Ralph Edmund Stanley (February 25, 1927 – June 23, 2016) was an American bluegrass artist, known for his distinctive singing and banjo playing. He began playing music in 1946, originally with his older brother Carter Stanley as part of The Stanley Brothers, and most often as the leader of his band, The Clinch Mountain Boys. Ralph was also known as Dr. Ralph Stanley.
Stanley was born, grew up, and lived in rural Southwest Virginia—"in a little town called McClure at a place called Big Spraddle Creek, just up the holler" from where he moved in 1936. Before that he lived in another part of Dickenson County.[1] The son of Lee and Lucy Smith Stanley, Ralph did not grow up around a lot of music in his home. As he said, his "daddy didn't play an instrument, but sometimes he would sing church music... I'd hear him sing songs like 'Man of Constant Sorrow,' 'Pretty Polly' and 'Omie Wise.'"[1]
I got my first banjo when I was a teenager. I guess I was 15, 16 years old. My aunt had this old banjo, and Mother bought it for me ... paid $5 for it, which back then was probably like $5,000. [My parents] had a little store, and I remember my aunt took it out in groceries.[1]
He learned to play the banjo, clawhammer style, from his mother:
She had 11 brothers and sisters, and all of them could play the five-string banjo. She played gatherings around the neighborhood, like bean stringin's. She tuned it up for me and played this tune, "Shout Little Luly," and I tried to play it like she did. But I think I developed my own style of the banjo.[1]
He graduated from high school on May 2, 1945, and was inducted into the Army on May 16, serving for "little more than a year." When he got home he immediately began performing:
... my daddy and Carter picked me up from the (station), and Carter was playing with another group, Roy Sykes and the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys, and they had a personal appearance that night. So I sung a song with Carter on the radio before I even got home.[2]
Clinch Mountain Boys
Stanley in 2006
After considering a course in "veterinary", he decided instead to join his older guitar-playing brother Carter Stanley (1925–1966) to form the Clinch Mountain Boys in 1946. Drawing heavily on the musical traditions of the area, which included the unique singing style of the Primitive Baptist Universalist church and the sweet down-home family harmonies of the Carter Family, the two Stanley brothers began playing on local radio stations. They first performed at Norton, Virginia's WNVA, but did not stay long there, moving on instead to Bristol, Virginia, and WCYB to start the show Farm and Fun Time, where they stayed "off and on for 12 years".[2]
At first they covered "a lot of Bill Monroe music" (one of the first groups to pick up the new "bluegrass" format).[3] They soon "found out that didn't pay off—we needed something of our own. So we started writing songs in 1947, 1948. I guess I wrote 20 or so banjo tunes, but Carter was a better writer than me."[2] When Columbia Records signed them as The Stanley Brothers, Monroe left in protest joining Decca Records. Later, Carter went back to sing for the "Father of Bluegrass", Monroe.
Ralph Stanley gave his opinion on Bill Monroe's apparent change of heart: "He [Monroe] knew Carter would make him a good singer... Bill Monroe loved our music and loved our singing."[2]
The Stanley Brothers joined King Records in the late 1950s, a record company which was so eclectic that it included James Brown at the time. In fact, James Brown and his band were in the studio when the Stanley Brothers recorded "Finger Poppin' Time". "James and his band were poppin' their fingers on that" according to Ralph.[2] At King Records, they "went to a more 'Stanley style', the sound that people most know today."[2]
Ralph and Carter performed as The Stanley Brothers with their band, The Clinch Mountain Boys, from 1946 to 1966. Ralph kept the band name when he continued as a solo act after Carter's death, from 1967 until his death in 2016.
Solo
After Carter died of complications of cirrhosis in 1966, after ailing for "a year or so",[2] Ralph Stanley faced a hard decision on whether to continue performing on his own. "I was worried, I didn't know if I could do it by myself. But boy, I got letters, 3,000 of 'em, and phone calls... I went to Syd Nathan at King and asked him if he wanted me to go on, and he said, 'Hell yes! You might be better than both of them.'"[4]
He decided to go it alone, eventually reviving The Clinch Mountain Boys. Larry Sparks, Roy Lee Centers, and Charlie Sizemore were among those with whom he played in the revived band. He encountered Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley arriving late to his own show, "They were about 16 or 17, and they were holding the crowd 'til we got there... They sounded just exactly like (the Stanley Brothers)."[5] Seeing their potential, he hired them "to give 'em a chance", though that meant a seven-member band.[2] Eventually, his son, Ralph Stanley II, took over as lead singer and rhythm guitarist for The Clinch Mountain Boys.[6] His grandson Nathan Stanley became the last lead singer and band leader for The Clinch Mountain Boys.[citation needed]
About 1970, Ralph Stanley ran for Clerk of Court and Commissioner of Revenue in Dickenson County and said:
What happened is, somebody traded me off—they used my popularity and money to elect somebody else. I was done dirty. And I'm so proud that I was done dirty, because if I had been elected ... I woulda had a job to do ... maybe woulda finally quit. So that's one time I was done dirty and I want to thank them for it now.[5]
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Stanley's work was featured in the very popular 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, in which he sings the Appalachian dirge "O Death". The soundtrack's producer was T-Bone Burnett. Stanley said the following about working with Burnett:
T-Bone Burnett had several auditions for that song. He wanted it in the Dock Boggs style. So I got my banjo and learned it the way he did it. You see, I had recorded "O Death" three times, done it with Carter. So I went down with my banjo to Nashville and I said, "T-Bone, let me sing it the way I want to sing it," and I laid my banjo down and sung it a cappella. After two or three verses, he stopped me and said, "That's it."[5]
He joined producers Randall Franks and Alan Autry for the In the Heat of the Night cast CD Christmas Time's A Comin', performing "Christmas Time's A Comin'" with the cast on the CD released on Sonlite and MGM/UA; it was one of the most popular Christmas releases of 1991 and 1992 with Southern retailers.[8][9]
Country singer Dwight Yoakam said that Stanley is one of his "musical heroes".[12]
In 2012, Stanley was featured on several tracks of the soundtrack for Nick Cave's film Lawless, with music by Cave and Warren Ellis. His solo track "White Light/White Heat" is prominent in several scenes of the movie.
Stanley maintained an active touring schedule; appearances in his later years included the 2012 Muddy Roots Music Festival in Cookeville, Tennessee and the 2013 FreshGrass Festival in North Adams, Massachusetts. In June 2013, he announced a farewell tour,[13][7] scheduled to begin in Rocky Mount, North Carolina on October 18 and extending to December 2014. However, upon notification of being elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (awarded on October 11, 2014) a statement on his own website appeared saying that he would not be retiring.[14]
Personal life and death
After two previous marriages ended in divorce, Stanley married his wife, Jimmie, in 1968; he had four children.[15][16][17]
Stanley's autobiography, Man of Constant Sorrow which was coauthored with the music journalist Eddie Dean, was released by Gotham Books on October 15, 2009.[18] On June 23, 2016, Stanley died from skin cancer at his home in Sandy Ridge in Dickenson County, Virginia; he was 89.[19][20][21]
Stanley created a unique style of banjo playing, sometimes called "Stanley style". It evolved from the Wade Mainer style two-finger technique and was later influenced by the Scruggs style, which is a three-finger technique. "Stanley style" is distinguished by incredibly fast "forward rolls", led by the index finger (instead of the thumb, as in Scruggs style), sometimes in the higher registers using a capo. In "Stanley style", the rolls of the banjo are continuous, while being picked fairly close to the bridge on the banjo, giving the tone of the instrument a very crisp, articulate snap to the strings as the player plays them.
