The folk-music icon, 89, died Tuesday, after a fall last week at his home in Deep Gap, N.C., and subsequent colon surgery.
Blind from infancy, Watson grew up playing harmonica and a homemade banjo but learned guitar after his father bought him a $12 Stella acoustic when he was 13. Born Arthel Lane Watson, he picked up the nickname "Doc" at the suggestion of an audience member at a radio broadcast when he was in his teens.
Though Watson was instrumental in developing the canon for 1960s folk musicians with his recordings of traditional tunes like Deep River Blues and Shady Grove, he didn't play just the music of the Appalachian Mountains. Before folklorist and musician Ralph Rinzler first recorded him backing old-time banjo player Clarence "Tom" Ashley in 1960, he worked with a local dance band, playing honky-tonk, rockabilly, pop and square-dance tunes.
"His adaptations of fiddle tunes to the flattop guitar virtually reinvented the instrument's role in bluegrass," journalist John Milward wrote in liner notes for the 1999 compilation The Best of Doc Watson 1964-1968, which included Watson's versions of the Eddy Arnold country hit Tennessee Stud and Jimmie Rodgers' My Rough and Rowdy Ways.
He is single-handedly responsible for the extraordinary increase in acoustic flatpicking and fingerpicking performance," Rinzler once wrote. "His flatpicking style has no precedent in early country music history."
His appearance on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1972 Will the Circle Be Unbroken triple-album set took him to a wider audience, including fans of country, bluegrass and blues.
"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," President Bill Clinton said when presenting Watson his National Medal of the Arts in 1997. Watson also won seven Grammys over a 33-year period and received Grammy's lifetime achievement award in 2004.
For many years, Watson toured with his son, Merle Watson, who died in a 1985 tractor accident. Merle's memory is honored by MerleFest, an annual North Carolina roots-music festival that the elder Watson hosted. Held on the last weekend in April since 1988, MerleFest draws more than 75,000 annually to Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, N.C.
Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson, March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012 was an American guitar player, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Watson's flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music are highly regarded. He performed with his son Merle for over 15 years until Merle's death in 1985, in an accident on the family farm.
In a 1988 radio interview with host Terry Gross on the Fresh Air show of National Public Radio (NPR), Watson explains how he got his first guitar. His father told him that if he and his brother chopped down all the small, dead, chestnut trees along the edge of their field, he could sell the wood to the tannery and make money. The brothers did the work and Watson bought a $10 Stella guitar from Sears Roebuck while his brother bought a new suit. Later in that same interview, Watson explained that his first high quality guitar was a Martin Guitar D-18.
The first song Watson learned to play on the guitar was "When Roses Bloom in Dixieland". Watson proved to be a natural musical talent and within months was performing on local street corners playing songs from the Delmore Brothers, Louvin Brothers, and Monroe Brothers alongside his brother Linny. By the time Watson reached adulthood, he had become a proficient acoustic and electric guitar player.
In 1947, Doc married Rosa Lee Carlton, the daughter of popular fiddle player Gaither Carlton. Watson and Rosa Lee had two children—Eddy Merle (named after country music legends Eddy Arnold and Merle Travis) in 1949, and Nancy Ellen in 1951.
In 1953, Watson joined the Johnson City, Tennessee-based Jack Williams' country and western swing band on electric guitar. The band seldom had a fiddle player, but was often asked to play at square dances. Following the example of country guitarists Grady Martin and Hank Garland, Watson taught himself to play fiddle tunes on his Les Paul electric guitar. He later transferred the technique to acoustic guitar, and playing fiddle tunes became part of his signature sound. During his time with Jack Williams, Doc also supported his family as a piano tuner.
In 1960, as the American folk music revival grew, Watson took the advice of folk musicologist Ralph Rinzler and began playing acoustic guitar and banjo exclusively. That move ignited Watson's career when he played on his first recording, Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley's. He also began to tour as a solo performer and appeared at universities and clubs like the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Watson would eventually get his big break and rave reviews for his performance at the renowned Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island in 1963. Watson recorded his first solo album in 1964 and began performing with his son Merle the same year.
After the folk revival waned during the late 1960s, Watson's career was sustained by his performance of "Tennessee Stud" on the 1972 live album recording Will the Circle Be Unbroken. As popular as ever, Doc and Merle began playing as a trio, with T. Michael Coleman on bass guitar, in 1974.
In recent years, Watson scaled back his touring schedule. Watson was generally joined onstage by his grandson (Merle's son) Richard, as well as longtime musical partners David Holt or Jack Lawrence. On one occasion, Watson was accompanied by Australian guitar player Tommy Emmanuel at a concert at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. Watson also performed, accompanied by Holt and Richard, at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco, California in 2009, as he had done in several previous years.
Watson hosted the annual MerleFest music festival held every April at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. The festival features a vast array of acoustic style music focusing on the folk, bluegrass, blues and old-time music genres. It is named in honor of Merle Watson and is one of the most popular acoustic music festivals in the world, drawing over 70,000 music fans each year.
In 2010, Blooming Twig Books published "Blind But Now I See" by Dr. Kent Gustavson, the first comprehensive biography of the seminal flatpicking guitarist.
Death
In late May 2012, Watson was listed in critical condition but was responsive at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after undergoing colon surgery. He had fallen early in the week, but did not break any bones. It was an underlying condition that prompted the surgery. Watson died on May 29, 2012 at the medical center at the age of 89.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe , moo-gah-bee; born 21 February 1924 is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980. He served as Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987, and as the first executive head of state since 1987.
Mugabe rose to prominence in the 1960s as the Secretary General of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) during the conflict against the white-minority rule government of Ian Smith. Mugabe was a political prisoner in Rhodesia for more than 10 years between 1964 and 1974. Upon release with Edgar Tekere, Mugabe left Rhodesia in 1975 to re-join the Zimbabwe Liberation Struggle (Rhodesian Bush War) from bases in Mozambique.
At the end of the war in 1979, Mugabe emerged as a hero in the minds of many Africans. He won the general elections of 1980, the second in which the majority of black Africans participated in large numbers (though the electoral system in Rhodesia had allowed black participation based on qualified franchise). Mugabe then became the first Prime Minister after calling for reconciliation between formerly warring parties, including white Rhodesians and rival political groups.
The years following Zimbabwe's independence saw a split between the two key belligerents who had fought alongside each other during the 1970s against the government of Rhodesia. An armed conflict between Mugabe's Government and dissident followers of Joshua Nkomo's pro-Marxist ZAPU erupted. Following the deaths of thousands, neither warring faction able to defeat the other, the heads of the opposing movements reached a landmark agreement, whence was created a new ruling party, ZANU PF, as a merger between the two former rivals.
In 1998, Mugabe's government supported the Southern African Development Community's intervention in the Second Congo War by sending Zimbabwean troops to assist the Kabila government. This was probably a tack to bolster the floundering Zimbabwean economy by plundering the DRC.
Since 2000, the Mugabe-led government embarked on a controversial fast-track land reform program intended to correct the inequitable land distribution created by colonial rule. The period has been marked by the deterioration of the Zimbabwean economic situation. Mugabe's policies have been condemned in some quarters at home and abroad, especially receiving harsh criticism from the British and American governments arguing they amount to an often violent land seizure. Eventually[when?] a wide range of sanctions was imposed by the US government and European Union against the person of Mugabe, individuals, private companies, parastatals and the government of Zimbabwe. In 2008, his party suffered a tight defeat in national parliamentary elections, but after disputed presidential elections, Mugabe retained presidential power with the signing of a power-sharing deal with opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara of the MDC-T and MDC-M opposition party.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his regime as a “leader for tourism,” according to reports.
The surprise honor, while slammed by human rights groups, is also a head scratcher since the 88-year-old despot is banned from even travelling to Europe because of Western sanctions.
The U.N. World Tourism Organization endorsed Mugabe along with Zambian President Michael Sata at the African countries’ shared border, where the pair signed an agreement Tuesday to co-host the WTO General Assembly in August 2013.
“I was told about the wonderful experience and the warm hospitality of (Zimbabwe),” UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai said at the event, according to The Herald, Zimbabwe’s state-owned newspaper.
“By coming here, it is recognition, an endorsement on the country that it is a safe destination,” Rifai said.
The UNWTO later stressed that Mugabe was not made an official U.N. ambassador or given a tourism-related title.
WTO spokeswoman Sandra Carvao said Mugabe and Sata were presented with “an open letter which calls for them to support tourism as a means to foster sustainable development in their countries to the benefit of their people,” according to Britain’s The Guardian newspaper.
Nevertheless, world leaders and human rights groups said any sort of endorsement undermines the U.N.’s credibility and props up a man with a long list of alleged human rights violations.
Since being elected into power in 1980, first as prime minister, Mugabe has been accused of election-rigging, allowing government cronyism to thrive and promoting racism against Zimbabwe’s minority white population. The country, once with a stable economy, has become reliant on foreign aid.
“The man has blood on his hands,” a spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change told The Guardian. “Do they want tourists to see those bloody hands?”
UNWTO said it had not appointed Mugabe to any formal position but acknowledged he would receive an open letter like other heads of state who have joined its leaders for tourism campaign.
The development has stunned human rights campaigners and political opponents, who regard Mugabe as a tyrant.
Kumbi Muchemwa, a spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said: "I can't see any justification for the man being an 'ambassador'. An ambassador for what? The man has blood on his hands. Do they want tourists to see those bloody hands?"
Meanwhile, British MP Kate Hoey, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Zimbabwe, said: "It is an absolute scandal – and an affront to the people of Zimbabwe, who didn't vote for Mugabe as their president but had him imposed because he used violence and the armed forces to hang onto power in defiance of the democratic will of the people of Zimbabwe.
"For a man who has destroyed his country's infrastructure and cynically engineered hunger to be an 'ambassador' for tourism is disgraceful – particularly as he has been personally responsible for the downward spiral of the economy and destroyed the hotel, travel and tourism industry in the process."
Mugabe and his allies are subject to EU and US sanctions preventing them from travelling to EU countries including Britain, although he does attend the UN general assembly in New York.
Muchemwa added: "Robert Mugabe is under international sanctions, so how do you have an international tourism ambassador who can't travel to other countries?
"The UN is losing credibility in this process. Does it think people should go to a country where the law is not obeyed? An MDC activist was murdered last Saturday. Zimbabwe is doing things which don't encourage the arrival of tourists."
There was also criticism from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, an umbrella organisation of civil society groups. Dewa Mavhinga, its regional information and advocacy officer, said: "It boggles the mind how the UN could appoint Mugabe as an ambassador of any sort. I don't think he's an appropriate person.
"It sends the wrong message to Mugabe that he is now acceptable to the international community. This is the same guy who last week was bashing gays and lesbians, who he says are worse than dogs."
Zimbabwe is rich in tourism potential, boasting attractions such as Victoria Falls, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and the Hwange wildlife game reserve, and one of the best climates in the world. Its official tourism branding entices with "a world of wonders".
The past decade has hit the industry hard, with the national airline going bust, but there have been recent signs of a gradual recovery.
John Makumbe, a politics professor at the University of Zimbabwe, said of Mugabe's accolade: "I think it's ridiculous because Zimbabwe is one of the countries least used by tourists.
"Tourism is at its lowest level because of the political and economic crises it's gone through. Tourists really wish Victoria Falls was in another country, like South Africa.
"Robert Mugabe will do more damage to international tourism than good. His image is in tatters, his country is an international pariah.
"It undermines the reputation of the UNWTO as being detached from the reality on the ground in terms of human rights violations and political instability."
But after visiting the country last week, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, urged western countries to lift their targeted sanctions, arguing that they are hurting the poor. She also called on Zimbabwe to pass reforms to avoid violence in the next election.
Mugabe's Zanu-PF party seized on his UN honour as evidence that opponents and media have exaggerated the country's problems. Spokesman Rugare Gumbo said: "There's no alternative but to accept the reality on the ground. We can theorise about sanctions but the reality is that the UN is in control of the situation. If you can't defeat them, join them: that is what we are witnessing."
He continued: "The situation on the ground in Zimbabwe is not as bad as portrayed. If we say this ourselves, you say it's propaganda.
