By DAN ARMONAITIS
If not for social distancing measures put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19, MerleFest would have been held this past weekend in Wilkesboro, N.C.
Since 1988, the festival has brought tens of thousands of music lovers — including many from the Upstate — to the campus of Wilkes Community College each April for a multi-day, multi-stage extravaganza featuring some of the finest roots music artists in the world.
By sheer coincidence, it was this past weekend when I happened to stumble across handwritten notes from an interview I did in the fall of 1998 with folk music icon Doc Watson, who, for a quarter-century, hosted the festival that was named in memory of his son Merle.
Merle Watson, who had played alongside his father, died in a tractor accident in 1985 at age 36. Doc’s last public performance was at MerleFest, a month before his death on May 29, 2012 at age 89.
As I looked through my notes, I was struck by how much content I was unable to use in the original article I wrote for The (Bergen) Record, a daily newspaper in New Jersey, where I lived at the time. Needless to say, published articles are bound to a specific amount of real estate, and I crammed as much as I could into the small space I was allotted.
Well, now that I have an independent website of my own, I thought it might be fun to revisit that Doc Watson interview from 21 1/2 years ago.
Most of the quotes I managed to use in the original article, which an editor gave the headline “Sharing the honors” with a subhead of “Guitar great still tours with his son in spirit,” featured Doc sharing his thoughts about the love he felt for Merle, who at the time had been deceased for 13 years.
“Without Merle’s help in the hard days and the dues-paying times, I probably would have gotten out of (the music business),” Watson, then 75, said in a quote that did appear in the original article. “But Merle stood by me and helped me over the hump. He wasn’t only a good son, he was as good a friend as a man will ever have in this world.
“The night before his funeral, I dreamed that I was in some kind of quicksand, a real hot but dark, awful place. And I couldn’t get out of it. … And I dreamed that a big ol’ strong hand reached back and said, ‘Come on, Dad, you can make it.’ And he helped me get out to where it was cool and sunny and there was a good breeze. And I thought when I woke up, ‘Well, there it is. The good Lord let him come and visit me even after he left this world and show me that I must not quit.'”
Wow, that’s some pretty spine-tingling stuff right there.
I began my conversation with Watson, who spoke by phone from his home in Deep Gap, N.C., by mentioning that I had attended MerleFest for the first time the year before, in 1997.
Watson talked about how a good friend of his, the late Bill Young, had approached him and his family about putting together a concert in memory of Merle.
“I said, ‘well sure, I’d be glad to do that,’ and we talked a while about it,” Watson said in a portion of our chat that didn’t make it into my original article. “My wife and daugther, Rosa Lee and Nancy, said, ‘why don’t y’all do it over the spring and have a little one- or two-day festival?’ (The idea was that) Merle’s friends who knew him in the music world could come and help with it and enjoy it.”
Watson then added with a gentle laugh, “And, oh, they jumped on that with all four feet and then some. And they really got excited about the idea. Well, the first one did so well that they decided they’d have it one more year, and it just mushroomed to (the point where) they said, ‘well, let’s just make it an annual thing.’ And it just grew from there.”
As we spoke, Watson noted that there had been flooding in that part of North Carolina just before the festival that year, which again was 1998.
“Everybody thought it wouldn’t happen, the flood was so bad,” Watson said. “But so many volunteers got out there and pitched in and worked hard to make it happen.”
At the time of our conversation, Sugar Hill Records had recently released “Home Sweet Home,” a Doc and Merle Watson album culled from home recordings done in 1967. On it, Merle plays banjo, an instrument he’d only picked up five months earlier.
“For five months’ work on the banjo, I thought he did pretty doggone good,” Watson said with a chuckle. “He’d just pick up the thing and go with it (as far as) music instruments. I think he might have eventually got down to fiddling because he loved old-time fiddling.
“But, anyway, (sound engineer) Bill Wolf and (producer) T. Michael Coleman found this in the home tapes. They were looking for material for another album and they found this one. And, luckily, the little ol’ cheap mics we used picked up enough of the sound ’til Bill, with the modern equipment he’s got, could balance out the EQ and make it sound pretty doggone good.
“The real ambiance had to be left alone; you couldn’t do anything with that. And when they overdubbed Sam (Bush) and Marty (Stuart), they made it sound exactly like they were there with us.”
Give “Home Sweet Home” a listen if you get a chance. I did, and it sounds just as fantastic in 2020 as it did when I first heard it in 1998.
After we talked about that album, Watson turned the conversation to the rigorous touring schedule that he and Merle kept for many years.
“When Merle was with me, we sometimes did close to 200 nights a year on the road during the hard times,” Watson said. “You had to do it to make ends meet. That was a killing task to go out there for four or five weeks at a time, but we finally quit that foolishness. That’ll kill you.
“Anyway, I cut way back at the end of ’90. I figured I might as well get some of that Social Security money back from Uncle Sam and still work a little. So, I’m still working anywhere from 10 to 25 jobs a year.”
I asked Watson how the home life was.
“Anything I can find to do around the house, I will,” Watson said. “I kid Rosa Lee and tell her I’m the ‘honey dew’ around here because I help out every bit. She’s suffering from a herniated disc in her back, so she’s not able to do very much.”
Watson, who became blind before his second birthday, then added, “I can get around my house as well as you could — and around the yard and all that good stuff. I help (Rosa Lee) as well as I can. I’ll find something to do, and then I’ll sit down and practice a little on the guitar to keep the ol’ fingers in shape.”
At some point, I asked Watson to describe how it felt to perform in front of an audience.
“When people sit and listen to your music and you know that they’re really into hearing what you do, it’s a very complimentary thing,” he replied. “That whole feeling put together is like when I was a little boy and I got exactly what I asked ol’ Santa for — that same kind of thing, only it’s amplified many times. An audiences’ appreciation of what I do is at least half of my pay.”
Watson then paused for a quick laugh before adding, “A man has to earn a living, you know. And at my age, I don’t want to spend my savings. I don’t know what the heck might come along. I might start falling apart and need some of my pension. And Rosa Lee, bless her heart, if we didn’t have some good insurance, we’d be hurtin’ right now.
“Luckily, Merle had good foresight for a young fellow and he talked us into taking out some good insurance. (Rosa Lee) is a heart patient, you know. She had a bunch of surgeries in the late ’80s and early ’90s. She got a staph infection after the first heart surgery, and, over a period of 13 months, she had eight major surgeries because of that.”
When our conversation turned back specifically to music, Watson spoke about Ralph Rinzler, the folk musicologist who played a key role in putting him in front of audiences during the early 1960s Folk Revival.
“I guess it was 1960 when I met (Rinzler) and he suggested that I do some coffeehouses and maybe play on some of the folk festivals,” Watson recalled. “I had my doubts about whether the old-time music would go over or not because I had to go back to the music I cut my teeth on. I didn’t really know if it would or not, but I said, ‘well, I’ll try it, Ralph. We’ll see what happens.’
“Well, he traveled a good bit with me in the first days of that because Merle was a still a child going to school. And with his help, I learned about programming on the stage. It’s automatic now; you hardly even think about it. But I didn’t know that much about it then
“So, he helped me a lot with that, and he helped me get my first record contract with Vanguard. He also did the ‘Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s’ (album) that I played on, and he recorded at our home the first Watson Family album that came out on Folkways. That sort of kept me alive.”
It’s worth noting that, in contrast to the acoustic flat-picking style he became famous for, Watson had been playing electric guitar in a local dance band in the 1950s when Rinzler discovered him.
“Sort of rockabilly,” Watson said of the style of music he played at the time. “There were a lot of square dances played, and the electric guitar was easy to play and I learned a lot of fiddle tunes on the guitar. And l later took over on the ol’ flat-top, and that’s how the flat-pick thing got started. Somebody said, ‘well, how did you develop your style?’ It just sort of happened. You don’t think about it, you just pick.”
During our chat, I also asked Watson about his involvement in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s landmark 1972 album, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” which featured such pioneering country music figures as Roy Acuff, “Mother” Maybelle Carter, Jimmy Martin and Merle Travis. Watson almost didn’t participate because his son, Merle, wasn’t invited to be a part of it.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Watson recalled. ” And Merle said, ‘Dad, I know that I would have loved to have played on the record,’ but he said, ‘Do it. It will help us. It will get us heard by audiences we haven’t been (exposed to) so far.’
“And he was exactly right. That’s another case of where his foresight came into play. For his years, he was wise. And I’m sure glad I did it. I really enjoyed working with those people because a lot of them were people I had listened to for years on the radio.”
Notably, the “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” album captured between-song banter, including the first-ever meeting between Watson and Merle Travis, whom Watson had named his son after.
During the hour-long conversation I had with Watson back in 1998, he also spoke of his childhood.
“Dad got our first little wind-up Victrola, and compared to just an average priced record player today — or music machine CD or whatever — it was pitiful,” Watson said. “But we thought, or at least I did when I was a little boy about six years old, that we had the King’s treasure in our house. (It was) the most wonderful thing in the world, and with that, I was introduced to several different kinds of music.
“(Within) the 78 (RPM) records that came with it, there was everything from Dixieland jazz tunes to one or two (Mississippi) John Hurt recordings. I think there was one by Furry Lewis. And, then, there was the Skillet Lickers, of course.
“And then Dad began to pick up recordings of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. And then the battery set radio came into the home in the ’30s and that expanded my knowledge of music a whole lot and I learned about different kinds of things.”
Watson mentioned that his father, who was a singing leader at the family’s church, introduced him to playing instruments as well.
“He was interested in me learning to play the guitar, but the first instrument I had was a little ol’ homemade banjo,” Watson said. “One of those little fretless things you’ve probably seen at craft shows. He made my first one, and then when the guitar came along, I just about forgot about the banjo.
“Dad played a little bit of banjo ’til I kind of got started with it, and then he never would pick no more. He said, ‘son, you can pick better than I can, play me something on that thing.’ That’s the way it went. And my mother sang a few of the old-time ballads around the house.”
I asked if there was any particular music to which he felt most connected.
“To tell you the truth, emotionally, the good old-time gospel music like you find on the album, ‘On Praying Ground,’ I think I get the most actual joy out of playing those things,” Watson said, referring to a Grammy Award-winning release of his from 1990. “But any kind of good song that has something to say for me, I’ll enjoy playing it. … Life is a mixture of joys and sorrows and that’s what good old-time or traditional music is about.”
At the end of our conversation, I asked Watson, a 7-time Grammy Award winner who went on to receive a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in 2004, how he wished to be remembered.
“I appreciate it if I leave a legacy of music that people enjoy, but the most important thing in life — and thank God I lived long enough to realize it — is the legacy of our personality we leave,” Watson said. “To have people remember you as a decent human being is the most valuable thing that you can leave on this earth. And that’s the most valuable thing our son Merle left. People loved him for what he was as a human being, not how much he had accomplished.
“Hundreds of friends have told me he was such a fine man. They knew him. We all have some hang-ups that are tortuous and bothersome, but if a man or a woman is a true person what they really are will come and shine right through that. It doesn’t make no difference what comes along in life. They’ll somehow manage to shoulder it and go on with it.”
So there you have it. Leave it to Doc Watson, in the final words of a conversation I had with him more than two decades ago, to offer some words of encouragement that seem perfectly suited for these worrisome times when a global pandemic caused MerleFest not to be held this past weekend.
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