Bob Alexander: You're considered a legendary bluegrass performer, but you're not totally comfortable, are you, calling your music bluegrass.
Ralph Stanley: I'd describe my music as old-time country and mountain sounds—the songs me and my brother learned from our mother. When me and my brother, Carter, first got started, they weren't calling it bluegrass. It was just oldtime country music. Back in the early days they didn't label it different from country music. There's so many people that play music and call it bluegrass, but I don't know what bluegrass is. When I think of bluegrass, I think of Bill Monroe.
Alexander: You have recorded nearly 200 albums and 2,000 songs, you've been touring and performing now for 50 years ...
Stanley: Fifty-six.
Alexander: Fifty-six years. Do you still enjoy making music?
Stanley: Yes, I like to sing all right. It would be hard to quit. I wouldn't know what to do with myself.
Alexander: The movie and best-selling soundtrack CD of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" featured several of your songs. Has all the attention affected you?
Stanley: Well, we used to draw a lot of older people to our shows, and for the last little while, since the movie, we're getting a lot more young people.
Alexander: Many of your younger fans consider you and your music "cool."
Stanley: Well, I've heard that "cool" several years now. I don't know what cool is. What is cool?
Alexander: The white hat helps.
Stanley: Maybe that's it. I don't know what that is. I have people say "Boy, you're cool." But I say, "No, I'm not too cool, I'm burning up."
Alexander: "Oh Death," your chilling last-hour appeal to the grim reaper, won a Grammy award: ("My mother came to my bed, placed a cold towel upon my head. Oh death, won't you spare me over till another year"). That's a sad song.
Stanley: Well, I try to sing it as sad as I can, you know.
Alexander: That's probably not a song you perform at concerts.
Stanley: Well, I have to, now, . Carter and me recorded it 55 years ago but we didn't perform it at concerts. Now I have to, because of the movie.
Alexander: So many of your songs are full of hurt.
Stanley: Well, I think everyone maybe at times is a little bit sad and lonely. But I've had letters from a lot of people telling me that the music really helped them out.
Alexander: You're a religious man, but I understand you were only recently baptized.
Stanley: It'll be a year in July. I was baptized in the Clinch River in Richlands, Virginia. I called the minister at 4 in the morning. That's just when it hit me, you know. I don't know how to say it, but I don't think you can go into a church and accept the Lord anytime you want to. You go to a lot of these churches and they'll have these altar calls. I don't believe in that. I believe the Lord tells you when to go. I called the preacher, Junior Davis, and told him I wanted to be baptized and that was it. I was baptized at 2:30 that day.
Alexander: Why so late in life?
Stanley: I think the Lord had worked with me for several years but I was just stubborn and it took a long time. I've always been a believer, and everything. But I wouldn't say that I lived a Christian life. But I have since I was baptized. I never did do anything that was, you know, unlawful—maybe just a little meanness here and there.
Alexander: Could you give me an example of that meanness?
Stanley: No. But being a law-abiding citizen, I never did steal, I never did lie to people. Whatever I did do was my business.
Alexander: You and your brother, the Stanley Brothers, were a very successful duo back in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. You seemed content to play the banjo and sing tenor harmony and let Carter be the front man, handling the lead singing and the emcee work. Was it hard to strike out on your own after Carter died in 1966?
Stanley: Yes. l dreaded it. I didn't know if people would accept me or not. I was sort of backward back in the early days, and it took me a little while to get out of that.
Alexander: What kind of childhood did you have growing up in the coal fields of Virginia?
Stanley: We could have been a little better off than our neighbors. My dad was a saw mill man, a logger. l guess we were poor but could have been poorer.
Alexander: What were your parents like?
Stanley: My mother was just a country woman, a good Christian woman. I learned the banjo from her when I was 13. She just tuned the banjo up and taught me one tune and I went from there. Both my parents were pretty good singers. They sang in church a lot. My father was a good lonesome singer.
Alexander: Did they approve of you and Carter getting in the music business?
Stanley: Mother was real proud of us and she did everything she could to help us along. I remember her having big holes in her stockings. She wouldn't buy new stockings ... gave the money to us. Our father was real proud of us, too. He took us to radio stations when we was teenagers.
Alexander: What kind of student were you in school?
Stanley: Sorta shy. Dreaded to go to school. Too much confinement and everything, and I didn't like to go and sit down.
Alexander: Are you still a shy person?
Stanley: Yes.
Alexander: It must be hard for you to perform in front of large crowds.
Stanley: No, not a bit. It used to be, years ago when I first started out, but I don't mind it a bit now. I'd rather talk to 50,000 people as to go in a small place and talk to 10.
Alexander: Do you recall your first paying performance?
Stanley: I remember the first show we did. We played in a little school in Pennington Gap, Virginia. We each made two dollars and 55 cents apiece.
Alexander: And before long The Stanley Brothers were big stars on the radio?
Stanley: We got our start at a little radio station in Norton, Virginia. We played a little bit at Norton, I believe about three weeks, before we moved to a powerful radio station in Bristol, Virginia--WCYB. We started a new program there from 12:05 each day until 1 o'clock and we played by ourselves. It was called "Farm and Fun Time." That was a big starting point for us. That station covered about four or five states. Flatt and Scruggs came to the show in about 1948, after we had been there a while.
Alexander: You earned more than two dollars and 55 cents?
Stanley: We went there in a '37 Chevy and left in a new Cadillac. We drove that Cadillac to shows about 150 miles out of Bristol. We'd play Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina. But we were pretty bad to get homesick, so we'd always come back to "Farm and Fun Time" in Bristol.
Alexander: You're more in demand now than ever and on the road half the year headlining about 150 concerts. That's a grueling schedule. Between bookings, do you relax at home?
Stanley: No. I work harder than when I'm on the road. I can't be still. I got to get out and keep going after I rest up a little bit. Very little time to relax. I don't like to sit in the house. I like to get out and walk around. I have a couple of acres. I have a couple of dogs and I walk them. I have a couple of head of cattle. I like to stay ouside all the time. My wife cooks occasionally, but I cook more than she does.
Alexander: What do you cook?
Stanley: I cook anything. I guess spaghetti is my favorite.
Alexander: You and your band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, have always dressed well on stage with matching suits, ties and white hats. Is appearance important?
Stanley: It is. I respect my audiences. Everything that I've got has come from this music, and I'm sincere in what I do. I wouldn't want to look disrespectful, and I won't as long as I'm in my right mind.
Alexander: Do you have a dress code for the band?
Stanley: They do pretty well without being told. The sidemen wore the same colored suits up until a year or so ago. My son, Ralph Stanley II, gets by with a little stuff. He's got a beard that I never would have allowed before. I'm getting a little softer I guess, but it's not that I like it.
Alexander: There are hundreds of songs in your head. What are your favorites?
Stanley: "Rank Stranger" is one of them, "Pretty Polly," "Lonesome River," "Man of Constant Sorrow" ... and "Oh Death," right now.
Alexander: What do you think about today's country music?
Stanley: I don't care a thing about this music they're calling country today. I think it's rock 'n' roll, pop -whatever else bad it could be.
Alexander: Bob Dylan has said he'a fan of your music. In fact, he recorded a duet with you on one of your CDs.
Stanley: I respect Bob Dylan and I appreciate him helping me and I think that what he did with me really helped my career a lot. It got me a new audience and everything. I don't have a thing but good to say about Bob Dylan.
Alexander: Does your old-time music have a future?
Stanley: If it's done right.
Alexander: Have you ever thought about retiring?
Stanley: I reckon I'll quit one of these days, but I hope no time quick. I'll stay in this business as long as I can and people support me, or until my toes stick up.
Note: These archival articles are presented exactly as they appeared at the time of the issue in which they appeared. As such, all quotes, as well as references to temporal facts, artifacts and other items are contemporaneous to the date of original publication.