Doc Watson, the virtuoso folk-guitar player whose real name was Arthel, died Tuesday in a hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was eighty-nine years old and had made more than fifty records. Before he was a year old he had gone blind from an eye infection, and he was educated at the Raleigh School for the Blind, in North Carolina. He was thirteen when he learned the chords to When the Roses Bloom in Dixieland on a guitar he had borrowed.
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Watson and his wife, Rosa Lee, had a son, Merle, and a daughter, Nancy. During the sixties, Watson performed with Merle, who also became a skilled musician. Merle died in 1985, when a tractor he was driving turned over on him. Grief-stricken, Watson gave up performing for a time, then began Merlefest, a bluegrass festival, in his sons honor.
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