( CNN ) -- If the one great book of American popular music is ever written , Doc Watson might not even need his own chapter . He has a solo -- or a harmony part , or a lead vocal , or a single perfect guitar lick -- in all the important chapters of the past 50 years . Watson , who died on Tuesday at age 89 , is most closely associated with the melodic style of flatpicking that cemented the guitar 's role as a solo voice in bluegrass and acoustic country music . But unlike the three-finger `` Scruggs style '' named after banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs , who crossed musical paths with Watson a number of times across the decades , there is n't a single `` Watson style . '' The flatpicking turned heads , but the tune that followed it might be a fingerstyle blues , a Travis-flavored country bounce or a parlor song from the Carter repertoire . Watson was a master tailor , not a designer ; he fitted techniques to the needs of the song or the generations of players who sat next to him , as if they had been designed that way from the start . Watson , blind from childhood , took an understated pride in being able to support his family independently . He was already a seasoned local and regional performer , playing both old-time music and what he called `` rockabilly and pop standards , '' when the folk boom of the 1960s put him in front of a new set of audiences with his voice , banjo and acoustic guitar . For some performers , the welcome influx of new audiences also brought calls for a change in repertoire . Watson merely changed gears ; he was comfortable with the ballads and tunes he 'd grown up with , and he was equally deft at re-creating the brother duets he had heard on the radio when he played them with their author , Bill Monroe , the prickly creator of bluegrass music . By the late 1960s , Watson was well known to urban folk audiences and increasingly in the country stronghold of Nashville as well ; he had even joined Scruggs and Lester Flatt , the former Monroe sidemen who had become the best-known names in bluegrass , for an instrumental album . His neutrality in personal and stylistic feuds reflected his own musical open-mindedness and served him well when the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was recruiting traditional performers for a three-album tribute to its own country roots , `` Will the Circle be Unbroken . '' The `` Circle '' helped define the sound of dorm rooms and hallways and the song lists of bar bands . Audiences that had never listened to the Grand Ole Opry itself would applaud the `` Grand Ole Opry Song , '' and they expected the Watson touches that knitted the album together : the instrumental styles , the vocals , the playful treatment of tunes like `` Tennessee Stud . '' That milestone album could have capped a career . For Watson , it was n't even a halfway point ; he had nearly four decades still to go . ( Indeed , he was scheduled to perform next in June with a number of longtime collaborators at a celebration of his work at the North Carolina Museum of Art . ) The newly world-famous Watson was strikingly consistent with the original . He continued to tour primarily with his son , Merle . He recorded music he liked with performers he liked , and he kept an ear out for the generation that was coming up behind him . The Doc Watson you saw on the national stage or heard on public radio was the same one you saw at small festivals in out-of-the-way parts of North Carolina : intimate , genial , as distinctive playing rhythm as he was in the spotlight . There was never a public watershed where Watson formally broke with his roots or humbly returned to them . His roots were always part of what he did ; he just kept adding new roots . That 's not to say there were no changes ; Merle 's death in a farming accident in 1985 was an unimaginable loss , personally and professionally . Watson adapted , with the help of players who could tour and play in the way Merle had . The genre-blending MerleFest , held each year since 1988 as a fundraiser for Wilkes Community College , is a lasting tribute . Watson continued to record : with country giants like Chet Atkins , newgrass superstars like David Grisman and Tony Rice , and by the end of the century with Merle 's son Richard . He was onstage with Scruggs again in 2003 -- as `` The Three Pickers , '' with Ricky Skaggs and such next-generation guests as Alison Krauss -- in a concert that Variety called `` one highlight after another . '' The British folk rebels of the early 1970s explained their rocked-out Child ballads as a way of taking folk music out of museums and giving it back to folks . Doc Watson made his share of music for museums and dignitaries and international audiences , but it was the same music he would have made in your living room : extraordinary music for ordinary occasions .
Doc Watson switched gears to adapt to changing musical scene . 1960s put him in front of a new set of audiences . Nitty Gritty Dirt Band brought him to an even broader audience .