ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – Ralph and Carter Stanley began performing as the Stanley Brothers in 1946.
The group was considered among the best in early bluegrass. And their appearances on radio and television included visits with Don Reno and Red Smiley on WDBJ7.
“One thing I remember about it,” Ralph Stanley told us in 1998. “It was really early in the morning. And I could never sing that early.”
The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys built a large and loyal following with their traditional sound – Carter playing the guitar and singing lead and Ralph picking the banjo and providing the high harmonies.
Gary Reid created a one-man show on the life of Carter Stanley, and he brought it to the stage ten years ago.
“Of course, it’s not just the instruments, it’s what you do with them,” Reid said as he portrayed Carter Stanley, “the rhythm and the drive and the power, the punch. That’s what makes this kind of music.”
Reid also wrote the definitive book on the music of the Stanley Brothers. He said Carter was the driving force behind a trailblazing band.
“He did so much to lay the foundations of what we know today as bluegrass,” Reid said in an interview, “but today’s audiences really don’t know anything about him.”
That’s because Carter died in 1966, leaving Ralph to carry on without him.
“He passed away just about the time the festivals started and when it really got good, and you know I think about that a lot,” Ralph Stanley said during our interview in 1998. “He had done so much. He wrote some really good songs and he was such a good lead singer, that I really wish he could have enjoyed some of it with me.”
Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys played at the State Capitol before Queen Elizabeth’s visit in May 2007, and he was a frequent guest at campaign rallies when major Democratic candidates made their way to Southwest Virginia.
Over the years, we interviewed him at WSLC Radio in Salem, at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke, and at the museum in Clintwood that bears his name.
Stanley would reach the pinnacle of his popularity following the releasr of the movie O’ Brother Where Art Thou. His rendition of the song, “O Death,” would win a Grammy award.
After recording dozens of albums, he shot his first music video at the Roanoke Civic Center during the Down from the Mountain Tour that followed the movie.
When Ralph passed away in 2016 at the age of 89, we spoke with John Lawless the editor of Bluegrass Today, about the significance of the Stanley Brothers.
“When I think of the big three, of course it’s Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers,” Lawless said. “And I think of the Stanley Brothers as the soul of Bluegrass Music.”
And now they’re headed to the Country Music Hall of Fame, with their formal induction planned for the Hall of Fame’s Medallion Ceremony later this year.
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