Doc Watson & Gaither Carlton – Doc Watson & Gaither Carlton
Smithsonian Folkways – 20 May 2020
Well now, here’s one to make old-time American music enthusiasts think all their Christmases have come at once. Born Arthel Lane in 1923 in Deep Gap, North Carolina, losing his sight by the age of two, the baritone-voiced Doc Watson is a legend in traditional bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music, the winner of seven Grammys as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award, while, from the small town, Gaither Carlton was his, no less acclaimed, fiddler father-in-law. Although the pair performed together, it was rarely outside of North Carolina, but, released on both CD and vinyl, this archive collection of previously unheard tapes marks two such occasions, recorded at separate shows in New York City’s Greenwich Village in October 1962 capturing Watson just as his career was starting to take off and marking the first – and pretty much last – of Carlton’s public appearances, electing to stay home and just play for friends and neighbours while Watson went on to international acclaim.
Put together by producer and traditional music enthusiast Peter K. Siegel, who had recorded the shows on his newly acquired tape machine and microphone as a banjo-playing 18-year-old, with song notes by Nothing But The Blues author Mary Katherine Aldin, even with studio finessing the sound quality is at times, inevitably a little rough around the edges, but that only serves to add to the sense of listening to music history. Featuring Watson on guitar, banjo, autoharp, voice with Carlton on fiddle and banjo it opens with the latter’s signature tune, the 86-second instrumental Double File, one of just four taken from the Friends of Old Time Music show from Friday, October 12 at NYU School of Education, Watson’s first appearance in town as a headliner (Jesse Fuller was support), with the rest of the ‘A’ side coming from October 18 at Blind Lemon’s, NYC. These are a mix of familiar and lesser-known numbers, the former including Handsome Molly (a number the pair played at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival which provided Watson’s big break and led to his first solo album), 12-bar blues Corrina, My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains and Bonaparte’s Retreat as well as the Blind Lemon arrangement of Groundhog, Gaither on banjo and Watson on fiddle, the two other tracks being the brief fiddle instrumental Brown’s Dream and He’s Coming To Us Dead, a downbeat song about a family awaiting the return of their son that likely dates from the Civil War.
Side B opens with one of the three remaining Oct 12 numbers, the banjo tune Willie Moore, the others being fiddle contest staple Billy in the Low Ground and, featuring Doc’s brother Arnold Watson on banjo, the Friends of Old Time Music version of Groundhog, this time with Watson on autoharp and Gaither on fiddle.
All the others come from the second show, first up being the popular The Blue Ridge Mountain Blues and also including Goin’ Back To Jericho, one of the earliest banjo tunes Watson learnt from his father, and the poignant old-timey disaster-premonition ballad The Dream of the Miner’s Child, a variation of the British music hall song Don’t Go Down In The Mine, Dad.
Presented with a booklet featuring Aldin’s introduction, Siegel’s background to the project and an appreciation of Carlton by fiddler and radio producer Stephanie Coleman along with rare photos, this should be an essential part of any old-time music aficionado’s collection.