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Appalachian Folk

Deep Gap, North Carolina

Doc Watson

Arthel Watson was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina, in 1923 and lost his sight before he was two. He got his nickname on a live radio broadcast, when someone in the audience shouted "Call him Doc!" He bought his first guitar with money from cutting dead chestnut trees for a tannery. In the 1950s he played electric guitar in a dance band, and because they had no fiddler he played fiddle tunes on the guitar, which became the root of his flatpicking. Ralph Rinzler steered him back to acoustic music, and the 1963 Newport Folk Festival made his name. He won seven Grammys and the National Medal of Arts. MerleFest in Wilkesboro was founded in memory of his son Merle. He died in 2012, aged 89.

Clinch Mountain, 1946

The Stanley Brothers

Carter and Ralph Stanley grew up in the mountains of southwest Virginia, where their mother taught Ralph clawhammer banjo. They formed their band in November 1946, after Ralph came home from the army, and soon had a slot on WCYB's Farm & Fun Time in Bristol. They were among the first to take up Bill Monroe's new bluegrass sound, which annoyed Monroe at first, though they later became friends and Carter played in his band for a while. They recorded for Rich-R-Tone, Columbia, Mercury and King. Carter wrote more than a hundred songs. He died in December 1966, aged 41, and Ralph carried on with the Clinch Mountain Boys, hiring the teenage Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley. Ralph won a Grammy in 2002 and died in 2016.

Daisy, Kentucky, 1959

Roscoe Holcomb

Roscoe Holcomb was born in Daisy, Kentucky, in 1912 and worked as a coal miner, labourer and farmer. He grew up in the Old Regular Baptist church, which allowed no instruments, and later played guitar and banjo in a Holiness church. In 1959 the folklorist John Cohen found him at the end of a hollow in Daisy, and coined the phrase "the high lonesome sound" for his singing. Folkways released his recordings from 1960 onward, and Cohen's film of that name came out in 1963. He played colleges, festivals and Europe in the folk revival. Bob Dylan said his singing had "an untamed sense of control", and Eric Clapton named him his favourite country musician. He died in Kentucky in 1981, his health ruined by the mines.

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