#FRESH AIR DOC WATSON HOW TO#
#FRESH AIR DOC WATSON SKIN#

By the beginning of the 1970’s, Merle became enamored with the slide guitar playing of Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band and adapted the technique to the acoustic guitar. When Merle was a teenager, he started to perform and record with his father. Doc first heard Merle Travis play guitar on the radio station WLW at night, which broadcasted out of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Travis’ music influenced his fingerpick style of guitar playing. In 1972 his career got another boost when he appeared on the historic three album project called “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” a collaboration hosted by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that brought together the new hippy generation with the old school country and bluegrass artists of the day.ĭoc’s only son, Eddy Merle Watson, was named after two of his father’s favorite musicians, Eddy Arnold and Merle Travis.

He was a big hit at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, and he recorded an album with the popular Flatt and Scruggs a few years later. While Doc’s career had many ups and downs as the 1960’s progressed, the folk and bluegrass music fans sure took notice. In the 1960’s, music promoter Ralph Rinzler heard Doc’s playing, and the enamored Rinzler soon had him performing around the country. With riffs built on top of those learned from his earlier guitar influences, such as Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Garland, and Grady Martin, Doc broke new flat picking ground and helped to popularize the style of guitar playing in the bluegrass, mountain folk, and country blues fields. It took him a long time to learn those riffs, but that simple adjustment set him on the path to creating the unique lead licks on the acoustic guitar that he is known for, a technique called flat picking. By the 1950’s he was playing electric guitar in a local dance band and on the nights when the fiddler didn’t show up, Doc would try and play the fiddle parts with his guitar. As he grew older, however, the guitar would become his first love.

#FRESH AIR DOC WATSON HOW TO#

Oh, man, it had a beautiful sound.'ĭoc would learn how to play that little 8-inch diameter banjo, as well as the harmonica and guitar, as time went on. I bet it would be as clear as you could read a paper through it when Daddy got done with it.' Between Daddy and Lenny they got that thing right, with all the hair off of it, and it was just about clear. But, Lenny said, 'Well, I bet that would sound good.

#FRESH AIR DOC WATSON SKIN#

Rodgers advertisement in Sears-Roebuck for a banjo head, if you boys will skin that thing I'll make you a banjo head out of it,'” continues Doc. “It couldn't see, it couldn't eat, so Dad thought about it for a minute and said, 'I seen a J. His father, however, saw an opportunity to make good use of the cat hide to craft for his young son, blind from youth due to an eye infection, his first banjo to play. His grandmother had an old cat that was on its last legs, and she asked Doc’s brother to put it out of its misery. First he put a groundhog skin head on it, but it was too thick, it didn't work good.”Īlthough politically incorrect by today’s standards, this story of the creation of Doc’s home-made banjo was not all that unusual in the North Carolina mountains of that time. 'In 1934, Dad made me a little home-made banjo,” remembers Doc Watson, on the historic three-CD album of performances and conversation recorded with David Holt called “Legacy.” “It had a cat skin head on it. Merlefest at 21, Doc Watson at 85: Festival NotesĪ Great American Music Festival And Its Host At The Crossroads

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