OK, the first one isn’t going to be any surprise. Any music fan, no, any person with ears who has lived more than a day or two, knows the first entrant is going to be Doc Watson.
Grammy-award winner Doc Watston was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina, in 1923, had perhaps single-handedly saved all of American traditional music. Blind from a 2 years old, Doc got his start not in Americana but in a country swing band, playing – gulp – electric guitar in Johnson City, Tennessee. By 1960, though Doc had caught the folk revival fever and switched to acoustic and banjo exclusively, playing Greenwich Village in New York City a year later.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/71L2ODASOE7x0OVxGeJcEJ
Contained on this playlist is Doc’s versions of “Sittin On Top of the World” and “Deep River Blues.”
Up next is another flavor of Doc, this one properly Dock, out of Norton, Virginia.
Born Moran Lee Boggs in 1898, Dock was the youngest of 10, many of whom also learned as children to pick the banjo. But none of them learned to pick like Dock. As a child, Dock is said to have sneaked out to hear the Black musicians on the other side of the tracks in Norton and melded their banjo picking styles with the frailing style he’d learned. Dock went into the mines but supplemented the pay with work playing parties and sometime around 1927 went to the still-extant Norton Hotel, where, fortified with a couple shots of whiskey, he played a borrowed banjo to cut songs for Brunswick Records. Within a year, Dock quit the mines and played music, until his wife put her foot down and had him cut out all that sinful secular singing (the drunken scrapes he found himself in and the Great Depression certainly didn’t help matters and after cutting a few more tunes, Dock pawned his banjo and gave up on the dream.
On the playlist from Dock are “Bright Sunny South” and “Coal Creek March.”
From Wilkes County, North Carolina, we have another Dock, this one Dock Walsh. Born in 1901, Walsh’s name was actually Doctor Cobble Walsh. In 1925, Walsh formed The Carolina Tar Heels with Clarence Ashley and became known as the Banjo King of the Carolinas.
Though a clawhammer player, Walsh was actually the first person to record playing the three-finger style, a style often attributed to bluegrass giant Earl Scruggs. Walsh also developed a style where he’d raise the bridge and use a knife to fret, much the way blues musicians might play a bottle-neck guitar slide. On the playlist, you’ll hear “In The Pines” and “Knocking on the Hen House Door.”
No list of docs would be complete without the legendary Dr. Ralph Stanley.
Stanley, who really needs no introduction, developed the Stanley style – a two-finger attack on the instrument – on banjo. Just out of the Army in 1946, he started playing with his brother, Carter, forming the Clinch Mountain Boys. The brothers started out on WNVA in Norton but quickly headed to WCYB, where they played off and on for 12 years on Farm and Fun Time.
When Carter died in 1966, Stanley set out on his own and became a legend once again. Included on this playlist is “O Death” and “Clinch Mountain Backstep.”
Though born in New York City, musical prodigy Dave Eggar has close ties to the Appalachian region, teaching as he does at UVA-Wise. Ralph Stanley is actually one of the long list of legends and future legends Eggar has performed, recorded with and arranged for. In the release The New Appalachians, Eggar teamed up with an all-star group that included the likes of Noah Wall and Tyler Hughes to showcase old standards, like the included “Make Me Down A Pallet On Your Floor” and “Wayfaring Stranger.”
As always, enjoy the music and if you have a suggestion for someone to be included on the playlist, let us know.
