Reports are coming in that Doc Watson has departed our temporary home.
There will be ample writing about his half-hundred records, the countless songs he rescued from obscurity, his own trials--no one is supposed to bury his own boy, damn it--and the numberless musicians he schooled.
A million words gonna be said. Million tears gonna be shed. Can't be any other way.
Me, I wanted to say thanks.
Thanks for a voice that forced a man to smile, in the face of the hardest blues, to laugh just to keep from crying and to cry at the joy of love and spring in the hills.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for so many beautiful pictures, painted in the most heartbreaking colors by a hand that never once slipped.
Thank you so, so much for so very much.
Pete Townsend was talking about the blues once, said the blues wasn't sad at all, it was your oldest friend. Nobody knew that old friend better than Doc, and he was happy to introduce you.