The Blind Minstrel of Deep Gap, NC

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

HILLSBOROUGH, NC—(Weekly Hubris)—12/6/10—One man put Deep Gap, North Carolina, on the cultural map. His fans around the world know him as “Doc” Watson, though he would answer to his given name, Arthel. For his native Blue Ridge region, Doc accomplished much the same thing that Fred Chappel and Lee Smith did in literary circles. While Chappell and Smith, for Canton, North Carolina, and Grundy, Virginia, respectively, gave life to their natal places, Doc achieved billboard status for Deep Gap.

Chappell and Smith wrote their way to fame and, drawing upon a setting in the Blue Ridge and upon the speech, beliefs, and traits of people in their region, turned their native soil into rich literary fare.

The richness and variety of Doc’s culture appears not only in his singing of traditional mountain songs but also in his talent for making the blues, George Gershwin tunes (who has a better rendering of “Summer Time” than Doc?), hymns, and Country & Western music his own. True artist that he is, Doc merges with the music he performs, one moment a-courtin’ with Froggy, the next mounted on a Tennessee stud, and the next pushing his lover into the Ohio River.

How Doc rose to fame and mastered a wealth of material is truly a remarkable story. An eye infection in his first year left him sightless, a challenge he overcame by making full and compensatory use of other senses. His talent for music appeared early and has sustained him for decades, leading to seven Grammy Awards, honorary degrees, a presidential citation (by Bill Clinton), and induction to various halls of fame.

Also fortunate enough to grow up in Deep Gap, I first heard Doc perform with Uncle Ben Miller, my and Doc’s relative on the Greene side of the family.

They came to Deep Gap Elementary School to entertain us kids, among whom was Rosa Lee Carlton, a classmate of mine from the first grade. Uncle Ben, a country fiddler delighting in clownishness, won eager cheers from us, but the singing and playing of young Arthel Watson proved spellbinding, especially when he sang traditional ballads with attention-grabbing stories. I remember Barbra Allen and Frankie and Johnnie as characters I first learned about from Doc. But he gave us Froggy and Muskrat, too. And they won hearty cheers,

It was not for money that Uncle Ben and Arthel played, but out of their love of performing and sharing. Doc would go for many years without reaping much financial reward for his talent.

He could be seen frequently on US 421, his guitar strapped to his side, hitchhiking his way to Boone, NC, where he garnered some coins by playing on a street corner in the middle of town. A radio station in Boone, with a broadcasting signal so weak it scarcely reached beyond the city limits, invited him to play on a local version of a variety show but offered him no pay.

A married man by now, having courted and won Rosa Lee in 1947, he needed to become something other than a wandering minstrel.

His break came, a small one as a wage-earner, when Jack Williams, leader of a Country & Western band, took Doc on as an electric guitar player. A bigger break occurred when a man interested in traditional mountain music heard Doc play. His name was Ralph Rinzler, and his discovery of Doc and his advice to him to trade his electric guitar for an acoustic model brought Doc from obscurity to fame.

With his fabulously talented son, Merle, Doc recorded hit album after hit album, and moved on to create music-making history by joining players such as Ricky Skaggs, Earl Scruggs, Chet Atkins, and David Holt.

For all his renown, Doc remained a humble, grateful citizen of Deep Gap, leaving only to play gigs in city after city in this country or in foreign lands.

But Deep Gap and neighboring Boone and the county (Watauga) in which they, sit, except for the Cove Creek area, failed to give Doc his due. Cove Creek, an area of Watauga County bordering Tennessee, showed its appreciation of Doc by establishing a museum in his honor, and neighboring Wilkes County poured energy and resources into putting together Merlefest, an annual celebration of traditional music attracting thousands of people and scores of performers, with Doc as the main draw,

That old saying that a man is without honor on his home turf (I take some liberties here) gained further proof for my wife and me a few years back when we decided to establish a scholarship at Appalachian State University to promote traditional mountain music, naming the scholarship for Arthel (“Doc”) Watson. We mailed letters to practically everyone in Deep Gap with a tie to Appalachian State describing our goal and inviting contributions, big or small. From the hundreds of neighbors we asked, we received gifts amounting to $700.00. And those dollars were from kin and friends. Some, kin and friends to Doc, no doubt, but mostly kin and friends to my wife and me.

The one visible sign in Deep Gap that Doc and Merle got their start here is a stretch of US421 (from near the intersection of that highway with the Blue Ridge Parkway to where that road crosses the South Fork of the New River east of Boone) that bears their name. It’s my fervent hope that, one day, the community will at least petition the state of North Carolina to erect a highway marker in honor of Doc, Deep Gap’s blind minstrel.

That doesn’t seem to ask too much, especially since all of us Deep Gappers will live in reflected glory—paid for by the state, our pockets being lighter by only tiny fractions of pennies as a result. Surely, we owe Doc that much.