The Definitive Doc Watson

Folk-singer-ophobes may find an unlikely ally in American roots singer Tim O’Brien, who astutely summarises Doc Watson’s appeal in the liner notes to this immensely satisfying album:‘Watson took a lot of the scratch out of folk, a lot of the whine out of it, and led us in the door.’ It’s true: Doc Watson’s voice is the epitome of smooth right across this 34-track compilation, spanning songs from his early 60s albums up to 2005, when he was in his mid-80s. He sounds truly at home in the world, with a delivery that is always engrossing, always at the service of the song. Yet it’s as a guitarist that the late Watson was best known. He’s one of the greats: as with Mississippi John Hurt or Robert Johnson, his instrument sounds like it must have organically sprouted out of him.

Watson recorded some 60 albums, if justification for this superb selection were needed. Stuffed with a connoisseur’s choice of songs from the Vanguard and Sugar Hill labels, it proves Doc Watson was an icon of American music, unhurriedly making nonsense of distinctions between blues and country, between African-American and Appalachian song, between music as performance and music as an essential part of life.