A Legend Goes Home

For those of you more accustomed to other types of music, this is like losing Benny Goodman or Isaac Stern.

Folk musician Doc Watson dies in NC hospital at 89

Doc Watson, the Grammy-award winning folk musician whose lightning-fast style of flatpicking influenced guitarists around the world for more than a half-century, died Tuesday at a hospital in Winston-Salem, according to a hospital spokeswoman and his manager. He was 89.

Watson, who was blind from age 1, recently had abdominal surgery that resulted in his hospitalization.

Arthel "Doc" Watson's mastery of flatpicking helped make the case for the guitar as a lead instrument in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was often considered a backup for the mandolin, fiddle or banjo. His fast playing could intimidate other musicians, even his own grandson, who performed with him.

Richard Watson said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press that his grandfather's playing had a humbling effect on other musicians. The ever-humble Doc Watson found it hard to believe.

"Everybody that's picked with you says you intimidate them, and that includes some of the best," Richard Watson told him.

Doc Watson was born March 3, 1923 in what is now Deep Gap, N.C., in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He lost his eyesight by the age of 1 when he developed an eye infection that was worsened by a congenital vascular disorder, according to a website for Merlefest, the annual musical gathering named for his late son Merle.

He came from a musical family — his father was active in the church choir and played banjo and his mother sang secular and religious songs, according to a statement from Folklore Productions, his management company since 1964.

Doc Watson's father gave him a harmonica as a young child, and by 5 he was playing the banjo, according to the Merlefest website. He learned a few guitar chords while attending the North Carolina Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, and his father helped him buy a Stella guitar for $12.

"My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music," Doc Watson is quoted as saying on the website. "I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar."

Doc Watson got his musical start in 1953, playing electric lead guitar in a country-and-western swing band. His road to fame began in 1960 when Ralph Rinzler, a musician who also managed Bill Monroe, discovered Watson in North Carolina. That led Watson to the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and his first recording contract a year later. He went on to record 60 albums.

According to the Encyclopedia of Country Music, Watson took his nickname at age 19 when someone couldn't pronounce his name and a girl in the audience shouted "Call him Doc!"

Seven of his albums won Grammy awards; his eighth Grammy was a lifetime achievement award in 2004. He also received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1997.

"There may not be a serious, committed baby boomer alive who didn't at some point in his or her youth try to spend a few minutes at least trying to learn to pick a guitar like Doc Watson," Clinton said at the time.

Folklore described Watson as "a powerful singer and a tremendously influential picker who virtually invented the art of playing mountain fiddle tunes on the flattop guitar."

Doc Watson's son Merle began recording and touring with him in 1964. But Merle Watson died at age 36 in a 1985 tractor accident, sending his father into deep grief and making him consider retirement. Instead, he kept playing and started Merlefest, an annual musical event in Wilkesboro, N.C., that raises money for a community college there and celebrates "traditional plus" music.

"When Merle and I started out we called our music 'traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play," Doc Watson is quoted as saying on the festival's website. "Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is 'traditional plus.'"

Doc Watson has said that when Merle died, he lost the best friend he would ever have.

He also relied on his wife, Rosa Lee, whom he married in 1947.

"She saw what little good there was in me, and there was little," Watson told the AP in 2000. "I'm awful glad she cared about me, and I'm awful glad she married me."

In a PBS NewsHour interview before a January appearance in Arlington, Va., Watson recalled his father teaching him how to play harmonica to a tune his parents had sung in church, as well as his first bus trip to New York City. Telling the stories in a folksy manner, he broke into a quiet laugh at various points. He said he still enjoyed touring.

"I love music and love a good audience and still have to make a living," Watson said. "Why would I quit?"

Musician Sam Bush, who has performed at every Merlefest, began touring with Doc and Merle Watson in 1974, occasionally substituting for Merle when he couldn't travel.

"I would sit next to Doc, and I would be influenced by his incredible timing and taste," Bush said after Watson's recent surgery. "He seems to always know what notes to play. They're always the perfect notes. He helped me learn the space between the notes (are) as valuable as the ones you play."

Bush said he was also intimidated when he began playing with the man he calls "the godfather of all flatpickers."

"But Doc puts you at ease about that kind of stuff," Bush said. "I never met a more generous kind of musician. He is more about the musical communication than showing off with hot licks."

His blindness didn't hold him back musically or at home.

Joe Newberry, a musician and spokesman for the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, remembered once when his wife called the Watson home. Rosa Lee Watson said her husband was on the roof, replacing shingles. His daughter Nancy Watson said her father built the family's utility shed.

Guitarist Pete Huttlinger of Nashville, Tenn., said Doc Watson made every song his own, regardless of its age. 'He's one of those lucky guys," said Huttlinger, who studied Watson's methods when he first picked up a guitar. "When he plays something, he puts his stamp on it — it's Doc Watson."

He changed folk music forever by adapting fiddle tunes to guitar at amazing tempos, Huttlinger said. "And people all over the place were trying to figure out how to do this," he said. "But Doc, he set the bar for everyone. He said, 'This is how it goes.' And people have been trying for years to match that.

"He took it (the guitar) out of the background and brought it upfront as a melody instrument. We're no longer at the back of the class. He gave the front to us."

Wayne Martin, executive director of the North Carolina Arts Council, said recently that Watson took southern Appalachian forms of music such as balladry, old-time string music and bluegrass, and made them accessible.

"He takes old music and puts his own creativity on it," Martin said. "It retained its core, yet it felt relevant to people today.

Said Bush: "I don't think anyone personifies what we call Americana more than Doc Watson."

In 2011, a life-size statue of Watson was dedicated in Boone, N.C., at the spot where Watson had played decades earlier for tips to support his family, according to the Folklore statement. At Watson's request the inscription read, "Just One of the People."

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Online: http://www.merlefest.org/

Atheist Richard Dawkins Supports Bibles in Schools

World-renowned atheist Richard Dawkins says he supports the mission of England's Department for Education to make sure every public school in the nation has a copy of the 1611 translation of the King James Bible.

"A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian," said Dawkins in a column he wrote for The Guardian.

The author and evolutionary biologist even went as far as to say he would have donated to the cause had he been given the opportunity to do so.

The books are being distributed to the schools in celebration of the translation's 400th anniversary.

Read it all.

Doctor of Divinity

“There once was a clergyman named Tweedle
Who refused an honorary degree.
He said, ‘Twas bad enough being Tweedle, 
Without being Tweedle, D.D.’”

Well, my name is not Tweedle, so I did not refuse the honorary degree which Nashotah House Theological Seminary graciously bestowed on me at the 167th annual Commencement of that hallowed institution.

Prof. Stanley Hauerwas, from Duke University, was the speaker at this Commencement and also delivered a public lecture the previous evening entitled, "A Suffering Presence: Twenty-five Years Later," marking the anniversary of his landmark book which examines how profoundly medicine and theology are intertwined when we deal with the human experience of illness and mortality.

The Nashotah House Class of 2012 was graduated in superb style (as usual) and a good time was had by all. The Nashotah House blog and Facebook page will probably have pictures soon, and I will try to link to them when they are available.

Pope Benedict XVI gives direction to U.S. bishops on hot-button issues

Over the course of the last six months, Pope Benedict XVI has delivered five major speeches to small groups of American bishops who were in Rome for their "ad limina" visits, which are required once every five years.

The ad limina visits are an opportunity for the pope to address the major issues faced by a local church.

Religion News Service provides a brief recap of some of the Pope's words for American bishops in recent months.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

'Anti-Christian' culture in America

“At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation’s founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature’s God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.” (Jan. 19)

The church's place in the public square

“The legitimate separation of church and state cannot be taken to mean that the church must be silent on certain issues, nor that the state may choose not to engage, or be engaged by, the voices of committed believers in determining the values which will shape the future of the nation.” (Jan. 19)

 Read it all.

Oh, the irony!

For each General Convention of the Episcopal Church, the convention office publishes a "Blue Book" containing all the reports of the Committees, Commissions, Agencies and Boards to be presented at that Convention.  Although it is called a "Blue Book," the color varies for each General Convention.  In the seven times I have attended, it has been brown, burgundy, olive green, various shades of blue, etc.

This July, the General Convention is scheduled to deal with a report recommending the adoption of liturgies to bless same sex relationships.  Would you like to guess what color the "Blue Book" is?

Click here to find out.

You just can't make this stuff up!