Loading details…
Artist
Ralph Stanley
12+ albums
bluegrasscountryfolkamericanaOld-Timey
about
Ralph Edmund Stanley (February 25, 1927 – June 23, 2016), also known as Dr. Ralph Stanley, was an American bluegrass artist, known for his distinctive singing and banjo playing. Stanley began playing music in 1946, originally with his brother Carter as part of "The Stanley Brothers", and most often as the leader of his band, "Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys". He was part of the first generation of bluegrass musicians and was inducted into both the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor and the Grand Ole Opry. Ralph Edmond Stanley was born, grew up, and lived in rural Southwest Virginia—"in a little town called McClure at a place called Big Spraddle, just up the holler" from where he moved in 1936 and lived ever since in Dickenson County. The son of Lee and Lucy Stanley, Ralph did not grow up around a lot of music in his home. As he says, his "daddy didn't play an instrument, but sometimes he would sing church music. And I'd hear him sing songs like 'Man of Constant Sorrow,' 'Pretty Polly' and 'Omie Wise.'" I got my first banjo when I was a teenager. I guess I was 15, 16 years old. My aunt had this old banjo, and Mother bought it for me ... paid $5 for it, which back then was probably like $5,000. My parents had a little store, and I remember my aunt took it out in groceries. He learned to play the banjo, clawhammer style, from his mother: She had 11 brothers and sisters, and all of them could play the five-string banjo. She played gatherings around the neigh
