Man of Constant Sorrow

Man of Constant Sorrow PDF

Author: Ralph Stanley

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009-10-15

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1101148780

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A giant of American music opens the book on his wrenching professional and personal journeys, paying tribute to the vanishing Appalachian culture that gave him his voice. He was there at the beginning of bluegrass. Yet his music, forged in the remote hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia, has even deeper roots. In Man of Constant Sorrow, Dr. Ralph Stanley gives a surprisingly candid look back on his long and incredible career as the patriarch of old-time mountain music. Marked by Dr. Ralph Stanley?s banjo picking, his brother Carter?s guitar playing, and their haunting and distinctive harmonies, the Stanley Brothers began their career in 1946 and blessed the world of bluegrass with hundreds of classic songs, including ?White Dove,? ?Rank Stranger,? and what has become Dr. Ralph?s signature song, ?Man of Constant Sorrow.? Carter died in 1966 after years of alcohol abuse, but Dr. Ralph Stanley carried on and is still at the top of his game, playing to audiences across the country today at age eighty-one. Rarely giving interviews, he now grants fans the book they have been waiting for, filled with frank recollections, from his boyhood of dire poverty in the Appalachian coalfields to his early musical success with his brother, to years of hard traveling on the road with the Clinch Mountain Boys, to the recent, jubilant revival of a sound he helped create. The story of how a musical art now popular around the world was crafted by two brothers from a dying mountain culture, Man of Constant Sorrow captures a life harmonized with equal measures of tragedy and triumph.

The Music of the Stanley Brothers

The Music of the Stanley Brothers PDF

Author: Gary B. Reid

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 025209672X

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The Music of the Stanley Brothers brings together forty years of passionate research by scholar and record label owner Gary B. Reid. A leading authority on Carter and Ralph Stanley, Reid augments his own vast knowledge of their music with interviews, documents ranging from books to folios sold by the brothers at shows, and the words of Ralph Stanley, former band members, guest musicians, session producers, songwriters, and bluegrass experts. The result is a reference that illuminates the Stanleys' art and history. It is all here: dates and locations; the roster of players on well-known and obscure sessions alike; master/matrix and catalog/release numbers, with reissue information; a full discography sorting out the Stanleys' complex recording history; the stories behind the music; and exquisitely informed biographical notes that place events in the context of the brothers' careers and lives. Monumental and indispensable, The Music of the Stanley Brothers provides fans and scholars alike with a guide for immersion in the long career and breathtaking repertoire of two legendary American musicians.

Traveling the High Way Home

Traveling the High Way Home PDF

Author: John Wright

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780252064784

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John Wright's collection of interviews and stories about Ralph Stanley puts readers around a campfire at a bluegrass festival while old-timers weave yarns far into the night. Told by those who create, produce, stage, love, and virtually live for old-time mountain music, these tales come from the longtime coworkers, sidemen, promoters, friends, and others in the orbit of the music legend. The storytellers include a scholar who knew Stanley from the early days, the housewife who ran the Stanley Brothers Fan Club, and a souvenir seller for whom the discovery of Stanley's music was almost a religious experience. Wright also uses these invaluable oral histories as a foundation to describe and evaluate Stanley's long career with the Clinch Mountain Boys and the development of his music after the death of his brother Carter. An appendix covers Ralph's prolific recording activity through the mid-1990s, including a breathtaking forty-five albums compromising more than 550 songs and tunes.

Lonesome Melodies

Lonesome Melodies PDF

Author: David W. Johnson

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2013-02

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1617036463

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The first biography of two integral bluegrass innovators and touchstones of old-time country music authenticity

The Stanleys of Cranberry Isles ... and Other Colorful Characters

The Stanleys of Cranberry Isles ... and Other Colorful Characters PDF

Author: Ralph Stanley

Publisher:

Published: 2020-06

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780578694634

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As a child I was interested in history and genealogy and through the years I had gathered a lot of stories. Out for an afternoon sail with Mrs. Montgomery on NILIRAGA, sometimes until the middle of October, often times just the two of us, I would tell her some of these stories. She would say, "Ralph! You must write all this down." Eventually I did write much about the early history of Mount Desert Island, shipbuilding history, other historical facts and stories of relatives and people that I knew. Albie and I discussed how to go about recording the story of the Stanley family and I suggested that we talk with Bill Bunting (William H. Bunting). We started by asking Bill to read all that I had written over the years. His response was, "You are a wonderful story-teller when describing people you know. As a youngster and as a young man you had an unusually sharp eye, sharp ear, and sensitive appreciation and understanding of the human comedy, all the while realizing that comedy and tragedy are often intertwined. You show that one can be insightful without being judgmental."So with this advice I sat down to the computer, rearranged, cut and pasted until I have the story of the Stanley family and those whose lives crossed, often with mutual respect and trust.

Hands in Harmony

Hands in Harmony PDF

Author: Tim Barnwell

Publisher: W. W. Norton

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780393068153

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A celebration of Appalachian artistic traditions from Nashville to Raleigh, with an accompanying CD of music.

Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard PDF

Author: David Cantwell

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-09-15

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0292754175

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Merle Haggard has enjoyed artistic and professional triumphs few can match. He’s charted more than a hundred country hits, including thirty-eight number ones. He’s released dozens of studio albums and another half dozen or more live ones, performed upwards of ten thousand concerts, been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and seen his songs performed by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. In 2011 he was feted as a Kennedy Center Honoree. But until now, no one has taken an in-depth look at his career and body of work. In Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard’s music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the entire breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music, which helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including songs such as “Okie from Muskogee,” “Sing Me Back Home,” “Mama Tried,” “Working Man Blues,” “Kern River,” “White Line Fever,” “Today I Started Loving You Again,” and “If We Make It through December,” among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions—most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed—that define not only Haggard’s music and public persona but the very heart of American culture.

Parking Lot Picker's Songbook - Guitar

Parking Lot Picker's Songbook - Guitar PDF

Author: DIX BRUCE

Publisher: Mel Bay Publications

Published: 2011-03-04

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1610658795

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A collection of over 200 great Bluegrass, Old Time, Country and Gospel standards. Melodies are presented with standard notation and tablature along with lyrics and chords.Learn to play songs written and recorded by the giants of traditional American music: Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, the Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Doc Watson and many more. Also included: Step-by-Step instruction on how to transpose any song to any key!The two CDs include recordings of EVERY song in the book.

Ralph Stanley

Ralph Stanley PDF

Author: Craig Milner

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780892726424

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Ralph Stanley is one of the best-known, most talented designers and builders of wooden boats in Maine, if not the entire nation. He is widely recognized in particular for his shapely lobster boats and Friendship sloops. Here, with the help of veteran boatbuilding journalist and professional photographer Craig Milner, he tells the fascinating, colorful story of his family, his neighbors, his boats, and his extraordinary career.

Kentucky Traveler

Kentucky Traveler PDF

Author: Ricky Skaggs

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-08-13

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 006209243X

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In Kentucky Traveler, Ricky Skaggs, the music legend who revived modern bluegrass music, gives a warm, honest, one-of-a-kind memoir of forty years in music—along with the Ten Commandments of Bluegrass, as handed down by Ricky’s mentor Bill Monroe; the Essential Guide to Bedrock Country Songs, a lovingly compiled walk through the songs that have moved Skaggs the most throughout his life; Songs the Lord Taught Us, a primer on Skaggs’s most essential gospel songs; and a bevy of personal snapshots of his musical heroes. For readers of Johnny Cash’s autobiography, lovers of O Brother Where Art Thou, and fans of country music and bluegrass, Kentucky Traveler is a priceless look at America’s most cherished and vibrant musical tradition through the eyes of someone who has lived it.