Description

Doc & Merle Watson: Never the Same Way Once – Live at the Boarding House – May 1974

This set of exquisitely recorded live concerts of Doc & Merle Watson at The Boarding House in San Francisco is from 4 live shows recorded in 1974 by the legendary soundman Owsley Stanley. It contains 94 tracks on 7 CDs, including several rare tracks and songs played for the first/only time by Doc & Merle. This is the first box set of live concert recordings of Doc & Merle Watson and is the first release created by the Owsley Stanley Foundation, a non-profit established to preserve and steward Owsley’s legendary recordings, which are renowned for their quality and clarity. These performances have not been heard since the nights they were played more than 40 years ago and have been preserved and restored to the highest audiophile standards. Each night is distinctly brilliant and equally captivating – reflecting differences in the playing, sound recording techniques, and the energy in the room.

Doc Watson was a legendary American flat-picking guitarist, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music, who won 7 GRAMMY Awards and a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award. He performed with his son, the multi-instrumentalist Merle Watson, for more than 15 years until Merle’s death in 1985. Live recordings from this peak period for Doc and Merle in the 1970s are rare.

1960’s counter-culture icon Owsley Stanley, known as “Bear” to his friends, was an audio innovator who helped create the first high-fidelity concert sound systems for rock and roll. As an early patron and first soundman of the Grateful Dead, he amplified, recorded, and influenced many other seminal artists in the psychedelic music scene of San Francisco and beyond in the 1960s and early 1970s, and was known for his focus on products of the highest quality. From the start, Bear recorded nearly every artist that played through a sound system that he built, trying to capture the music precisely as the audience heard it, using the recordings to help him improve his sound. The techniques he developed to create what he called his “Sonic Journals” resulted in recordings of unparalleled quality and clarity, capturing the sound of the room like no-one else.

‘Never the Same Way Once’ was mastered by Jeffrey Norman of Mockingbird Mastering, a frequent Grateful Dead mastering engineer and one of Bear’s trusted friends and colleagues. State-of-the-art Plangent Process transfer techniques were used to remove subtle timing distortions created by the recording and playback devices (wow and flutter), resulting in the most accurate replication of the music, exactly as it was heard on the night it was played.

This 7 CD set is packaged in a 5.5 inch wide x 5 inch high x 1.75 inch deep box, featuring 94 tracks, including extraordinary flatpicking of a broad range of music, from bluegrass to swing jazz to rockabilly to gut-bucket blues, and contemporary folk.

The included 16 page booklet contains contemporaneous photographs of Doc & Merle as well as of “Old Hoss,” Doc’s first Gallagher guitar which he played from 1968-1974. Old Hoss was retired after this tour and is also featured in the cover art ​​– an original poster by ​frequent ​Grateful Dead ​artist, Mike DuBois, based on a design by Bear’s son, Starfinder. Also included is a new in-depth interview with bassist T. Michael Coleman, who performs with Doc and Merle on these recordings, and an original essay by David Holt, 4-time GRAMMY winner and a longtime Doc Watson collaborator.

Future releases from this box set will be available on half-speed master, 45 RPM 180g audiophile vinyl and on reel-to-reel analog tape, both mastered directly analog-to-analog by Paul Stubblebine, who worked with Bear on the Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin Sonic Journals album released by Sony in 2012.

Chapter 1: May 1, 1974 (reels 038-040) -One disc

Salty Dog Blues

Doc’s Talking Blues

Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)

Miss The Mississippi & You

Wabash Cannonball

Nancy Rowland

Solid Gone

Tennessee Stud

Frosty Morn

Matchbox Blues

Mama Don’t Allow No Music

Deep Elem Blues

Chapter 2: May 2, 1974 (reels 028-032) – Two discs

Introduction

Good Ole Mountain Dew

Travellin’ Man

Miss The Mississippi & You

Wabash Cannonball

Leather Britches/Cotton Eyed Joe

A Rovin’ on a Winter’s Night

Tennessee Stud

Black Mountain Rag

St. James Infirmary

Love Me

Blue Suede Shoes

Sweet Georgia Brown

Lonesome Moan

The Clouds Gwine Roll Away

Three Times Seven

Peach Pickin’ Time In Georgia

Poor Boy Blues

Nancy Rowland/Salt Creek

Alberta

Movin’ On

Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!

Walk on Boy

Nothin’ To It

Blue Railroad Train

Brown’s Ferry Blues

Beaumont Rag

Chapter 3: May 3, 1974 (reels 033-037) – Two discs

New River Train

Doggone My Time

Peach Pickin’ Time in Georgia

Poor Boy Blues

Nancy Rowland/Salt Creek

Alberta

Natural Born Gamblin’ Man

Doc’s Guitar

Matchbox Blues

Streamlined Cannonball

Summertime

Love Me

Blue Suede Shoes

Mama Don’t Allow No Music

Freight Train Boogie

Life Gets Teejus Don’t It

Miss the Mississippi & You

Wabash Cannonball

Leather Britches/Cotton-Eyed Joe

Bye Bye Bluebell

Tennessee Stud

South Coast

Sweet Georgia Brown

St. James Infirmary

Step It Up & Go

Jailhouse Rock

Chapter 4: May 4, 1974 (reels 041-046) – Two discs