Doc Watson 1923-2012

Guitarist Doc Watson passed away recently. Someone who I feel needs to be considered when speaking of the most influential guitarists of our time. My first introduction to Doc was through my Dad, whose passion for music and record collecting was contagious. My record collection as a teen, ran the gamut of popular records from the sixties and seventies, mixed in with influences from my father and fellow siblings, whose taste in music was more sophisticated than my own. McCoy Tyner, Sonny and Brownie, Weather Report, Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart and of course Doc Watson, were a few of the musicians that I discovered in my families record collections, that couldn't be found in typical collections of the friends I hung out with in high school. There taste in music generally was spoon fed to them via Top 40 FM radio. I also was a victim of pop music, but I felt privileged to have access to a wider variety of music under one roof. As we got older, and more sophisticated in our tastes, spirited discussions over music would follow.

                                                                                          photo/John McGuire

This got me to thinking about critics who feel it necessary to organize musicians (or bands for that matter) in some semblance of order, in order to place them within the canon of "all-time" greatest. Baseball fanatics are even more preoccupied with this phenomenon, but I'll leave that for a future post. When examining the virtuosity of guitarists in the twentieth century, you will typically find lists comprised of the usual suspects of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and so on.  These lists are generally chock-full of mostly rock and roll legends, whose guitar prowess is often well deserved, but many are under consideration based more on reputation and notoriety, rather than influence. Rolling Stone Magazine lost so much credibility with David Fricke's "100 Greatest Guitarists" list, they had to re-issue the list years later with some finagling of the order, that included some additions, as well as some subtractions from the original list. Having said that, it's amazing how many musicians have been excluded, simply because they don't exist within the framework of a dumbed down history of rock and roll, or any other genre of music for that matter.

Which brings me back to Doc Watson, whose influence on the flat-picking style of guitar is second to none, yet despite his influence on the guitar as a lead instrument, he is often left out of the discussion. Fair or not, I would recommend anyone interested in the guitar as a solo instrument, to check out his catalogue of music.