Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 5, 1994 TAG: 9404050085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE TENNIS BRISTOL HERALD COURIER
DATELINE: MCCLURE LENGTH: Long
Sure, like everybody, he's got a few day-to-day problems. Like that recent mess when somebody rounded a corner on Virginia 652 and knocked down a stone column - and some shrubbery - at the edge of the banjo picker's driveway in southern Dickenson County.
Still, that's about all the bad news you'll find in Stanley's life.
Recently, the bluegrass music legend found himself up for three Grammy nominations - the first in his 47-year music career.
"Miner's Prayer," a duet with country sensation Dwight Yoakam, was on the list for best country duet of the year. He also found his "Saturday Night" up for a bluegrass record of the year award. The album's spiritually oriented counterpart, "Sunday Morning," was nominated for best gospel record of the year.
Stanley's life is also the subject of a new book, "Traveling the High Way Home," by John Wright, a Northwestern University professor and a columnist for "Banjo Newsletter."
The book traces the length of Stanley's career - especially the early days - when he and brother Carter got started on WCYB radio in Bristol with a live music show called "Farm and Fun Time."
"I think it's a fine book," said Stanley, 67. "He was about 10 years getting this book together."
For 21 years, Stanley has hung his cowboy hat on Sandy Ridge - a residential and farming community in a mountainous corner of Dickenson County. Ranch fences outline the musician's rolling green land, where cows graze near the house Stanley shares with Jimmie, his wife of 26 years.
Stanley's performances now average about 40 a year. He goes all over the United States and to several foreign countries. He's toured Japan three times and played in Europe twice.
Stanley remembers first hearing music on the radio around 1936 or '37. And he remembers dreaming of a music career that would take him out of the rugged mountains of Dickenson County and let him escape what could become a hard life in a logging or coal camp.
His dad, Lee, was a logger. His mother, Lucy Smith Stanley, taught young Ralph to play claw-hammer banjo when he was 11.
Stanley, a Democrat, remembers playing his first gig at a Republican Party political rally at age 16. In later years, he would try - and lose - bids to win elections in Dickenson County races for commissioner of revenue and Circuit Court clerk.
In Wright's book, Stanley said he lost because a group of 400 voters in Clintwood, the county seat, swap out votes before elections. "They can get on the telephone in two nights and change it," he said.
Soon after the election, Stanley appeared on the syndicated country music TV show "Hee Haw." And, in the show's make-believe cornfield, Stanley - still snubbed by the Dickenson County electorate - saluted the Wise County town of Coeburn as his home.
Following his 1945 graduation from Ervinton High School in Nora, Stanley joined the Army, serving 17 months in Germany at the end of World War II.
Carter - his only brother, not counting three half-brothers and four half-sisters - had meanwhile learned to play guitar. And a little banjo. Carter once learned enough on banjo to beat young Ralph in a talent contest held in Grundy.
On his return from Germany, Lee and Carter Stanley met Ralph at the Bristol bus station. Before they took Ralph home, however, they put the veteran's banjo-picking on the air - at WNVA in Norton, where Carter had a regular radio show.
Soon after, in 1946, the Stanley Brothers formed. And the group began performing six days a week on "Farm and Fun Time," giving them constant exposure in their own back yard. They remained a regular act on the WCYB radio show, off and on, for a dozen years.
In 1947, the brothers made their first recording.
Folks called the Stanley Brothers' music "bluegrass" - a name taken from the kind of grass that grows in abundance in the Bluegrass State, Kentucky, home of the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe.
For 20 years, the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys, their band, refined the old-time unamplified mountain music of the Appalachians on records and in shows all over Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee.
They played at schools, churches - and at drive-in theaters. But even with the radio shows, the records and the constant invitations to play, life wasn't all clover.
In 1951, despite a successful series of recordings for Columbia, the Stanleys quit the music business and went to work for the Ford Motor Co. in Detroit.
But that was only a temporary gig. Carter Stanley soon was working full-time as lead singer for Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys.
Later, Ralph and fellow musician Pee Wee Lambert came close to establishing themselves as farmers in Dickenson County.
Still, music kept calling.
And the Stanley Brothers kept recording. In 1958, the brothers moved to Live Oak, Fla., to appear on a regular television program. And, in 1965, they spent a day in Fincastle, the county seat of Botetourt County.
There, about 15 miles north of Roanoke, the Stanley Brothers found themselves on stage at the world's first bluegrass festival, staged by North Carolina booking agent Carlton Haney and attended by a mere 300 people.
Commercially, the show - also featuring Bill Monroe - was a flop.
Still, it spawned imitations. Larger bluegrass festivals soon sprouted all over the place. Just like bluegrass itself.
"That changed everything," Stanley said. "It made [bluegrass] music more popular and a lot easier to give bands places to play."
Little more than a year after the Fincastle festival, the Stanley Brothers were no more. Carter Stanley, ill for many years, died of cancer in 1966.
To Ralph Stanley, Carter's death was not only a family loss; it nearly sounded the death knell for the banjo picker's music career as well. Carter was the main songwriter, the front man, the emcee for the Stanley Brothers.
And though Ralph Stanley knew his sick brother's death was imminent, he said: "It hit me pretty hard. I didn't know how I'd be accepted by the people without him."
He stopped performing for three weeks.
And then he and the Clinch Mountain Boys went back out on the road. And back in the recording studio.
The show went on. And Stanley became more popular than ever before.
Today, the Clinch Mountain Boys include Stanley's 15-year-old son, Ralph Stanley II, on guitar as well as longtime members Jack Cooke on bass and Art Stamper on fiddle.
"I've tried to keep it the same sound. It may have gotten a little more authentic, down-to-earth maybe. It didn't change too much."
In 1971, Stanley shocked the music world, introducing unaccompanied religious singing - hymns such as "Village Church Yard" - to the bluegrass stage.
In time, singing a cappella became the norm for bluegrass bands.
For Stanley, it was a throwback to his youth: His father often sang hymns around the house with no accompaniment.
Together as a solo act and with The Stanley Brothers, the musician guesses he's released 150, maybe 155 records.
by CNB