Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys form one of the last, purest, traditional country music groups. Dr. Ralph Stanley still lives where he was born in Dickenson County, Virginia, when the band isn’t traveling. He is still viewed as the best banjo pickers and tenor singers in bluegrass music, even after more than 55 years in the music trade. He and his group have over 170 albums, tapes, and CDs. Ralph and his brother Carter have written many of the songs that have made him famous throughout the world.

The Clinch Mountain Boys and Ralph Stanley continue the tradition of acoustic instruments only. They don’t use the dobro or electric guitars. Their music is still the old-time mountain style and Stanley’s five-string banjo style continues to be the claw-hammer playing he learned from his mother. Ralph sings with a raw Appalachian tenor as if wailing in lamentation. The group’s music focuses on hard times in connection with unfaithful lovers, lonely graves, and deceased relatives. One of their most famous, “O Death,” contains a dialogue pleading with the Grim Reaper himself.

Now 82 years old, Ralph Stanley has performed continuously since he was a teenager. He still plays 100 dates a year, traveling in a comfortable, customized bus within the US. The group has traveled to Japan several times. They are so popular there that their fans sing along, having learned at least the lyrics in English.

Dr. Ralph Stanley was a title given after he was awarded an honorary degree from Lincoln Memorial university in Tennessee in 1976. His collection of awards is extensive, including a Grammy for his a capella version of “O Death” on the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” movie soundtrack, the National Medal of Arts, and a Library of Congress designation as a “Living Legend.”