his family on his own pride.”

Much of this biography covers those years before Watson met Rinzler. Rinzler had come to Appalachia to record the legendary Clarence Ashley, also known as Tom Ashley, a session for which Watson has been hired to play the electric guitar. Rinzler doesn’t want a modern instrument ruining music not meant to be amplified, but when he heard Doc sing “Tom Doula” and accompany himself with a banjo, Rinzler realizes he has found an American original.

Gustavson quotes a Who’s Who of folk musicians, and tidbits about music legends are scattered throughout the book. Pete Seeger is everything Doc Watson is not—a political and social liberal and scion of a prosperous family—but he can only imitate Watson’s blood-rooted authenticity. Woody Guthrie, dying from Huntington’s disease, is spirited from a hospital by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to be at one of Doc’s early New York City appearances.

Gustavson’s research is admirable. While an index would have been helpful, the author does include extensive notes at the end of each of the twenty chapters. Curiously, a reading of the author’s acknowledgements suggests Watson was not interviewed for this biography, but I would not doubt that Gustavson’s work presents an authentic picture.

The final chapters of the book are deeply affecting. They chronicle Watson’s years of international renown as his legend reaches outside the folk genre; the grind of day-after-day touring on the road; the integration of his son, Merle, into his performances; and the collapse of Doc’s world when Merle, also an extraordinary guitarist, died at age thirty-six in 1985. Doc Watson cherished Merle as musical soulmate and best friend. Merle also had orchestrated and guided much of Doc’s tour life for fifteen years, and the older man felt his loss deeply, so much so that some of the people interviewed note his son’s death left him a “harder” man. But the legend continued to tour and record for several years, and to take part in an annual acoustic music festival in honor of his son. Watson resides in North Carolina today, although friends sometimes characterize him as reclusive.

Musicologists will appreciate the chapters on Doc’s singing style, and his guitar work, both flat-picking and finger-picking. Music fans will delight in the book as a whole, a splendid recounting of Doc Watson as man whose “ ... approach to folk music on a guitar was like Horowitz’s approach to the piano ... Music awash on our shores

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson
368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

American music takes multiple forms—classical, jazz, show tunes, big band music, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, and more—and most of these genres have evolved by blending into one or more of the others. But there is one genre, entirely American now, that owes its origins to the Celts, Scots, and Brits who brought their music as they washed up on these shores. It’s the music of the South and the Appalachian Mountains, and it is the music of Doc Watson.

I knew the styles of the music but had never really connected with the people who played it ... I just had this sound ringing in my ears of this beautiful pentatonic, archaic-sounding music sung in a vocal style that left Frank Sinatra far behind.

So said Ralph Rinzler on first hearing Doc play. Rinzler, a young folk aficionado, was instrumental in bringing Watson out of the hills of western North Carolina to perform on a New York City stage. This occurred in 1961, at the initial wave of the folk music revival. Watson’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” at that performance created a sensation, making the old hymn once again part of the American songbook and identifying Watson as an icon of acoustic instruments and traditional singing.

Rinzler soon became a combination of representative, agent, manager, and friend to Watson, even pressuring him to maintain the purity of his repertoire when Watson wanted to incorporate other genres into his performances.

The musical wizard known as Doc was born Arthel Lane Watson in 1923, near Deep Gap, North Carolina on the family farm, a few meager acres of the three thousand passed down from David Watson, a Scotsman who came to America to fight the British “in exchange for the promise of land, should the Americans prevail in their struggle.”

Possibly as a result of an injury from an ill-measured dose of silver nitrate eye drops meant to prevent post-natal infection, Doc has never been able to see, but the blind youngster grew up without being coddled. He was allowed to run free across fields and farmland with his brothers and sisters, and he pitched in with chores, right down to being stationed at one end of a cross-cut timber saw. Like some who are blind, young Doc learned to listen. He calls it “sound radar,” a skill so highly developed that he can easily memorize music, or diagnose a car engine flaw simply by hearing it run.

Kent Gustavson’s biography is filled with such minutiae about hill country life, about the music and musicians of Appalachia, about Doc’s short sojourn at the Raleigh School for the Blind, and about the Watsons and related families.

Gustavson is a music professor at Stony Brook University in New York, and his knowledge, passion, and expertise offers readers a thorough insight into the magic that Watson makes. He chronicles Watson’s career from local dances and juke joints to appearances on small town radio stations. It was prior to a broadcast performance in a furniture store, in fact, that Doc earned his nickname. The host didn’t think “Arthel” came across well on the airwaves, and a young woman in the audience yelled out, “Call him Doc.” And so it was.

Watson married, had two children, lived off the land, a state pension, and his meager earnings from playing music at dances and picnics across the hills and hollers, in churches, and juke joints, but it wasn’t folk music then. It was “ ... America’s other traditional folk music ... rockabilly ... music that transformed Doc Watson from a street musician ... to a professional musician who could support his family on his own pride.”

Much of this biography covers those years before Watson met Rinzler. Rinzler had come to Appalachia to record the legendary Clarence Ashley, also known as Tom Ashley, a session for which Watson has been hired to play the electric guitar. Rinzler doesn’t want a modern instrument ruining music not meant to be amplified, but when he heard Doc sing “Tom Doula” and accompany himself with a banjo, Rinzler realizes he has found an American original.

Gustavson quotes a Who’s Who of folk musicians, and tidbits about music legends are scattered throughout the book. Pete Seeger is everything Doc Watson is not—a political and social liberal and scion of a prosperous family—but he can only imitate Watson’s blood-rooted authenticity. Woody Guthrie, dying from Huntington’s disease, is spirited from a hospital by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to be at one of Doc’s early New York City appearances.

Gustavson’s research is admirable. While an index would have been helpful, the author does include extensive notes at the end of each of the twenty chapters. Curiously, a reading of the author’s acknowledgements suggests Watson was not interviewed for this biography, but I would not doubt that Gustavson’s work presents an authentic picture.

The final chapters of the book are deeply affecting. They chronicle Watson’s years of international renown as his legend reaches outside the folk genre; the grind of day-after-day touring on the road; the integration of his son, Merle, into his performances; and the collapse of Doc’s world when Merle, also an extraordinary guitarist, died at age thirty-six in 1985. Doc Watson cherished Merle as musical soulmate and best friend. Merle also had orchestrated and guided much of Doc’s tour life for fifteen years, and the older man felt his loss deeply, so much so that some of the people interviewed note his son’s death left him a “harder” man. But the legend continued to tour and record for several years, and to take part in an annual acoustic music festival in honor of his son. Watson resides in North Carolina today, although friends sometimes characterize him as reclusive.

Musicologists will appreciate the chapters on Doc’s singing style, and his guitar work, both flat-picking and finger-picking. Music fans will delight in the book as a whole, a splendid recounting of Doc Watson as man whose “ ... approach to folk music on a guitar was like Horowitz’s approach to the piano ... “Music awash on our shores

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson
368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

American music takes multiple forms—classical, jazz, show tunes, big band music, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, and more—and most of these genres have evolved by blending into one or more of the others. But there is one genre, entirely American now, that owes its origins to the Celts, Scots, and Brits who brought their music as they washed up on these shores. It’s the music of the South and the Appalachian Mountains, and it is the music of Doc Watson.

I knew the styles of the music but had never really connected with the people who played it ... I just had this sound ringing in my ears of this beautiful pentatonic, archaic-sounding music sung in a vocal style that left Frank Sinatra far behind.

So said Ralph Rinzler on first hearing Doc play. Rinzler, a young folk aficionado, was instrumental in bringing Watson out of the hills of western North Carolina to perform on a New York City stage. This occurred in 1961, at the initial wave of the folk music revival. Watson’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” at that performance created a sensation, making the old hymn once again part of the American songbook and identifying Watson as an icon of acoustic instruments and traditional singing.

Rinzler soon became a combination of representative, agent, manager, and friend to Watson, even pressuring him to maintain the purity of his repertoire when Watson wanted to incorporate other genres into his performances.

The musical wizard known as Doc was born Arthel Lane Watson in 1923, near Deep Gap, North Carolina on the family farm, a few meager acres of the three thousand passed down from David Watson, a Scotsman who came to America to fight the British “in exchange for the promise of land, should the Americans prevail in their struggle.”

Possibly as a result of an injury from an ill-measured dose of silver nitrate eye drops meant to prevent post-natal infection, Doc has never been able to see, but the blind youngster grew up without being coddled. He was allowed to run free across fields and farmland with his brothers and sisters, and he pitched in with chores, right down to being stationed at one end of a cross-cut timber saw. Like some who are blind, young Doc learned to listen. He calls it “sound radar,” a skill so highly developed that he can easily memorize music, or diagnose a car engine flaw simply by hearing it run.

Kent Gustavson’s biography is filled with such minutiae about hill country life, about the music and musicians of Appalachia, about Doc’s short sojourn at the Raleigh School for the Blind, and about the Watsons and related families.

Gustavson is a music professor at Stony Brook University in New York, and his knowledge, passion, and expertise offers readers a thorough insight into the magic that Watson makes. He chronicles Watson’s career from local dances and juke joints to appearances on small town radio stations. It was prior to a broadcast performance in a furniture store, in fact, that Doc earned his nickname. The host didn’t think “Arthel” came across well on the airwaves, and a young woman in the audience yelled out, “Call him Doc.” And so it was.

Watson married, had two children, lived off the land, a state pension, and his meager earnings from playing music at dances and picnics across the hills and hollers, in churches, and juke joints, but it wasn’t folk music then. It was “ ... America’s other traditional folk music ... rockabilly ... music that transformed Doc Watson from a street musician ... to a professional musician who could support his family on his own pride.”

Much of this biography covers those years before Watson met Rinzler. Rinzler had come to Appalachia to record the legendary Clarence Ashley, also known as Tom Ashley, a session for which Watson has been hired to play the electric guitar. Rinzler doesn’t want a modern instrument ruining music not meant to be amplified, but when he heard Doc sing “Tom Doula” and accompany himself with a banjo, Rinzler realizes he has found an American original.

Gustavson quotes a Who’s Who of folk musicians, and tidbits about music legends are scattered throughout the book. Pete Seeger is everything Doc Watson is not—a political and social liberal and scion of a prosperous family—but he can only imitate Watson’s blood-rooted authenticity. Woody Guthrie, dying from Huntington’s disease, is spirited from a hospital by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to be at one of Doc’s early New York City appearances.

Gustavson’s research is admirable. While an index would have been helpful, the author does include extensive notes at the end of each of the twenty chapters. Curiously, a reading of the author’s acknowledgements suggests Watson was not interviewed for this biography, but I would not doubt that Gustavson’s work presents an authentic picture.

The final chapters of the book are deeply affecting. They chronicle Watson’s years of international renown as his legend reaches outside the folk genre; the grind of day-after-day touring on the road; the integration of his son, Merle, into his performances; and the collapse of Doc’s world when Merle, also an extraordinary guitarist, died at age thirty-six in 1985. Doc Watson cherished Merle as musical soulmate and best friend. Merle also had orchestrated and guided much of Doc’s tour life for fifteen years, and the older man felt his loss deeply, so much so that some of the people interviewed note his son’s death left him a “harder” man. But the legend continued to tour and record for several years, and to take part in an annual acoustic music festival in honor of his son. Watson resides in North Carolina today, although friends sometimes characterize him as reclusive.

Musicologists will appreciate the chapters on Doc’s singing style, and his guitar work, both flat-picking and finger-picking. Music fans will delight in the book as a whole, a splendid recounting of Doc Watson as man whose “ ... approach to folk music on a guitar was like Horowitz’s approach to the piano ... “Music awash on our shores

BLIND BUT NOW I SEE:
The Biography of Music Legend Doc Watson
By Kent Gustavson
368 pp. Blooming Twig Books (Cardinal’s Publishing Group) $14.95

Reviewed by Gary Presley

American music takes multiple forms—classical, jazz, show tunes, big band music, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, and more—and most of these genres have evolved by blending into one or more of the others. But there is one genre, entirely American now, that owes its origins to the Celts, Scots, and Brits who brought their music as they washed up on these shores. It’s the music of the South and the Appalachian Mountains, and it is the music of Doc Watson.

I knew the styles of the music but had never really connected with the people who played it ... I just had this sound ringing in my ears of this beautiful pentatonic, archaic-sounding music sung in a vocal style that left Frank Sinatra far behind.

So said Ralph Rinzler on first hearing Doc play. Rinzler, a young folk aficionado, was instrumental in bringing Watson out of the hills of western North Carolina to perform on a New York City stage. This occurred in 1961, at the initial wave of the folk music revival. Watson’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” at that performance created a sensation, making the old hymn once again part of the American songbook and identifying Watson as an icon of acoustic instruments and traditional singing.

Rinzler soon became a combination of representative, agent, manager, and friend to Watson, even pressuring him to maintain the purity of his repertoire when Watson wanted to incorporate other genres into his performances.

The musical wizard known as Doc was born Arthel Lane Watson in 1923, near Deep Gap, North Carolina on the family farm, a few meager acres of the three thousand passed down from David Watson, a Scotsman who came to America to fight the British “in exchange for the promise of land, should the Americans prevail in their struggle.”

Possibly as a result of an injury from an ill-measured dose of silver nitrate eye drops meant to prevent post-natal infection, Doc has never been able to see, but the blind youngster grew up without being coddled. He was allowed to run free across fields and farmland with his brothers and sisters, and he pitched in with chores, right down to being stationed at one end of a cross-cut timber saw. Like some who are blind, young Doc learned to listen. He calls it “sound radar,” a skill so highly developed that he can easily memorize music, or diagnose a car engine flaw simply by hearing it run.

Kent Gustavson’s biography is filled with such minutiae about hill country life, about the music and musicians of Appalachia, about Doc’s short sojourn at the Raleigh School for the Blind, and about the Watsons and related families.

Gustavson is a music professor at Stony Brook University in New York, and his knowledge, passion, and expertise offers readers a thorough insight into the magic that Watson makes. He chronicles Watson’s career from local dances and juke joints to appearances on small town radio stations. It was prior to a broadcast performance in a furniture store, in fact, that Doc earned his nickname. The host didn’t think “Arthel” came across well on the airwaves, and a young woman in the audience yelled out, “Call him Doc.” And so it was.

Watson married, had two children, lived off the land, a state pension, and his meager earnings from playing music at dances and picnics across the hills and hollers, in churches, and juke joints, but it wasn’t folk music then. It was “ ... America’s other traditional folk music ... rockabilly ... music that transformed Doc Watson from a street musician ... to a professional musician who could support his family on his own pride.”

Much of this biography covers those years before Watson met Rinzler. Rinzler had come to Appalachia to record the legendary Clarence Ashley, also known as Tom Ashley, a session for which Watson has been hired to play the electric guitar. Rinzler doesn’t want a modern instrument ruining music not meant to be amplified, but when he heard Doc sing “Tom Doula” and accompany himself with a banjo, Rinzler realizes he has found an American original.

Gustavson quotes a Who’s Who of folk musicians, and tidbits about music legends are scattered throughout the book. Pete Seeger is everything Doc Watson is not—a political and social liberal and scion of a prosperous family—but he can only imitate Watson’s blood-rooted authenticity. Woody Guthrie, dying from Huntington’s disease, is spirited from a hospital by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to be at one of Doc’s early New York City appearances.

Gustavson’s research is admirable. While an index would have been helpful, the author does include extensive notes at the end of each of the twenty chapters. Curiously, a reading of the author’s acknowledgements suggests Watson was not interviewed for this biography, but I would not doubt that Gustavson’s work presents an authentic picture.

The final chapters of the book are deeply affecting. They chronicle Watson’s years of international renown as his legend reaches outside the folk genre; the grind of day-after-day touring on the road; the integration of his son, Merle, into his performances; and the collapse of Doc’s world when Merle, also an extraordinary guitarist, died at age thirty-six in 1985. Doc Watson cherished Merle as musical soulmate and best friend. Merle also had orchestrated and guided much of Doc’s tour life for fifteen years, and the older man felt his loss deeply, so much so that some of the people interviewed note his son’s death left him a “harder” man. But the legend continued to tour and record for several years, and to take part in an annual acoustic music festival in honor of his son. Watson resides in North Carolina today, although friends sometimes characterize him as reclusive.

Musicologists will appreciate the chapters on Doc’s singing style, and his guitar work, both flat-picking and finger-picking. Music fans will delight in the book as a whole, a splendid recounting of Doc Watson as man whose “ ... approach to folk music on a guitar was like Horowitz’s approach to the piano ... “