
{"id":26387,"date":"2012-06-07T14:45:23","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T18:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=26387"},"modified":"2012-06-07T14:49:42","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T18:49:42","slug":"doc-and-merle-1983","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2012\/06\/07\/doc-and-merle-1983\/","title":{"rendered":"Doc and Merle, 1983"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Thousand Words<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>By Jock Lauterer<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2012\/06\/07\/doc-and-merle-1983\/1kwords060712\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-26388\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/1kwords060712.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"1kwords060712\" width=\"500\" height=\"363\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-26388\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/1kwords060712.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/1kwords060712-113x82.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/1kwords060712-150x108.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/1kwords060712-100x72.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/1kwords060712-360x261.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nHow do you honor the guitar player who singlehandedly changed the face of American folk and roots music? The photographer goes to his vaults and pulls out a haunting image made back in 1983 during a pilgrimage to Doc Watson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home in Deep Gap, where the humble wizard of the six-string shared not only his music but also his wisdom. Doc Watson talked like he played the guitar \u00e2\u20ac\u201c bass string ringing lickety-split in an arpeggio of notes too fast for any normal mortal to put down. He flared a sentence devoid of commas: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell you what buddy I cut stovewood tuned pianos took a little charity from the state like most blind folks and did a whole lotta walking and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have no car either,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d rest, a breath, and then: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Back in the \u00e2\u20ac\u212250s son I played with a country swing group \u00e2\u20ac\u201c well it put biscuits on the table and overalls on little Merle!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Doc also allowed me to make this image, shot on a foggy Blue Ridge morning, with his son, Merle, at his side. Two years later, Merle would be lost to a tractor accident \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and likewise, the negative to this photo, never printed, was lost, only to be discovered 20 years later in a forgotten darkroom drawer. Doc Watson was an American original; we will not see his likes come this way again. (The entire interview with Doc can be found in my anthology of Appalachian portraits, <em>Runnin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 On Rims<\/em>, published in 1986 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.) <\/p>\n<p><strong>A THOUSAND WORDS<\/strong><br \/>\nDo you have an important old photo that you value? Email your photo to jock@email.unc.edu and include the story behind the picture. Because every picture tells a story. And its worth? A thousand words.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/sections\/a-thousand-words\/\">More &#8220;A Thousand Words&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you honor the guitar player who singlehandedly changed the face of American folk and roots music?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":26388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-thousand-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26394,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26387\/revisions\/26394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}