1960s Recordings of Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton Capture a Moment that Changed Roots Music

Thanks to COVID-19, there was no MerleFest this year. But you can still get your Doc Watson fix courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways’ newest release, Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton. Recorded at two concerts in New York City in 1962 by Peter Siegel, founder of the Nonesuch Explorer Series, it captures the emergence of a new sound in folk music, with flatpicked guitar as lead instrument instead of accompaniment.

Although Gaither Carlton is the lesser known participant here, he leaves a big musical footprint. Carlton was a Wilkes County, North Carolina, farmer who seldom demonstrated his fiddle skills too far from home, but he did have a weekly 15-minute gospel radio show, playing hymns on his fiddle on Sundays in the 1940s. Appearances with Watson at Newport in 1964 and Cornell in 1962 were among his few mainstream exposures outside the Old Time Fiddlers’ Convention in Union Grove, North Carolina. In the liner notes, Carlton’s granddaughter says he was a shy man who preferred to stay close to home, playing at church affairs and the fiddlers conventions, before he passed away in 1972.

He was an accomplished musician who glides easily over around and behind Watson’s guitar. Accompanied by Carlton’s hill country drone on fiddle on “He’s Coming to Us Dead,” Watson displays some of the flatpicking skills he would later become famous for.

Carlton’s fiddle sounds more like bagpipes on “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” a fiddle staple that first showed up on record in the 1920s. The only original on the Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton track list is Carlton’s “Double File,” a lively dance tune with Carlton’s fiddle winding sinuously around Watson’s meticulous fingerpicking for a speedy encounter that’s over in less than a minute and half. “Brown’s Dream” is another shorty, Watson sidestepping around Carlton’s fiddle for a couple of minutes.

The rest are covers or arrangements by the duo. Watson shows off his banjo skills on “Goin’ Back to Jericho” a rattly traditional tune that tries to run away from Carlton’s fiddle as Watson barely keeps the tempo from skedaddling down the mountain. Watson picks up the banjo once again for “Reuben’s Train,” a tune he learned from his dad, letting Carlton shine as he scrapes high and lonesome on the strings.

The servings here are small but tasty, most clocking in at under three minutes. It’s a master class in efficiency, capturing a moment when some mountain air was delivered farther afield, bringing the sound and the message with no frills attached.