Arthel Watson embodied that classic Southern phrase: “Don’t get above your raising.” Folks from the North misinterpret its meaning. It doesn’t mean don’t achieve or better yourself, it doesn’t mean don’t do your best or be your best, it means stay humble, remember your roots, and remember your family despite all you might achieve in this world.
Most folks don’t know that Watson didn’t start with the guitar. He began his legendary musical career on a banjo his father made, the original head of which was made from the hide of a groundhog. But in playing it they found the sound to be too thick and muddy. So when his grandmother’s cat passed away of old age, yep, you guessed it, his father found a much better substitute for the head of the banjo. True story.
Watson went to the state school for the blind in Raleigh, North Carolina at the age of 10. The year was 1933. While there he learned a few chords on the guitar from a blind classmate.
When he returned home he wanted a guitar of his own. His dad was walking out the door to go cut timber one morning and said, “If you can play me a song when I get back, we’ll go get you a guitar.” Well, that was all the incentive Doc needed and he learned a few chords and verses of the song “When the Roses Bloom in Dixie.” True to his word, Arthel’s father took him out to buy a new $12 guitar at local a furniture store but…what people don’t know is that his father had to break up his own piggy bank to help buy it.
As much as Watson loved that guitar, he later said the most valuable thing his father ever did for him, was put him on the other end of a cross-cut saw. He related that the experience helped him understand that while he was blind, he could still be useful.
Doc got his first “paying gig” playing for tips on the streets of Boone, NC.
After playing in bands here and there, and tuning pianos to help make ends meet, Watson’s guitar playing skills became notable on the national stage when the folk music revival swept through the nation and the world in the 1960s. And, as the story goes, he received his legendary nickname “Doc” on a live radio broadcast when the announcer felt he needed a catchy name better than Arthel. We won’t argue with that.
A few years later Doc was growing weary of life on the road and life away from his Deep Gap, North Carolina home. On a short visit back he heard his 15 year old son Merle on the guitar playing some chords his mother Rosa Lee had taught him. Doc walked in the room and said, “Son, you are going with me to California,” and the rest, as they say, is history. Doc admired both Merle’s style AND his ability learn new pieces of music incredibly quickly, something that Doc recognized as unique.
Later, when producers were putting together the all-star cast for the famous, 1972 “Will the circle be unbroken” album, the invitation to join the elite recording group was extended the Doc, but not Merle. Doc was about to decline the invitation but Merle said, “Sure, it hurts my feelings that they didn’t ask me, but Dad, if you take part in this project, it will expose our music to an entirely new audience and I think you should do it.” Doc did. And Merle was right, as over 10 new Doc and Merle albums followed and they enjoyed a huge resurgence in popularity.
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