Doc’s another of those musicians that it’s easy to eulogize in terms of near worship. From this distance of time and culture, it’s tempting even to hear the phrase “blind folk singer” and start constructing these giant mythical archetypes straddling history and legend, much as John Fahey seemed to be consciously doing with his construction of the Blind Joe Death character. So when I hear this music, I have to take a step back and remember that at the end of the day, Doc was a musician and a farmer, terms which have their own vague mythology attached to them but which are easier to ground against those stark black and white images of a man and a guitar that adorn his records and the books and articles about him.
The simple facts about the man belie any sort of attempt at mythologization. Doc was born and lived his entire life in the tiny community of Deep Gap, North Carolina. He once described his music as nothing more than a way to provide for his family. By most accounts, he had a down-to-earth, humble charisma that belied his formidable picking ability. He didn’t record his commercial debut until the age of 41, when the scene was ripe for the 60s folk revival that brought so many forgotten artists into the public limelight.
Doc Watson’s greatest strength isn’t his formidable technical ability, or his simple, effective vocal style, but rather the conviction and confidence with which he sings, the unassuming self-assuredness of one who has mastered his craft. It’s the near-total lack of ambition here that gives the album so much of its charm, and ironically so much of its depth. It’s the antithesis of grandiose: just Doc and a guitar or banjo, and more than once, just Doc sans guitar or banjo, a man whose ability to sing and play are just shy of virtuosity, and completely without any sense of grandstanding or conceit.
Without getting too breathless with the praise, the breadth and depth of the musical sources and moods that he draws from in many ways reflect the breadth and depth of the human experience itself. A wide range of American Folk styles and subjects is on display on this record, from hymns and murder ballads to blistering fingerpicked instrumentals. The fact that it all comes together in such a coherent statement is a minor miracle. That the ***-eating-grin-tall-tale of Intoxicated Rat can even exist on the same album as the stark tragedy and horror of Little Omie Wise speaks to a unitive element that is more than just a style or a mood: Doc Watson is relaying an astonishing breadth of that human experience in these thirteen brief songs: laughter, poverty, wealth, faith, love and death.
As such, Doc’s debut marries folklore, flawless technique and sheer warmth and humanity in what is one of the all-time great American folk albums.
