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Obituary from NYTimes:
Thank you, Mr. Stanley for sharing your talent with us.
Ralph Stanley, Whose Mountain Music Gave Rise to Bluegr**** Dies at 89
By BILL FRISKICS-WARRENJUNE 23, 2016
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Ralph Stanley, center, and his brother, Carter, right, performing with Red Stanley, Benny Birchfield, and George Shuffler at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. Credit David Gahr/Getty Images Ralph Stanley, the singer, banjo player and guardian of unvarnished mountain music who was also a pivotal figure in the recent revival of interest in bluegr**** died on Thursday. He was 89.
His death was confirmed in a message posted on the website of his grandson, Nathan Stanley, who said his grandfather had skin cancer. The Associated Press reported that he died at his home in Sandy Ridge, Va.
Though widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of bluegr**** Mr. Stanley said on numerous occasions that he did not believe his music was representative of the genre.
“Old-time mountain style, that’s what I like to call it,” he explained in a 2001 interview with the online music magazine SonicNet. “When I think of bluegr**** I think of Bill Monroe.”
Mr. Stanley, Charles McGrath wrote in The New York Times in 2009, “is one of the last, and surely the purest, of traditional country musicians.”
“He’s such a stickler that he has no use for the dobro, let alone electrified instruments,” Mr. McGrath wrote, “and he’s not overly fond of the term bluegrass.”
His reservations aside, the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys, the group that Mr. Stanley and his brother Carter led for two decades, was among an elite triumvirate of pioneering bluegrass bands that also included Flatt and Scruggs and the founders of the genre, Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. Renowned for their otherworldly vocal harmonies and an instrumental style that was more soulful than showy, the Stanleys were the most traditional-sounding of the three.
Continue reading the main story
Mr. Stanley sang high tenor and played banjo in the group. His brother sang the lead parts in a melancholy timbre and played guitar. Performing a mix of blues, ballads, hymns and breakdowns, the Stanley Brothers popularized a number of songs that would become bluegrass standards, among them “Mountain Dew,” “Little Maggie” and “Angel Band.”
Another staple in their repertoire, “(I’m a) Man of Constant Sorrow,” was updated, in a Grammy Award-winning rendition, by an ad hoc group known on screen as the Soggy Bottom Boys in the 2000 movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The song was performed, in voices overdubbed for George Clooney and others, by the bluegrass musicians Dan Tyminski, Pat Enright and Harley Allen.
Mr. Stanley’s ghostly rendition of the dirge “O Death” also appeared on the multiplatinum soundtrack to “O Brother.” The song won a Grammy in 2002 for best male country vocal performance and afforded Mr. Stanley more mainstream exposure than he had ever had before.
After his brother’s death in 1966, Mr. Stanley continued to lead the Clinch Mountain Boys, taking the group in a more traditional direction. “I was aiming to establish my own sound, which was more old-time mountain-style than Carter was really comfortable with,” he wrote in “Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times,” his 2009 autobiography, written with the journalist Eddie Dean.
Photo
Ralph Stanley, left, and his grandson Nathan Stanley. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times “I wanted to put my own stamp on some songs that bluegrass and country fans hadn’t heard before,” Mr. Stanley explained. “I found some material that fit my voice like ‘Hemlocks and Primroses,’ which was a fairly recent song but sounded a few hundred years old and was adapted from some mossy old British ballad by a songwriter from West Virginia.”
Mr. Stanley and various installments of the Clinch Mountain Boys recorded dozens of albums and toured widely; two of the band’s members, Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs, went on to successful careers in commercial country music. Mr. Stanley’s son, Ralph II, also sang with the group, which continued to tour extensively, including an appearance at the 2007 Bonnaroo festival shortly after their leader’s 80th birthday. In 2009 they were featured, with the comedian and banjoist Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, on a double bill at Carnegie Hall.
Ralph Edmond Stanley was born in Dickenson County, Va., on Feb. 25, 1927. He grew up listening to the music of the Carter Family and singing in the ardent, unaccompanied style of the Primitive Baptist Church.
His mother, the former Lucy Rakes, taught him to play the banjo in the claw-hammer, or two-finger, style of the day. His father, Lee, a sawmill worker, was a talented singer; Ralph and his brother Carter, though, were the only musically inclined children in the family. (When his parents married, their mother was a widow with three children from her previous marriage, their father a widower with four children of his own.)
Mr. Stanley and his brother formed the first version of the Clinch Mountain Boys in Norton, Va., in 1946, the year that Mr. Stanley graduated from high school. The two hosted their own radio show in Norton before being hired away by a larger, more powerful station in nearby Bristol, Tenn. It was then that Mr. Stanley developed his rolling three-finger banjo style.
The Stanley Brothers made their first recordings for the independent Rich-R-Tone label in 1947 and moved to Columbia Records the next year. By the time they signed with Mercury in 1953, Mr. Stanley’s haunting, stratospheric tenor had become a focal point of the group’s music.
Their influence within bluegrass and roots-music circles notwithstanding, the Stanley Brothers had only one popular chart hit, “How Far to Little Rock,” released on King Records in 1960. A humorous set-piece in the tradition of the minstrel favorite “The Arkansas Traveler,” the record reached the Top 20 of the Billboard country singles chart. That same year they recorded Albert E. Brumley’s “Rank Stranger,” a performance ignited by Mr. Stanley’s unearthly wailing on the chorus that is often considered the group’s signal achievement.
The Stanley Brothers frequently played college campuses, outdoor concert parks and festivals during the folk music revival of the 1950s and ’60s. In 1970, Mr. Stanley began hosting his own annual music festival on Smith Ridge near Coeburn, Va. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., in 1976, and was thereafter known as “Dr. Ralph” to his fans.
He is survived by his wife, Jimmie; his sons, Tim and Ralph II; his daughters, Lisa Stanley Marshall and Tonya Armes Stanley; seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
Mr. Stanley was inducted, as co-founder of the Stanley Brothers, into the International Bluegrass Hall of Honor in 1992. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 2000. He also received the Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress and a National Medal of Arts. He was the first artist to be presented with the Traditional American Music Award by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Writing about him in The New Yorker after the movie “O Brother” introduced his rawboned music to a new generation of listeners, the critic David Gates observed that Mr. Stanley’s “best performances involve you so deeply that any sense of a particular genre gets lost.”
“Ralph Stanley,” he added, “understood that the way to go was to simplify, intensify and countrify.”
Mr. Stanley put it this way, in a 2009 interview with The Times: “I started out the way I was raised, in the old-time mountain style, and I’ve never wavered from it. I’ve always stuck to my roots. I think that means a whole lot to the audience — people knows exactly what to expect.”
By BILL FRISKICS-WARRENJUNE 23, 2016
Continue reading the main story Share This Page
Photo
Ralph Stanley, center, and his brother, Carter, right, performing with Red Stanley, Benny Birchfield, and George Shuffler at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. Credit David Gahr/Getty Images Ralph Stanley, the singer, banjo player and guardian of unvarnished mountain music who was also a pivotal figure in the recent revival of interest in bluegr**** died on Thursday. He was 89.
His death was confirmed in a message posted on the website of his grandson, Nathan Stanley, who said his grandfather had skin cancer. The Associated Press reported that he died at his home in Sandy Ridge, Va.
Though widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of bluegr**** Mr. Stanley said on numerous occasions that he did not believe his music was representative of the genre.
“Old-time mountain style, that’s what I like to call it,” he explained in a 2001 interview with the online music magazine SonicNet. “When I think of bluegr**** I think of Bill Monroe.”
Mr. Stanley, Charles McGrath wrote in The New York Times in 2009, “is one of the last, and surely the purest, of traditional country musicians.”
“He’s such a stickler that he has no use for the dobro, let alone electrified instruments,” Mr. McGrath wrote, “and he’s not overly fond of the term bluegrass.”
His reservations aside, the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys, the group that Mr. Stanley and his brother Carter led for two decades, was among an elite triumvirate of pioneering bluegrass bands that also included Flatt and Scruggs and the founders of the genre, Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. Renowned for their otherworldly vocal harmonies and an instrumental style that was more soulful than showy, the Stanleys were the most traditional-sounding of the three.
Continue reading the main story
Mr. Stanley sang high tenor and played banjo in the group. His brother sang the lead parts in a melancholy timbre and played guitar. Performing a mix of blues, ballads, hymns and breakdowns, the Stanley Brothers popularized a number of songs that would become bluegrass standards, among them “Mountain Dew,” “Little Maggie” and “Angel Band.”
Another staple in their repertoire, “(I’m a) Man of Constant Sorrow,” was updated, in a Grammy Award-winning rendition, by an ad hoc group known on screen as the Soggy Bottom Boys in the 2000 movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The song was performed, in voices overdubbed for George Clooney and others, by the bluegrass musicians Dan Tyminski, Pat Enright and Harley Allen.
Mr. Stanley’s ghostly rendition of the dirge “O Death” also appeared on the multiplatinum soundtrack to “O Brother.” The song won a Grammy in 2002 for best male country vocal performance and afforded Mr. Stanley more mainstream exposure than he had ever had before.
After his brother’s death in 1966, Mr. Stanley continued to lead the Clinch Mountain Boys, taking the group in a more traditional direction. “I was aiming to establish my own sound, which was more old-time mountain-style than Carter was really comfortable with,” he wrote in “Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times,” his 2009 autobiography, written with the journalist Eddie Dean.
Photo
Ralph Stanley, left, and his grandson Nathan Stanley. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times “I wanted to put my own stamp on some songs that bluegrass and country fans hadn’t heard before,” Mr. Stanley explained. “I found some material that fit my voice like ‘Hemlocks and Primroses,’ which was a fairly recent song but sounded a few hundred years old and was adapted from some mossy old British ballad by a songwriter from West Virginia.”
Mr. Stanley and various installments of the Clinch Mountain Boys recorded dozens of albums and toured widely; two of the band’s members, Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs, went on to successful careers in commercial country music. Mr. Stanley’s son, Ralph II, also sang with the group, which continued to tour extensively, including an appearance at the 2007 Bonnaroo festival shortly after their leader’s 80th birthday. In 2009 they were featured, with the comedian and banjoist Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, on a double bill at Carnegie Hall.
Ralph Edmond Stanley was born in Dickenson County, Va., on Feb. 25, 1927. He grew up listening to the music of the Carter Family and singing in the ardent, unaccompanied style of the Primitive Baptist Church.
His mother, the former Lucy Rakes, taught him to play the banjo in the claw-hammer, or two-finger, style of the day. His father, Lee, a sawmill worker, was a talented singer; Ralph and his brother Carter, though, were the only musically inclined children in the family. (When his parents married, their mother was a widow with three children from her previous marriage, their father a widower with four children of his own.)
Mr. Stanley and his brother formed the first version of the Clinch Mountain Boys in Norton, Va., in 1946, the year that Mr. Stanley graduated from high school. The two hosted their own radio show in Norton before being hired away by a larger, more powerful station in nearby Bristol, Tenn. It was then that Mr. Stanley developed his rolling three-finger banjo style.
The Stanley Brothers made their first recordings for the independent Rich-R-Tone label in 1947 and moved to Columbia Records the next year. By the time they signed with Mercury in 1953, Mr. Stanley’s haunting, stratospheric tenor had become a focal point of the group’s music.
Their influence within bluegrass and roots-music circles notwithstanding, the Stanley Brothers had only one popular chart hit, “How Far to Little Rock,” released on King Records in 1960. A humorous set-piece in the tradition of the minstrel favorite “The Arkansas Traveler,” the record reached the Top 20 of the Billboard country singles chart. That same year they recorded Albert E. Brumley’s “Rank Stranger,” a performance ignited by Mr. Stanley’s unearthly wailing on the chorus that is often considered the group’s signal achievement.
The Stanley Brothers frequently played college campuses, outdoor concert parks and festivals during the folk music revival of the 1950s and ’60s. In 1970, Mr. Stanley began hosting his own annual music festival on Smith Ridge near Coeburn, Va. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., in 1976, and was thereafter known as “Dr. Ralph” to his fans.
He is survived by his wife, Jimmie; his sons, Tim and Ralph II; his daughters, Lisa Stanley Marshall and Tonya Armes Stanley; seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
Mr. Stanley was inducted, as co-founder of the Stanley Brothers, into the International Bluegrass Hall of Honor in 1992. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 2000. He also received the Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress and a National Medal of Arts. He was the first artist to be presented with the Traditional American Music Award by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Writing about him in The New Yorker after the movie “O Brother” introduced his rawboned music to a new generation of listeners, the critic David Gates observed that Mr. Stanley’s “best performances involve you so deeply that any sense of a particular genre gets lost.”
“Ralph Stanley,” he added, “understood that the way to go was to simplify, intensify and countrify.”
Mr. Stanley put it this way, in a 2009 interview with The Times: “I started out the way I was raised, in the old-time mountain style, and I’ve never wavered from it. I’ve always stuck to my roots. I think that means a whole lot to the audience — people knows exactly what to expect.”
Thank you, Mr. Stanley for sharing your talent with us.
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