hypersongs

The Stanley Brothers

Carter and Ralph Stanley of Dickenson County, Virginia, who led the Clinch Mountain Boys from 1946 until Carter's death in 1966, and whose "Rank Stranger" is in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.

Dickenson County and Bristol

Carter Stanley (August 27, 1925) and Ralph Stanley (February 25, 1927) grew up on a farm in Dickenson County, Virginia, listening to the Monroe Brothers, J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers and the Grand Ole Opry. Carter sang lead and played guitar; Ralph played banjo and sang high tenor. After starting as the Lazy Ramblers on Johnson City radio and a break for the war, they formed the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys in November 1946, and began on WCYB in Bristol, Tennessee, on December 26 of that year, on the program Farm and Fun Time. Wikipedia calls them the first band to copy the Monroe sound.

Their first recordings, in September 1947, were for Rich-R-Tone, and in 1949 they began recording for Columbia; "Man of Constant Sorrow" was recorded on November 3, 1950 and released in May 1951. Money was short in the early 1950s, and Ralph worked at Ford in Detroit for a while; Carter played with Bill Monroe for several months in the summer of 1951, and Ralph was badly hurt in a car accident that August. Then came Mercury (fourteen sessions from August 1953), which Carter used to add twin fiddles in 1956, and King and Starday from 1958.

The last years and after

From 1958 to 1962 they headlined the Suwannee River Jamboree on WNER in Live Oak, Florida. "How Far to Little Rock" reached number 17 on the US country chart in 1960. In 1966 they toured Europe, and on December 1 of that year Carter died, aged 41, ending the duo.

Ralph kept the Clinch Mountain Boys name and performed until 2013, recording Side by Side (2014) with his son Ralph II; he died on June 23, 2016, aged 89. His fame grew again after he sang "O Death" on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (2000), and he received the National Medal of Arts in 2006. The brothers were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in 1992. A 2005 stage production, Man of Constant Sorrow: The Story of the Stanley Brothers, ran at the Barter Theatre, David W. Johnson's Lonesome Melodies (2013) is the first full biography, and Gary B. Reid's The Music of the Stanley Brothers is the detailed session reference.

Albums

  • Sacred Songs from the Hills 1960 · Starday

    A 1960 Starday album of gospel songs, from the Florida sessions that produced "Rank Stranger".

Songs

  • Rank Stranger Sacred Songs from the Hills · 1960

    Albert Brumley's gospel song of a visit home to a place full of strangers, recorded in Jacksonville in 1960 and kept in the Library of Congress.

  • Angel Band 1955

    A nineteenth-century hymn recorded for Mercury on December 19, 1955.

Sources

  1. The Stanley Brothers, Wikipedia
  2. Clinch Mountain Echo, Clinch Mountain Echo
  3. The Stanley Brothers: The Complete Mercury Recordings, PopMatters (2003-09-17)
  4. Rank Stranger enshrined by the Library of Congress, Bluegrass Today (2009-06-11)