Gary B. Reid
The Music of the Stanley Brothers
University of Illinois Press 978-0-252-08033-3

www.press.uillinois.edu
 

From the Blue Sky Boys and Monroe Brothers down through the Everlys, brother duets have created some of country music’s most thrilling work. Take southwestern Virginia’s Stanley Brothers. Years of alcohol felled older brother Carter Stanley, age 41, in 1966. Then younger sibling Ralph (born in 1927) took the Stanley sound deep into the stark primitivism of the vocal styles they’d heard as children. Still performing at age 88, he’s the grand old man of American roots music – along with Mac Wiseman, one of the last men standing of early bluegrass.

Over the years, Stanley devotee Gary B. Reid has made the brothers’ Shadows of the Past the first reissue on his own label, Copper Creek; written and acted in a play, A Life of Sorrow: The Life and Times of Carter Stanley; and produced and annotated four-CD The Stanley Brothers: The Early Starday King Years 1958-1961. His new book (part of University of Illinois Press’s worthy Music in American Life series) emphasizes their music more than their life stories.

The discography and sessionography are extensive. We even find an entry for a 1965 Social Security Administration program, The World of Folk Music Starring Oscar Brand. The bulk of the recordings were on the Columbia, Mercury and King labels.

Similarly exhaustive research on songs’ histories reaches farther back than 20th-century recordings and copyrights. For the brothers’ third session (1947 or 1948) for the Rich-R-Tone label, Reid tells of “’Our Darling’s Gone,’ whose lyrics were written by a woman whose husband had been killed in a mining accident. She wrote a poem about her family’s life since her husband’s death and sent it to the Stanley Brothers, who composed a melody for it.” Among the reams of quotes, we find gospel songsmith Albert E. Brumley’s description of penning “I’ll Fly Away” (as previously quoted by the late Dorothy Horstman in Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy).

So, among songs’ authors, who was Ruby Rakes, “whose name appears on nearly all of Carter and Ralph’s compositions during their first few years at King”? She was a half-sister. Reid continues, “Ralph related that possible monetary damages from an auto accident threatened their income stream. ‘That was one of the reasons me and Carter copyrighted some of songs in [her] name, to keep the royalties safe.’” (Ralph’s quote within the quote from Reid comes from his 2009 autobiography, Man of Constant Sorrow, written with Eddie Dean.)

King Records, the most successful indie label of the late ’40s and early ’50s, is a story unto itself. (Check Jon Hartley Fox’s King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records, another entry in the Music in American Life series.) Ever seeking to maximize his income, its resourceful owner, Syd Nathan, published many of his acts’ songs and then boosted his publishing profits by having King’s country acts record its rhythm & blues songs and vice versa. Thus the Stanleys’ 1961 cover of “Finger Poppin’ Time.” The Stanleys must have felt OK about it since, amid all his info on their concerts, Reid reports that they then sang it on stage a few times.

Reid’s book is so penetrating that one footnote gives the Youtube citation for a long-unheard, incomplete 1944 home recording that Bill Monroe did of “Out in the Cold” (also known as “The Wandering Boy” – See Below). Thus we can hear for ourselves how Monroe’s lyrics (more than the Carter Family’s at 1927’s Bristol Sessions) influenced those of his former guitarist Carter Stanley on a 1952 disc. Reid’s dedication and musical sleuthing are amazing.

— Bruce Sylvester