An Audience With A Legend
Posted at 6:00 AM on May 12, 2010
by Dale Connelly
(21 Comments)
Radio Heartland has tickets to a landmark event at the Cedar Cultural Center this Saturday night - the first Twin Cities appearance in five years by the legendary Doc Watson. The concert has sold out at $65 per seat.
Only three pairs of tickets remain.
As is the case with all our drawings, this is open to everyone.
You do not have to be an MPR member to enter or to win.
Enter the drawing.
Follow the rules.
Good Luck.
Doc Watson was born with a defect in the blood vessels around his eyes and became blind by the time he was one year old. He just turned 87 in March. He is an expert in flatpicking and fingerpicking guitar techniques. His influence among players of traditional and popular music is impossible to measure. Among his many honors, Doc received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton in 1997.
But far greater gifts came from Doc's father, who hand built a banjo for his 11 year old son. Watson told Fresh Air's Terry Gross that his dad ...
"... showed me a few of the old time frailing or clawhamer style banjo tunes. And one day he brought it to me and put it in my hands and said "son I want you to learn to play this real well. Some of these days we'll get you a better one. It might help get you through the world."
General Dixon Watson's dedication to helping his son 'get through the world' led to another important moment. When Doc was 14 his father assigned him to do some work with a crosscut saw - a risk many of today's hyper-protective parents wouldn't take with their sighted children. Doc told an interviewer for "Bluegrass Unlimited" ...
"He made me know that just because I was blind, certainly didn't mean I was helpless."
And it helped develop a useful skill. Doc and his younger brother cut and sold scrap wood to a local tannery to make some money. Doc used his share to buy his first mail order guitar from Sears Roebuck.
Years later, a music store proprietor in Boone, North Carolina offered to help Doc get a better guitar, a Martin D-18, by cutting the payments to five dollars a month.
As Doc told Terry Gross ...
"At that time I was playing at the little fruit stand and a little bean market that they had at Boone and makin' me a few shekels on Saturday. Havin' a good time a pickin'. I paid for the guitar that summer. He got me that thing at his cost - and it cost ninety bucks. And I paid for it. Lord I was proud of that guitar. But in all truth, compared to my guitar now it was like frettin' a fence.
It was really hard to play."
Doc Watson has certainly made the best of what he had to work with. If you didn't already know the story you wouldn't look at that early handmade banjo or the Sears mail order guitar and guess that a blind boy might pick them up and with time and talent, become a national treasure.
Have you stashed away an early tool or a toy that was a "starter" for a lifelong passion?
Comments (21)
Morning Heartlanders. Wish I could go to Doc Watson on Saturday... alas, other plans already made.
My mother does not like to cook. Neither did my grandmother (long, long story about incredibly inflexible grandfather inserted here). But my grandmother did have a good "burger shaper" - two wooden disks with a hinge holding them together. It had a rooster painted on it and my grandmother used it to make hamburgers on Saturday nights. I begged and begged for it when I was a girl and my grandmother finally let me have it when I was about 10. By the time I was out on my own and cooking, I had become a vegetarian, so I have never actually used the little hamburger maker, but I am the only good cook in my whole family... love to bake and cook as a matter of fact. Even worked in the bakery business for several years. I still have the pretty little press on the window sill in my kitchen to this day!
i have my Dad's pocket knife but i don't use it; i have it stashed away. his favorite teasing line to me was "if i buy you a banjo will you learn how to play it?" i wasn't wise enough to take him up on it. but then i never would have been as talented as Doc anyway.
thanks for that look into Doc Watson' life, Dale - very interesting how his Dad taught him to be strong. a valuable tool.
good morning, All
Good morning all. The 45 rpm single records that got me started on listening to music and collecting recorded music are gone. However, I do have some more recently bought recordings of some of the same artist I listened to on those 45s, including Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, and Bo Didley. Also, I have a lot LPs that are from my early days of collecting jazz.
dale'
thanks for the doc stories, i hope my kids remember me as nicely as doc remembers his dad. my dad came from a perfectionist dad who was a bricklayer and would make certain every task assigned was done to perfection. my dad as a result was the opposite. i will always remember putting up a fence witht he 4x4's being a bit out of line after we dug the holes and put them in and the mantra " make it up on the next one" it became a punch line for life.
the stuff i have stashed away is my brain. the passions i have are all in there. i have the art books thenlp collection the books i have collected a warehouse full of stuff i can't give away or part with my first electric guitar in a box never assembled after my brother refinished it for me but never put it back together, my first bmw motorcycle in boxes to be dealt with later. but the true stashed stuff is like fine wine. the memories get better with age. my travels journeys quests and friendships are the things i look back upon with a sense of value.
ill let you know about this outdoor baseball after the noon game today.wonderful when the sun is out, 40 and gray is a little less wonderful but tough to complain about the chance to be outdoors watching the greatest game invented in one of the most beautiful parks on the planet even if it is a bit gray.
good wednesday all
Good morning Heartlanders
I attended the Iowa State Fair in 1954. My parents gave me $6 to pay for food and fun. One of the first booths I came to was the Iowa Conservation Commission's, and they were selling a hardbound book on Iowa Fish and Fishing. Cost: $6. I wanted it badly enough to forgo food and rides.
It was the first book I ever purchased. Adjusted for inflation, that book cost me $48. I still have it. What I couldn't know then was that books about the outdoors would become my life's work.
Since things seem a little slow at the moment, maybe folks won't mind a Doc Watson story. A guitarist friend told me he was present when a very young Doc Watson first met the legendary Bill Monroe.
Bill Monroe was a great musician but a bit of a jerk, and he had an ego larger than his cowboy hat. He invited this blind kid to play a tune together and then he ripped into one of his signature tunes that he could play faster than any living human being.
Doc had not known the tune, but he picked it up right away and matched Monroe's speed. Monroe played faster and faster, but Doc kept right with him. My friend said toward the end you could almost see smoke curling up from the picks as those two men played.
I don't know that this was true, though it fits what I know about both men. And from what I know about Doc Watson's humanity, I doubt he remembers this incident the way it was told to me.
My grandfather gave me his old Pentax SLR when he was upgrading to a new camera. The camera no longer works, but it was the tool with which I began documenting family life. Over time, I grew more interested in the photographs themselves and less interested in documenting family life. My first photographs were photos of my grandfather in his rock shop in the basement, where he would make gold and silver settings for the gems and stones he cut. I am happy and fortunate to have many photographs of my late grandparents.
Greetings, all!
i saved books, like my original Little House series, Winnie the Pooh; also saved my daughter's favorites
and thank you for playing the Beatles car song, you played it for my daughter's 16th birthday, when she got her driver's license; she will be 33 on june 4
thank you for all the music through the years
Steve, I saw Doc Watson play as a duo with Bill Monroe when I lived in Indiana and attended the festival at Bean Blossum. They were great. I guess this wasn't the first time they played togather, as you have indicated. My friend was the president of the Bill Monroe fan club and I got a chance to shake Bill Monroe's hand and heard Bill Monroe and his band play several times at Bean Blossum in a barn-like building owned by Bill's brother, Birch Monroe.
Nice blog, Dale. Nice.
Have not really had a life-long passion. My adulthood went so differently than my childhood plans and dreams. So nothing remains of any meaning from my childhood, and I am not much of a keeper, nor was my mother. I envy those who found a childhood passion and carried it through. My daughter at about age 10 announced she was going to be a pastor, which I think is quite early for that call. My sister announced she would be a teacher at about 8.
A thing or two I kept here or there as a treasure have slipped away. My longest-lasting passions have been more of the mind and spirit than of the hand or the arts. Professionally I fought a lot of battles of curriculum, methodology, pegagogy, which are now pretty much gone from schools. My grand-daughter's classroom is devoid of all of the research done in education in the last 100 years. I have not even kept any copies of the first version of the educational manuals I co-authored and doubt I will keep any copies of the last version, which are about to be trashed out from Glen Taylor's back room. Threw out all of my sermons at our last move, but they were just speaking notes.
Hmm. Have not really kept poems I have written. This answer surprises me. Pneumonia makes one sentimental I guess.
Sherrilee - my mom had one of those hamburger presses, too. I think hers has gone the way of the dodo, however.
I don't have a tool from my earliest days - but somewhere stashed away I think I still have my first wood project - a "clock" with only one hand and purple crayon numbers made from 2x4 scraps (the one hand, a corner cut off of something, was nailed on with a 16 penny nail). Made it in kindergarten one day when the teacher's husband came in with his woodworking scraps and a few tools. Man that hammer felt good in my hand...
I do have the psoriasis I had as a child . . . does that count?
So who among you besides Anna have carried a passion from primary grades to the present and what passion?
My wife has a figurine I made in Mrs. Hayes 7th grade art which my mother gave to my wife. My wife and I have an agreement that I will not destroy it if she does not display it. Mrs. Hayes artc classroom was not a place to learn a passion for art.
Interesting experience, Jim! As I said, I don't know that my friend's "take" on that first meeting was accurate. I've read several times that Monroe rose up from poverty and was both proud and hard-edged about his musicianship. I'm sure he came to respect Doc. Everything I've heard about Doc makes it clear he is an uncommonly decent man. He once did an interview with Terry Gross that made my eyes smart because he was so genuinely humble and gracious.
My earliest passion I remember was horses. Planned a horse farm I ran by myself with a hired hand..."invented" a stationwagon-convertible (never occurred to me I could have one of each...). Drew horses endlessly well into my twenties...then again in my thirties and forties. Finally got the real thing when I was 36...still have three of them...no longer draw them and haven't shown them or taken lessons for ten years, haven't ridden for a few years, but the joy remains just to hang out with them and watch them feed and play in the pasture.
now that i'm in and have thought awhile, i know that my Dad gave me the ability to deal with numbers. he only had a 8th grade education but he liked numbers. was a carpenter and could do board feet calculations in his head so he wanted me to be able to "figure" things without paper and pencil (he'd be shocked at calculators!). i'd go to his shop after school and sit on the floor and nail little scraps of wood together to make little boats. he'd be working and would propose math problems to me and help me figure them in my head. i carry that with me yet today. a huge gift.
my Mom gave me her stubbornness - not on purpose :-)
Completely off topic... but for my limerick-writing friends here, I just found out that today is Edward Lear's birthday. Great champion of the limerick, which, it turns out, is the only fixed-verse form indigenous to the English language.
When I was a young teen I purchased Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. We had none of equipment or ingredients but I poured over that book from cover to cover. I started cooking from it when I was in college. My husband and I consider cooking a major hobby and avocation. Thanks, Julia.
cynthia--did you get both the station wagon and the convertible? At the same time?
Steve--love the $6 book story. I love giving away books. There is a movie in which Sean Connery as a Salinger type author complains about people dog-earing his books. If I wrote a book, I would want people to dog-ear it, write all over it, wear it out with use.
Re Monroe and Watson--I met some of the greatest athletes of the mid 60's. Thmey were either hard-edged egotists or humble and nice. But all were focused and driven and willing to be dedicated to work on their passion to be better to the point of extreme drudgery and greatly carefully analysis and thinking.
I have treasured dishes with patterns that I can remember from my childhood, a platter from each grandma, and some of my Grandma Sterling's china, which she was so delighted about because the imprint on the back says "Sterling". Cooking isn't my life work, but I did learn to cook way beyond expectation - Mom cooked convenience foods and Betty Crocker (wish I had her old B.c. Cookbook).
It's rainy here in Iowa today, here at Ma's Sr. Residence for a Mothers Day Brunch, and I don't even have to go outside. :) Good Wednesday, y'all.
Hope I'm not too late to recommend today's Writer's Almanac.
A good smile.
Steve--I forgot to look today. Louis Jenkins must be about our age. He nails the feeling, does he not?
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