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Stanley has old-time love for his old-time country

Thursday, Jun 10, 2004 - 09:59:53 pm CDT

L. Kent Wolgamott column

Ralph Stanley might just be the world's oldest overnight sensation, picking up a pair of Grammys at age 75 and now headlining a critically acclaimed tour at 77.

That package show, The Great High Mountain Tour, is rolling into Council Bluffs' Mid-America Center tonight.So Stanley grabbed his cell phone before a show at Wolf Trap's Filene Center, just outside Washington,D.C., last week to talk about his career and the old-time music that he loves.

When asked about how he's taken to all the attention he's received since he won Grammys for the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" album, Stanley laughed.

"It's been fun, it's been profitable, it's just been good,"he said. "After I'd been in it so long, it was a surprise. But I really didn't start my career until something like three years ago. I don't think that's ever happened to anybody. I guess that's a record."

The reason that's a record is that Stanley hadn't really performed as a solo act, even though he's been a professional musician for 58 years and counting. He came out of the mountains of Virginia, where he was exposed to the traditional sounds, thanks to his banjo-playing mother, who tuned up the instrument and handed it to her boy.

"The first people I heard were the Carter Family and this group called the Miner Mountaineers, who you'd have never heard of," Stanley said. "But I think it was born and bred into us.I think the Lord gives you something to do, and you can do it. If my car broke down, and I had to put on a fan belt, I couldn't do it. But I can get up and play the banjo."

Stanley, who was born in 1927, and his brother Carter formed their first group in 1946; for the next two decades, the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys were among the most popular bluegrass acts, holding their own among the titans, such as Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs and the Osborne Brothers.

But Ralph was more in the background, content to sing harmony behind Carter and play the banjo, rarely if ever displaying the jagged, stark, haunting voice that earned him the Best Country Male Singer Grammy for "O, Death" two years ago.

"Back when I first started, I was backward," Stanley said. "I didn't have the nerve to get up there and do that (sing). I grew out of that, but it took a long while."

After Carter died in 1966, Ralph took the Clinch Mountain Boys from bluegrass to an older, sadder, stripped-down mountain music, employing young talents such as Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley.Even though the band kept playing, Stanley didn't begin to get recognition outside the bluegrass/old-time music until the 1990s - about the same time he started singing lead.

A pair of albums, "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning" and "Clinch Mountain Country," paired Stanley with the likes of Dwight Yoakam, George Jones, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Bob Dylan.Then along came producer T-Bone Burnett and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Instead of using the Clinch Mountain Boys, in which Ralph sings with his son Ralph II, Burnett placed Stanley front-and-center. What came out on "O, Death" captivated the music world. Burnett also produced a 2002 Stanley solo album featuring the same musicians and showing off his striking, heart-touching vocals.

"It's just me," Stanley said. "You can tell it comes from the heart. Ising it like Ifeel. I think people know that when they hear it. I think that's why it's good."

Stanley gives "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" full credit for revitalizing his style of music. The Great High Mountain Tour is made up of acts like The Cox Family, Norman Blake and the Reeltime Travelers, who were on that soundtrack along with performers who made some of the music from last year's "Cold Mountain,"which had similar music.

"I'll give 'O Brother' 101 percent for all the old-time music that's come back,"Stanley said. "It's never been played on big radio stations. But public TV and public radio did a lot for that. But it was the movie that did it."

In large part, Stanley's style of music doesn't get played on the radio because it is too raw and old-sounding for programmers, who rarely challenge the audience.In part, it's because Stanley has stuck with the old sound and refuses to integrate rock shadings into his music as have many of today's bluegrass groups.

"I call mine traditional country, traditional bluegrass is all right, too," he said. "The reason I don't call it fully bluegrass is that some of the groups that call it bluegrass, I don't know what they play.But it isn't what I call bluegrass."

Regardless of the label on his music, Stanley is reaping all kinds of awards, from induction into the Grand Ole Opry to his three Grammys, including a Best Bluegrass Album Award last year.

"I'll tell you what tickled me was, I got that Grammy in the country (male singer) category,"Stanley said. "I don't do the modern country. But I took the old-time country and beat the modern country, especially Tim McGraw. I was proud of that."

Stanley closes the Great High Mountain Show, doing four songs along with the Nashville Bluegrass Band before calling the rest of the performers out on stage to close the show with "I'mGoing Home" and "Idumea," a pair of Sacred Harp songs from the "Cold Mountain" soundtrack.

Even though he's not close to as popular as Alison Krause, who is also on the tour, the closing slot is an indicator of the esteem in which Stanley is held by his fellow performers, the show's producers and mountain music fans.

"I'd like to think so, anyway," said the humble Stanley. "I'm just doing what I've always done. I think that's the reason I'm around for 58 years. I've always been Ralph. There's not that many that hang around until they're 77 years old.The Lord's blessed me, you know.He's chosen me, I believe, to do these things."

ReachL. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@;journalstar.com.