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Ted Olson is a 2023 Grammy Award nominee for Best Album Notes for Doc’s World: Traditional Plus, a book that accompanies the compilation Doc Watson, Life’s Work: A Retrospective. (Full disclosure: As part of my day job at uDiscover Music, I published an excerpt of these liner notes.) I asked him just a few questions about the process of putting it together.
Can you please briefly describe the release for those that may not be familiar with it?
In November 2022 I learned that an album I co-produced and curated had been nominated for two GRAMMY Awards (Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes). That album, entitled Life’s Work, A Retrospective and released on the Los Angeles-based label Craft Recordings, compiles 101 recordings by Doc Watson originally issued on a dozen different record labels during the legendary folk musician’s decades-long career. I selected the recordings to include on that album and also contributed a biographical essay on Watson and track-by-track notes. It was the first retrospective collection of Doc Watson’s recordings, and the album was in essence a box set (4 CDs and an 88-page book featuring the aforementioned notes alongside many rare photographs of Watson).
Why do you think liners notes were so important to this release?
Throughout his long career, the western North Carolina-based Doc Watson toured the world performing a repertoire he referred to as “Traditional Plus,” incorporating traditional ballads, songs, and tunes alongside whatever else Doc wanted to play (gospel, blues, rock, even jazz standards). Doc overcame many obstacles in his life—he was blind from infancy—but he achieved musical immortality through balancing unparalleled technical skill, profound interpretive instincts, with tireless persistence. That said, some purchasers of this album couldn’t fully appreciate the recordings in this album without knowing Doc’s story. And so I wrote that story for inclusion with this album. I also thought that the listener might wish to know more about the material in Doc’s vast repertoire, and so I added individual notes to contextualize all 101 recordings.
What sort of primary material did you have to work with to write the liner notes?
The research for this project drew from my previous work in documenting Appalachian musical culture. I also visited various archives and conducted numerous interviews with people who knew Doc well. The latter was particularly important for the success of this album, as my telling of Doc’s story is enlivened by the inclusion of compelling insights into Doc’s world from people (David Holt, T. Michael Coleman, Jack Lawrence, Bryan Sutton, Tom Paxton, Mitch Greenhill, and Tony Rice, among others) who performed and traveled with him.
What’s the most interesting thing that you learned while researching this music?
In researching and writing about Doc Watson’s life’s work, I learned many interesting things. One example: before he was brought onto the national folk revival stage in the early 1960s, Doc performed in a country/dance band based in Johnson City, Tennessee (where I live) throughout the 1950s. Back then, Doc built a powerful local reputation playing the electric guitar, which obviously challenges the modern-day notion of Doc being a renowned master of the acoustic guitar. Clearly, Doc was a master guitarist, period. Of course, as the notes illustrate, Doc was much, much more—a master singer, harmonica-player, banjo-player, and occasional songwriter. And as the concert recordings reveal, he was an exceptionally engaging entertainer who shared with audiences a rare mix of wisdom and humor.
If you win the Grammy, where will you be displaying it?
Having been nominated for seven previous GRAMMY Awards without winning, I don’t count on winning. As someone who has spent a lifetime promoting and studying Appalachian musical culture, it is always an honor to witness a documentary album of Appalachian music receiving recognition from a national audience.
What’s next for you?
2023 will bring the release of several new documentary albums I have worked on, including two albums celebrating Black music from Appalachia (Satan Is Busy in Knoxville: Revisiting the Knoxville Sessions, 1929-1930 and Birthright: A Black Roots Music Compendium).
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