High-lonesome Voice of the Mountains

High-lonesome Voice of the Mountains

Bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley figures his longtime success largely can be attributed to his humble nature and respect for fans.

“I enjoy signing autographs and talking with them,” he says. “If people didn’t come out to see you, you’d be sitting at home.”

With his soft-spoken demeanor and silver hair, Stanley seems more like an amiable country pastor than an entertainment icon. Had he not learned to play the banjo from his mother more than a half-century ago, that’s what he might have become—a Baptist preacher in the mountains of southwest Virginia.

But instead he teamed with his older brother, Carter, in 1946 to form the Stanley Brothers duo—Ralph on the banjo and singing tenor harmony to guitar-playing Carter’s lead vocals. Through their records, schoolhouse performances, and radio shows broadcast across the South, the brothers took their music far from their Appalachian mountain home and helped pioneer a new kind of music that became known as bluegrass. When Carter died in 1966, Ralph soldiered on with his new string band, the Clinch Mountain Boys.

At 74, Stanley is more popular than ever. The high-lonesome singer is a living legend in bluegrass—or as Stanley prefers, “old-time mountain country music.”

When he’s not on the road, Stanley returns to the mountains and his home near Coeburn (pop. 1,996). “I could’ve lived anywhere I guess,” he says, arranging piles of his T-shirts and CDs on a souvenir table at the annual memorial festival he holds near his home. “I like right here better than anywhere I’ve ever been,” he explains.

He’s always glad to get back home, he says, but not to relax. “I don’t like to sit in the house,” he admits. “I have to get out and walk around. I have a couple of acres. I have a couple of dogs I like to walk and a few head of cattle that need tending to. My wife cooks occasionally,” he says, “but I cook more than she does.”

Stanley and his Clinch Mountain Boys are on the road half the year, his touring calendar filled with some 150 bluegrass festivals, clubs, music stores, and fairgrounds. The band gives audiences a mix of Stanley Brothers gems from the ’40s and ’50s, wistful songs of love and loss, haunting ballads, and rousing Saturday night tunes driven by hot fiddle and banjo licks. With his raspy, mournful tenor, Stanley captures the soul of Appalachia. “He sounds exactly like where he comes from,” says Ricky Skaggs, fellow bluegrass star and former member of Stanley’s band.

Stanley says his audiences have grown considerably since the release of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the film’s best-selling soundtrack CD featuring the Stanley Brothers classic Angel Band, as well as several different artists’ versions of I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow, first recorded by the brothers 50 years ago. “For the last little while since the movie came out, we’re getting a lot more young people,” he says—many of whom say they consider Stanley and his old-time music to be “cool.”

“Well, I’ve heard that for several years now, about me being cool,” says an amused Stanley. “But I don’t know what cool is,” he insists. “I have people say, ‘Boy, you’re cool,’ but I say, ‘No, I’m not too cool ... I’m burning up.’”

Each Memorial Day weekend for the past 31 years Stanley has hosted his Carter Stanley Memorial Bluegrass Festival in a park he developed on land beside the family cemetery at his old homeplace near Coeburn. Bluegrass fans from down the road and around the country follow the highway that snakes through the mountains and past Stanley’s modern stone ranch home, leading to the Hills of Home Park.

Does he feel like an American legend, Stanley is asked as he dons his hat and prepares to take the stage. “You know, I’ve been playing long enough to be a legend,” he replies. “I was proud to receive the Living Legend honor from the Library of Congress, you know. I hate to brag on myself, but I’m glad that they felt that way and glad that they gave it to me,” Stanley says, lifting his banjo from its case and hoisting the strap over his shoulder.

“I’ve been in this business for 55 years now, and right now I am playing to the biggest audiences I’ve ever had,” he adds. “It’s great to be appreciated.”

Bob Alexander is a freelance writer living in Ormond Beach, Fla.

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