Dr Ralph Stanley has played bluegrass for 60 years, never changing his style with fashion. 'I don't play modern,' he tells Tony Clayton-Lea
The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys Sing the Songs They Like the Best was released in 1961, and as album titles go it's probably one of the most selfish in the country music/bluegrass canon. "Well, you've got to stick to your principles," counters Dr Ralph Stanley, a bluegrass legend who has been around long enough to know what he's talking about.
Through thick and thin times, through personal tragedies and public indifference, Stanley is a man that refuses to budge from his musical year zero. Keeping the same sound that he started with and that he stands for has been crucial to his longevity.
"When people hear my music on the radio, they don't have to ask who it is that's playin' or singin' - they recognise it straight off," he says. "With a lot of this modern bluegrass you don't know who it is unless you're lookin' at 'em. But when people hear one of my records, they know who it is. I think that's pretty important, being recognised for what you do."
Stanley's picture hangs on the front of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. He has been bestowed a National Endowment for the Humanities Traditional American Music Award (presented by the then president, Ronald Reagan); he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by Lincoln Memorial University (at the same time that the university established the Dr Ralph Stanley Music Scholarship); he received a Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress for contributions to American social and cultural heritage, and he performed at the inaugurations of presidents Carter and Clinton. As you can guess, then, Stanley is a living, breathing national treasure in the US, yet his cachet has been further enhanced by his involvement in the immensely successful soundtrack to the Coen brothers' movie, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, on which his striking a capella rendition of O Death won him a Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance.
These days, Stanley is so busy it's a wonder he can find the time to talk. And when he does, it's a wonder he doesn't tire himself and his vocal cords out.
"Actually, I am a little bit hoarse," he says from Nashville, where he's in the middle of recording a new album. "But I'm gettin' over it. I can talk to you for a while, but I'll have to let you know if I'm feeling all tuckered out."
A member of the Primitive Baptist Universalist Church (a Shriner, by any other name), Ralph Stanley was born in 1927 in McLure, Dickenson County, Virginia. Raised in the isolation of the state's rural south-west, he and his older brother, Carter, were taught how to play the banjo by their mother, Lucy, and how to sing by their father, Lee, who was a singer of no small reputation. Inspiration and natural ability fused, and by the mid-1940s - drawing heavily on old-time musical traditions, the drop-thumb or claw-hammer style of banjo-playing, the spiritual singing of the Primitive Baptists and the performances of bluegrass giant Bill Monroe - the Stanley Brothers were on their way to becoming one of the most successful acts of an essentially new genre.
"Back in the older days it was much more difficult," recalls Stanley of the modus operandi of the bluegrass music scene. "You didn't have as good a travel and transport system; you didn't make as much money. Everythin' was different, and it's much better these days.
"Mind you, people's ideas and considerations of country music have changed some. I'm glad to say that I haven't changed that much. I play the same style and everythin' else that I started with. I think it's gotten better over the years, obviously, with the same background and the same feel to it. It's gotten better because the more you do somethin', the more you work at it, it gets better. After you've built 100 houses, the 101st house should be great compared to the first one! You're a better carpenter, and it's the same with music or anythin', I guess. It's all down to experience."
Stanley looks upon his almost 60 years of playing music as a lifetime well spent, yet it still seems fairly short to him: he says he can barely relate to it in terms of actual time, because all his life it seems as if he's done nothing else. He's aware, though, of the swings-and-roundabouts principle of any form of entertainment or music.
"Bluegrass is now hugely popular, so maybe it's a case of what comes around goes around," he says. "Yes, I guess it's that - I've been in it and at it a long time. But there's also no doubt that O Brother Where Art Thou? and the soundtrack of that movie really helped me and bluegrass music. The success of both the movie and the album was so unexpected I don't think anyone could have seen it comin'. Me too, most certainly."
He has little time for either the so-called "newgrass" scene ("they're goin' a little out there with some of the modern stuff, which just isn't my style - I don't play modern, I play the music the way it started") or for modern country ("I don't care anythin' for it, nor do I pay it attention - when it leaves traditional it's left me, too").
Tradition, then, is all for Dr Ralph, whose high and lonesome mountain tenor has sent a spooky shiver up and down the backs of listeners for more years than he or they can care to remember. His voice, now that we're on the subject of it, he says, is getting tired with all this talking. Just two more questions, if you don't mind, mister Irish journalist.
I ask him if bluegrass music has been good to and for him. "I can't complain," he answers. "If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing, and I think that's a pretty good thing to say. There's not too many that could say that and tell the truth, is there?" Indeed not.
And has he been good to music? "I think so . . . I've always respected my fans and the music for what it is. If it comes from me, then it's natural; there ain't no put-on airs and graces. I think I give it my best."
- Dr Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys play Dublin's Olympia on November 8th. Special guests are Laura Cantrell and Paul Burch