One Drop of Water

A good old hell fire gospel song from Ralph Stanley, "One Drop of Water". This song is include in this Ralph Stanley Gospel playlist.

Ralph Stanley's Little Maggie

Here is Ralph Stanley's version of "Little Maggie".

Little Maggie

Here is Robert Plant performing "Little Maggie" at the Glastonbury Festival in 2014. This song was recorded almost 70 years ago by the Stanley Brothers, Carter and Ralph.  Their version did sound a little different.

Poor Rambler

Two Versions of "Poor Rambler"—one by Sturgill Simpson, and then Ralph Stanley.

Miner's Prayer

Dwight Yoakum, with Ralph Stanley singing harmony and playing banjo, performing "Miner's Prayer".

Rank Strangers

To mark Ralph Stanley's receipt of an Honorary Doctorate from Yale yesterday, here Stanley performs "Rank Strangers" with his grandson, Nathan Stanley. I thought this song was written by Ralph's brother Carter, but in fact it was written by Albert E. Brumley. It was, however, recorded by the Stanley Brothers about 60 years ago.

Keith Whitley & Ralph Stanley

Before Keith Whitley went to Nashville to become a big star and one of the best Country singers of all time, he sang lead for Ralph Stanley. Below is  a clip of them performing "Will You You Miss Me When I'm Gone". This would be late 70's or early 80's.

Here also is a link to a playlist I created with a bunch of other clips that they appear in.

Gloryland

Ralph Stanley performing "Gloryland".

Angel Band

Ralph Stanley performs "Angel Band"

Monroe & Stanley

Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley perform "I'll Fly Away" with help from a few others.

Banjos

Some banjo music to start out the week.

Ralph Stanley - "Clinch Mountain Backstep"



Steve Martin, Earl Scruggs, Pete Wernick, Charles Wood and Tony Ellis - "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"



J.D. Crowe - "Flint Hill Special"

Jacob's Vision

The Stanley Brothers—Carter and Ralph— perform "Jacob's Vision"

Going Home

Songs about going home.

"Long Road Home" - Sheryl Crow with Susan Tedeschi



"Homeward Bound" - Paul Simon and Willie Nelson



"Long Journey Home" - Porter Wagoner with Ralph Stanley

Murder Ballads

I said a couple weeks ago that I would do a post of Murder Ballads, and I guess Halloween is an appropriate time to do that. So here they are.

To start off here is Ralph Stanley and Patty Loveless performing "Pretty Polly".



Many murder ballads originated somewhere on the British Isles, and then the events were relocated to this side of the ocean when they were brought over and performed in the United State. "The Knoxville Girl" originates from an Elizabethan poem titled "The Cruel Miller". Here is Jim & Jesse McReynolds' version of that song.



Most of the videos of murder ballads are by men, but here is Joan Baez performing "The Lily of the West". Also in this one—unlike the previous two—it is not the girl that gets murdered.

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I am not sure if this last song counts as a murder ballad or not. It deals with the consequences of a murder, and not the murder itself. But I am including it anyway. Also—compared to the previous songs—this is a recent song, having been written in 1959 by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin. Here is Dave Matthews and Emmylou Harris' version of "Long Black Veil".

Ralph Stanley

Last week Ralph Stanley released his autobiography, Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times. Diane Rehm has interviewed him about the book. You can listen to the interview here. Also there was an article in the New York Times.

I have downloaded the book to my Kindle. As soon as I finish the book I am reading now, this is what I plan to read next.

So here are a couple Ralph Stanley videos. From the time that he performed with his brother, Carter, as the Stanley Brothers, here is "Rank Strangers".



After Carter Stanley passed away in 1966, Ralph continued with his band the Clinch Mountain Boys. For a while Keith Whitley sang lead for Ralph. There are several good videos of that line up you can see at this link.

Here is a video with two songs, this first is "Rocky Island", the second is "Angel Band".



I could not pass up this last video, even though it is not a video for a song. Here is a video of Ralph Stanley and the Obama Girl making a video.

IBMA Awards Pt. 5 - The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers

The second group to be inducted into the IBMA's Bluegrass Hall of Fame was The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. This group was in existence form 1938-1966. It consisted of members of the Cline family as well as other individuals at different times.

I do not see any video of the group, but here an audio recording of "Windy Mountain".



Members of the group went on to play with other well known bluegrass artists. Here is a video of Bill Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys performing the instrumental "Roanoke". One of the two fiddlers in this clip is Charlie Cline, one of the Cline brothers. The other is Bobby Hicks.



There is also a great video of Curly Ray Cline performing "Orange Blossom Special" with Ralph Stanley. That video cannot be embedded, but it is worth following this link to see it.

Death

Flowers, the theme of my last post, was a little soft. I was going to counteract this with a post of murder ballads, but when I found the first video below, I decided to just do Death. I will do a post of murder ballads some other time.

This is Emmylou Harris performing my favorite Julie Miller song, "All My Tears". Julie and her husband, Buddy, both appear with Emmylou in this video.

You can't get more to the point than this. Ralph Stanley singing "O Death" a cappella.

And for a really sad one, Alison Krauss performing "Jacob's Dream".