Jeffrey Ufberg/WireImageDoc Watson is ailing.
The Grammy-winning folk singer-guitarist is in critical condition in a Winston-Salem, N.C., hospital, E! News has learned.
A spokeswoman at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center confirmed the 89-year-old musician is currently being treated there, but declined to release additional information about his condition, citing privacy laws.
A close friend of Watson's told the Watauga Democrat newspaper, however, that the Look Away singer was hospitalized at the Watauga Medical Center to treat an infection after a fall at his home in Deep Gap. He was transferred to Wake Forest on Thursday for unspecified reasons, where he was placed in intensive care.
The Winston-Salem Journal quoted Watson's daughter, Nancy, as saying the influential guitar wiz didn't break any bones in the accident but remains "real sick."
Watson's versatility in the genres of folk, bluegrass, country and gospel and his amazing flatpicking and fingerpicking style helped earn him seven Grammys over the course of a 60-year career as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Among his most popular tunes are "Tennessee Stud" off his hit 1972 live album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken; "Tom Dooley"; and "Keep on the Sunny Side," a collaboration with Randy and Earl Scruggs that appeared on the 1994 AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country.
In 1997, Watson received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton.