Ralph Stanley

Ralph Stanley (born February 25, 1927, Stratton, Virginia, U.S.—died June 23, 2016, Sandy Ridge, Virginia) was an American banjo player and singer who was a pioneer in post-World War II bluegrass and a leading figure in the early 21st-century revival of interest in that music genre.

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Stanley grew up in the mountains of far southwestern Virginia, where his mother taught him to play the banjo in the traditional clawhammer style. While other banjo-picking techniques involve the upward plucking of individual strings with the fingernails or with a plectrum, clawhammer players use a consistent downward stroke to strum the strings with the backs of the fingers. Stanley and his guitar-playing older brother, Carter, became a singing team as teenagers, and after service in World War II the duo began their career in earnest. They performed and recorded as the Stanley Brothers and formed a five-piece string band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, one of the first bands to play in the new bluegrass style, a form of country music invented by Bill Monroe. The brothers’ sound was distinctive—Carter played guitar and sang lead, while Ralph played banjo and sang a mournful tenor harmony. Both wrote songs that captured the atmosphere of the stark ancient Appalachian landscape. They popularized such bluegrass standards as “Mountain Dew,” “Little Maggie,” “Angel Band,” and “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Other notable recordings include “The White Dove,” “Rank Strangers,” and “Hard Times.” They toured extensively and made numerous recordings, and the 1960s folk music revival brought the Stanleys widespread popularity. In 1966, however, Carter died, and Ralph later reorganized the Clinch Mountain Boys, adopting a more-traditional sound, and continued to perform at festivals and record.

During the 1990s, Stanley became known for his recordings with other stars of country music. He played at the inaugurations of U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter (1977) and Bill Clinton (1993). In 2002 he released the solo album Ralph Stanley, a collection of spirituals and murder ballads that featured the production talents of American songwriter and performer T-Bone Burnett. That same year “O Death,” an unaccompanied vocal from the soundtrack for the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), won Stanley his first Grammy Award. In 2003 the Clinch Mountain Boys, featuring Stanley and his son Ralph Stanley II, collected the Grammy Award for best bluegrass album, Lost in the Lonesome Pines. The following year the Ralph Stanley Museum and Traditional Mountain Music Center opened in Clintwood, Virginia. The Stanley Brothers were inducted (1992) into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Stanley also received (2000) the Living Legend award from the U.S. Library of Congress and was a 2006 recipient of the National Medal of Arts.

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