Notizie

In an increasingly bad month for music lovers, we have lost two more beloved greats, guitarists of the highest caliber: folk/country icon Doc Watson and jazz/blues/soul/avant-garde legend Pete Cosey. Watson was a star, certainly; just as certainly, Cosey was not. But aficionados of their respective genres had the highest respect for them.

I am shamefully uninformed about the (vastly) more famous of the two, Arthel "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 -- May 29, 2012), whose virtuoso country flat-picking style made him a legend not just in country music but among guitarists of many stripes. Rather than crib from Wikipedia, I'll just say that you can find the outline of his life there; here I'll stick to my impressions.

After three early '60s Folkways albums on which he shared the spotlight with a variety of artists, he switched to Vanguard and released a series of dazzling and varied LPs that,...