hypersongs

Ralph Stanley

The Virginia banjoist and singer of the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys, whose unaccompanied "O Death" on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack won a Grammy.

The Stanley Brothers

Ralph Edmund Stanley was born on February 25, 1927 in McClure, Virginia, and grew up from 1936 in Dickenson County. He learned clawhammer banjo from his mother, and the Stanley style grew from Wade Mainer's two-finger technique and later Earl Scruggs's influence. He graduated high school in May 1945, spent a little over a year in the Army, and in 1946 formed the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys with his older brother Carter. They played radio on WNVA in Norton and WCYB in Bristol, covered Bill Monroe early on and wrote their own songs from the late 1940s, recording for Columbia and then King, where "Finger Poppin' Time" came out in the late 1950s.

After Carter's death in 1966, Ralph carried on from 1967 as Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, a band that passed Larry Sparks, Roy Lee Centers, Charlie Sizemore, and, as teenagers, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley into the wider country world. His albums include Cry from the Cross (1971, Rebel), Clinch Mountain Gospel (1977), Man of Constant Sorrow (2001), Ralph Stanley (2002, Columbia, 22 on the country chart) and Poor Rambler (2003, King). Lost in the Lonesome Pines, with Jim Lauderdale, won the Grammy for best bluegrass album at the 45th awards. His 2009 autobiography is Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times, written with Eddie Dean.

Honors

He received a National Heritage Fellowship in 1984, was named a Library of Congress Living Legend in 2000, joined the Grand Ole Opry, and received the National Medal of Arts in 2006. The Ralph Stanley Museum opened in Clintwood, Virginia in 2004. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2014 and received an honorary doctorate from Yale that year, and he had fifteen Grammy nominations between 1993 and 2015. He announced a farewell tour in 2013 but said after the academy election that he would not retire. He died on June 23, 2016, aged 89, at home in Sandy Ridge, Virginia. His son Ralph Stanley II re-formed the group after his death. Setlist.fm lists 129 sets for the Clinch Mountain Boys, the latest in Gatlinburg, Tennessee on November 20, 2025.

On PBS NewsHour in 2002 he described his singing: that's a God-given voice.

Albums

Songs

  • O Death O Brother, Where Art Thou? (soundtrack) · 2000

    A traditional Appalachian song (Roud 4933) that Ralph Stanley sang unaccompanied for the O Brother soundtrack.

Sources

  1. Ralph Stanley, Wikipedia
  2. O Death, Wikipedia
  3. Remembering Ralph Stanley and his God-given voice, PBS NewsHour (2016-06-24)
  4. Ralph Stanley Museum, Ralph Stanley Museum