On Getting Started on Guitar

Arthel "Doc" Watson's Vanguard album in 1964, and the live festival, concert, and coffeehouse performances which immediately preceded and followed it, marked a quiet but real revolution in the folk music field. They showcased the most exciting traditional folk performer to emerge in a generation -- a fully mature artist who at once embodied the roots and traditions of the old-time country music, and also stepped beyond them with his own brilliant innovations and polished performing style. They showed the blind mountain musician to be an utterly charming, natural, and affecting singer, a fountain of fascinating traditional song repertoire, and a real master of at least 5 distinct instrumental styles -- one of which, his astonishing flatpicking lead work on acoustic guitar, dramatically changed the role of the instrument in bluegrass music, and opened the door for the careers and styles of Clarence White, Tony Rice, Norman Blake, Dan Crary, Eric Thompson, and literally thousands more.

Doc Watson: the Vanguard Years (Vanguard 155/158), a 4-CD compilation from the period of those great early solo albums and performances (ca. 1964-71), provides many examples of Doc's amazing lead technique -- dazzling long runs of flowing sixteenth notes, executed with grace and precision at blisteringly fast fiddle-tune tempos. What's even more remarkable than his speed, accuracy, and superb timing is the fact that his hot licks are also genuinely expressive, interesting, idiomatic and appropriate -- and that he tosses them off with a feel that somehow makes them seem as relaxed and natural as breathing! Acoustic guitar in traditional country music had had a much more limited role until Doc rewrote the book, building on the elegant but much simpler earlier styles of Maybelle Carter (with the Carter Family), the Delmore Brothers, and Riley Puckett to fire off blazing lead lines as intricate and exciting as the hottest bluegrass fiddle or mandolin breaks. Listen to the astonishing fill he casually throws in to answer his vocal line in the first verse of "Way Downtown," or the much-imitated runs in the instrumental showcase "Black Mountain Rag."It's obvious to even the most casual listener that this is a true master at work.

Doc's flatpicking alone would assure his place in history, but in fact, as the Vanguard set makes abundantly clear, his mastery of other instruments and styles is almost equally amazing. His intricate, bluesy fingerpicking pieces are some of the finest on record -- the jazzy, Merle Travis-derived licks he adds to the old Delmore Brothers tune " Deep River Blues" are just one of many examples. His precise, clean, soulful, and melodic rack harmonica lines on "Muskrat" will be a revelation to anyone who has heard only the much rawer, looser sound of the Guthrie-Dylan idiom. When he picks up the 5-string banjo, as on the Dock Boggs classic "Country Blues," he proves to be completely at home in the hypnotic, modal, bluesy old-time mountain frailing style. And his warm, pleasing baritone vocals are always natural, personal, and deeply expressive, whether the song is loose, salty, and humorous (check out his hilarious rendition of "The Intoxicated Rat") or filled with ache and longing (as in a capella spirituals like "Down In the Valley to Pray"). Taken together, this is an incredibly rich and diverse body of music.