Doc Watson (1923—2012)

Arthel “Doc” Watson was as true a poet as I know. And now he is no longer resident in the mountains of his beloved Carolina but “scattered among a hundred cities,” as Auden put it when he remembered the death of his friend, W. B. Yeats. It’s a good thing, too, that the poet’s death be kept from his poems. Doc Watson now resides in the many tunes and songs and licks and riffs he left behind in various media, in the many good and generous gifts of himself that form the recollections of fans and friends who wrote about him in yesterday’s newspapers.

Blind almost from birth, a touring musician for whom touring carried the constant apprehension of being marooned, and a bereaved father; Watson, hugely talented, transported himself and his music nevertheless, into the lives and hearts of countless listeners like me who will recall him with fondness as we collect his recordings with renewed focus and energy, perhaps remembering when we first heard him in person (for me it was Durham, North Carolina, in 1967). For all of us, as for the world at large, Doc Watson is now timeless in memory—sad, to be sure (unexpectedly sad as a friend put it), but the sadness is the common sadness of human life. In Doc Watson’s case, as Daniel Gewertz put it in the comment section of yesterday’s New York Times obituary: “It wasn’t an easy life, but it was touched by amazing grace.”

It’s hard to pick a favorite recording, but here’s one I love that features Doc in his prime. It’s the ensemble recording of “Blue Railroad Train,” off the old Southbound album from 1966 that he made with Merle and others.