Guitarist Doc Watson dies aged 89

Blind guitarist, Doc Watson, died yesterday aged 89. He was widely considered a true American original who deeply influenced every guitarist – folk, jazz, or rock – in the past 50 years. He was lauded not just for his technical skill but his understanding of Appalachian culture and for his model behavior as a humble man.

According to the Chicago Tribune: "You can spot his picking style by its grace: It's as though his loss of eyesight had not only sharpened his hearing, but filled with light the conduit that connected his brain to his fingertips. What he imagined, he played.

Music was the heirloom that Watson, born Arthel Lane Watson in 1923, inherited from his father, named General Watson, himself a banjo player who taught his son a love and enthusiasm for stringed instruments. General was so fixed on his son's talent that, after he was confident of the younger Watson's skills, he built his son a fretless banjo from scratch.

On the family farm in rural North Carolina, a little island of desegregation allowed blues songs to mix alongside cowboy yodelers and gospel choirs. By his late teens, he was playing square dances at the local American Legion Hall and figuring out how to play fiddle lines on guitar. These adaptations became the substance of a style that drew on bluegrass "flatpicking" guitar technique.

Like Mississippi John Hurt, another veteran player who achieved greater fame after Bob Dylan and the success of the Newport Folk Festival had opened the gates for workingman blues, Watson had a voice that shined with optimism even when he was delivering bad news. His version of "Worried Man's Blues," for example, bounces along despite its message, the subtext being that the condition will pass with a new day.

And in Watson's hands, "Whiskey Before Breakfast" is one of the happiest, most wonderful guitar instrumentals you'll ever hear, a jaunt that seems to celebrate, not bemoan, a sip of rye before the morning coffee, as if he's frolicking toward the bottle."