Doc and Merle Watson's Elementary Doctor Watson, released in 1972, maintains a very deep, special hold on me, and has since I was about eight years old. Though Southbound, released six years earlier on Vanguard, is the superior album — one of the best folk revival albums ever made, in fact — Elementary is one of my father's favorite records, and I've listened to it countless times with him, and over the years he has taught me many of these songs on guitar as well. He has the album memorized — guitar parts and lyrics — from start to finish. Once upon a time, I did as well.

Doc is from Deep Gap, North Carolina, pure Appalachia. I grew up about 150 miles to the north in a similar terrain, and the songs that Doc and his late son Merle play on Elementary are known by any and all pickers who have settled in those hollers. (Go visit the Galax Fiddler's Convention if you don't believe me. Check that: visit it, period. It's amazing.) Doc, who is still living and performs regularly, is a deceptively smooth picker, a man who learned to play from listening to Merle Travis (Doc's… read more »