Ralph Stanley’s time, it appears, has finally come. At 74, he’s in the center of the critical praise heaped on old-time and bluegrass music’s first platinum-selling CD, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, his beyond-bluegrass stardom certified by articles appearing everywhere from Country Weekly to Spin. The attention has resulted in, among other things, this clutch of reissues, summoned out of the vaults by the prospect of sales to listeners newly acquainted with his self-described “mountain music.” Sometimes the market works just like it’s supposed to.
First, the basics: The banjo-toting, tenor-singing member of the pioneering Stanley Brothers since 1946, Ralph carried on alone after the death of brother Carter twenty years later. Cry From The Cross, made in early 1971, was his first effort for what was then the premier bluegrass label, Rebel Records. The Varèse Sarabande disc compiles two albums, one sacred, one gospel, recorded later in ’71 for Jessup, a tiny Michigan label. Clinch Mountain Gospel comes from 1977, while I’ll Answer The Call skips ahead almost a dozen years.
Collectively, then, this set leans heavily toward hymns, with a dozen Jessup cuts the only departure. Gospel music was important to Stanley for historical reasons (“Ralph and Carter Stanley recorded a multitude of gospel tunes, almost all of them classics,” noted a reviewer of Gospel Echoes at the time) as well as commercial ones (bluegrass enthusiasts would buy bluegrass gospel albums, while some gospel fans wouldn’t buy secular ones). But his personal beliefs, too, led him in the same direction.
Whatever the relative weight of its causes, and keeping in mind that he was releasing a steady stream of secular albums during the same period, Stanley’s gospel orientation produced some memorable results.
Cry From The Cross featured Curly Ray Cline (fiddle) and Jack Cooke (bass, vocals), two veterans who’d first worked with Ralph while Carter was still alive. They joined brilliant lead singer/guitarist Roy Lee Centers, a Kentuckian whose voice was markedly similar to Carter’s but with an even more mournful cast, and two musicians still in their teens: Ricky Skaggs (mandolin) and Keith Whitley (lead guitar). Aside from its intrinsic merit, which is considerable, the album is valuable for its depiction of a musician in transit from one sound to another.
The set kicks off with the title track, a powerful trio first recorded by the Brothers in the 1950s, and the rendition is a detailed recreation of the earlier one, stunning for its fidelity not only to the sound of the original (Skaggs provided the necessary second fiddle part), but to its spirit as well. Another three tunes from the Brothers’ repertoire are here, too, and many of the new songs are in the same vein, albeit more primitive-sounding — one of the signs that Ralph’s own predilections were starting to reshape the Stanley style in Carter’s absence.
The most dramatic index of change, though, is the appearance of two a cappella quartets, “Bright Morning Star” and “Sinner Man”. The Brothers had made no such recordings, and at the time, neither had anyone else, so these bore Ralph’s characteristic stamp; they were innovations, yet at the same time they looked back to the most deeply rooted sounds of his youth, that of the small, unaccompanied Baptist congregations of the Appalachian mountains. For this reason alone, Cry From The Cross is worth having, but there are many more.
Despite having been made just months later, and with the same lineup, the Jessup recordings don’t quite match the earlier ones. Probably they were done with less thought, since given the two labels’ relative statures there was less riding on the projects; certainly the sound is unfortunately thinner. Still, it’s a twofer, much of the music is fine indeed, and the more prominent roles played by Skaggs and Whitley give the collection further interest.
The secular half of Echoes Of The Stanley Brothers consisted of all new material, and it’s a spotty bunch — an assessment with which Ralph apparently agrees, as he’s performed or recorded little of it since. Wendy Smith’s “River Underground” is haunting, and so is “Another Song, Another Drink”, featuring Whitley’s lead vocal. But while the band does its best to infuse the material with some energy, notably through inspired backup work by Skaggs, Cline and Whitley (on lead guitar), they keep bumping up against the limits of worn-out melodies and more than occasionally pedestrian lyrics.
The gospel songs fare better, mostly because they’re better songs, culled from that multitude of the Brothers’ sacred recordings, and some of them, like “Daniel Prayed”, have all the vigor and power of the earlier versions.
By the time Clinch Mountain Gospel appeared, Skaggs was gone, Centers was dead — murdered — and Whitley, after a hiatus, had returned to take the lead singer slot, while Renfro Profitt was filling the lead guitar chair Keith had once occupied. Though the Clinch Mountain Boys were very much a unit, Whitley, then just 22, is at the forefront in a way that none of Ralph’s other lead singers had been (or would be). The performances are gripping, Whitley’s voice effortlessly soaring and dipping, full of passion, awe and faith in the promise of redemption.
It’s not surprising Whitley leads on a number of songs Ralph has since reclaimed for himself; he was that good, and the material is first-rate, ranging from “Amazing Grace” (lined out in the old Baptist manner) and “Oh, Death” (a quartet, not the a cappella solo of O Brother) to the Louvin Brothers’ “Are You Afraid To Die” and a couple of clawhammer banjo-driven shouters, “Over In The Gloryland” and “Travelling The Highway Home”.
In such company, I’ll Answer The Call, recorded in early 1988, has a hard time measuring up. Sammy Adkins and Junior Blankenship are lead singer and guitarist, respectively and while the latter does admirably, Adkins is not in the same league as either Centers or Whitley. There’s no shame in that — not many are — but as a result, the album is more competent than memorable; “nice but not essential,” as Bluegrass Unlimited reviewer Frank Godbey put it at the time.
Details of repertoire and personnel aside, I’ll Answer The Call revealed that the transition from the Stanley Brothers sound to the Ralph Stanley vision had been completed. Stylistically speaking, there’s little to differentiate it from its successors, right down to last year’s crop.
Even listeners with but a casual interest in Ralph Stanley would be interested in Cry From The Cross and Clinch Mountain Gospel; they’re among the finest albums he’s ever recorded. Those with a deeper interest will find much to enjoy on Echoes Of The Stanley Brothers, too, while I’ll Answer The Call will sate, if only temporarily, the appetites of completists (who can then pine for reissues of albums featuring Whitley’s successor, the excellent Charlie Sizemore). In short, there’s something for everyone here; for Stanley fans, life is good.
(Rebel, P.O. Box 7405, Charlottesville, VA 22906; Varèse Sarabande, 11846 Ventura Blvd. #130, Studio City, CA 91604)
