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Ralph Stanley was
about three months old when A.P., Sara and Maybelle Carter made their
first recordings about 60 miles from his home near Stratton, Va. Known as
the "Bristol Sessions" for the Virginia-Tennessee border town in which
they were recorded, those records launched the Carter Family's career and
shaped, for generations, what would become known as "country
music."
Stanley, 79, pays
tribute to the "first family of country music" on his new album, A
Distant Land to Roam: Songs of the Carter Family.
"A lot of the songs they
wrote and recorded are standards and helped lay the foundation for
bluegrass music and country music today," Stanley says.
Like so many musicians
from that era and that region, Stanley recalls listening to the trio in
the early morning hours during his Virginia childhood, as they sang such
songs as Wildwood Flower and Keep on the Sunny Side on XERA,
the 100,000-watt station just across the Mexico border from Del Rio,
Texas.
Years later, as Stanley
was starting his own performing career with his brother Carter Stanley
(named after Virginia Sen. Carter Glass), he met A.P. Carter when A.P. did
radio shows at WCYB in Bristol, Va.
"He was a little hard to
get acquainted with, but I think he meant well," Stanley says. "He was as
straight and honest as he could be. He was just an old-time mountain man,
that's what he was."
In those days, the
Stanleys would occasionally play shows with the Carters. Stanley recalls
that A.P. once introducing them by saying: "These here are the Stanley
Brothers. As far as I know, they ain't done nothin' wrong yet."
With his brother and on
his own, Stanley has recorded many songs from the Carter catalog. A
Distant Land to Roam features several of the trio's lesser-known
numbers.
"I wanted to get some of
the songs that hadn't been worn out through the years," says Stanley,
whose brand of bluegrass has always been rooted in what he calls "the
old-time songs."
Bristol, which played
such an integral role in the Carters' career, also helped launch the
Stanleys'. The brothers made their first record there and had a popular
midday radio show called Farm and Fun Time.
"It was on from 12:05 to
1 o'clock each day," Stanley recalls. "We had the full 55 minutes. But
after so long, maybe less than a year's time, they had sponsors lined up,
so they added an hour. We couldn't handle that much, I don't guess, and
there was other bands come in, you know, like Flatt & Scruggs, Mac
Wiseman, Charlie Monroe.
"But we held that show
for over a year ourselves."
For 20 years, the
Stanley Brothers were one of the most popular acts in bluegrass. Stanley
continued on his own after his brother's death in 1966.
"I think he was the best
natural lead singer that I've ever heard in this business," Stanley says.
"You know, I can't question God's work, but it was a pity, the talent that
he had, that he had to go."
Stanley had his own
scare a year ago Tuesday, when he had triple-bypass surgery. Though he
played his first show just five weeks later, he says, it has taken him
longer to recover than he expected.
"I thought I could go in
and have that and, in a couple or three months, I'd be as good as ever,"
he says. "But I found out that it takes time. About everybody I've talked
to about it, it takes from a year to three years to get over that. I still
have not gained my power back, as good as it was. Probably never will.
That's pretty rough, to saw you in two."
Stanley, who now lives
in Coeburn, Va., currently has dates booked all over the eastern half of
the USA well past his 80th birthday next February. Clearly, he has no
intentions of hanging up his banjo any time soon.
"I know I'll have to
sometime, but, you know, I hate to think that I'd completely retire," he
says. "That's left up to the good Lord. He has blessed me all through the
years to be able to do this, and I believe he'll be the man to tell me
when to quit."
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