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STANLEY BROTHERS IN THEIR PRIME
"An Evening Long Ago - Live 1956"
AVAILABLE ON DMZ/LEGACY MARCH 23
Nashville, Tenn. (February 20, 2004) -- Bluegrass newcomers and long-time fans alike have a rare opportunity to listen in to an intimate performance by some of the music's greatest artists when DMZ/Columbia Legacy releases the legendary Stanley Brothers' An Evening Long Ago - Live 1956 on March 23, 2004. Previously available only at Ralph Stanley's concerts (and then only intermittently), the newly remastered set features the duo and two of their most durable sidemen, recorded as they unearthed songs from their youth in an informal, late night session at Bristol, Virginia's famed WCYB.
For Carter and Ralph Stanley, Bristol - a town sitting astride the Virginia-Tennessee border - and WCYB were lifelong haunts. Born and raised in nearby southwestern Virginia, a late 1940s stint on the station "Farm And Fun Time" show had helped to launch their career, and their first recordings had been made then for the Bristol-based Rich-R-Tone label. While they frequently traveled throughout the south and midwest and even lived elsewhere on occasion, they just as frequently returned to their Blue Ridge mountains home, keeping faith with the large and loyal audience they had in the region. In such familiar surroundings, engineer Larry Ehrlich's request to record some old favorites resonated with the Brothers - then facing a rapidly changing professional environment, thanks to the rock'n'roll revolution launched just two years earlier by Elvis Presley - and the outcome offers unique insights into their deep artistic roots in the area's traditional music.
Indeed, the Brothers had recorded only three of the selections on An Evening Long Ago "Little Birdie" for Rich-R-Tone, and "Orange Blossom Special" and "Tragic Love" in 1955 for their then-current label, Mercury Records, to which the Brothers had been signed after recording for Columbia for two years. Reaching back to the songs they had learned from their parents and from hillbilly recordings of the 1930s, the pair uncovered everything from "Shout Little Lulie," the first tune Ralph's mother had shown him on the banjo, to Grayson & Whitter's "Handsome Molly" and "Train 45," the Delmore Brothers and Arthur Smith's "Bound To Ride," the Monroe Brothers' "Drifting Too Far From The Shore" and songs from even further back, from the mournful murder tale, "Poor Ellen Smith" to folks staples like "John Henry" and "Feast Here Tonight." As brief spoken commentaries on several numbers suggest, these were in some cases songs the Brothers hadn't sung in fifteen years, if ever - and while live recordings from the era are widely circulated, virtually none of them feature such vintage material.
Carter and Ralph would go on to record many of these songs in later years, when the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s created a market for them. Yet despite more elaborate equipment and studios, later versions never had the same intimate, stripped-down feeling heard on An Evening Long Ago. At home, free from commercial considerations, the Brothers, mandolin player and harmony singer Curley Lambert and fiddler Ralph Mayo were at their best; not yet beset by the ill health that would eventually take his life in 1966, Carter's careworn voice was at its mournful, haunting peak, while brother Ralph's tenor harmonies fit his leads to perfection.
The result is a compelling set that lays bare the reason for the Stanley Brothers' reputation as bluegrass legends, for more than any other first-generation artists, their sound was firmly planted in the music of their childhood home. After a decade of struggling for commercial success with recordings made in Nashville's studios, returning to the songs that shaped and inspired their own gave Ralph and Carter Stanley the opportunity to do that which they did best. Long unavailable to more than a handful of fans, An Evening Long Ago presents the Stanley Brothers in one of their finest hours.
PUBLICITY CONTACT: COMMOTION PR 615.467.6677 - KAY CLARY : kay@commotionpr.com | DONICA CHRISTENSEN : donica@commotionpr.com
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THE STANLEY BROTHERS
An Evening Long Ago - Live 1956
CK 86747
OVERVIEW
March 24, 1956 was a night no different from any other for Ralph and Carter Stanley. The Stanley Brothers were one of country music's most popular bands and they had the songs and miles to prove it. After a long day of personal appearances at radio stations and barn dances, The Stanley Brothers, along with WCYB engineer Larry Ehrlich went back to the Bristol, TN station to record an off-the-cuff set of songs. The result was a very personal, very raw recording of traditionals and originals, capturing a glimpse of an average night in the career of this brilliant duo.
Now, Columbia/DMZ/Legacy is proud to release this collection for the first time. Ralph Stanley, the hero of the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and tour, along with its producer, T. Bone Burnett and original engineer Larry Ehrlich have painstakingly restored and remastered the recording for optimum sound quality. Listen and you'll hear the high lonesome harmonies of these two brothers who have been emulated and celebrated for decades.
BOOKLET COPY
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1. Handsome Molly 1:57
(G.B. Grayson - H. Whitter)
2. East Virginia Blues 3:05
(Ralph Stanley)
3. The Story Of The Lawson Family 4:56
(Carter Stanley - Ralph Stanley)
4. Dream of A Miner's Child 2:42
(traditional)
5. Come All You Tenderhearted 3:18
(Ralph Stanley)
6. Poor Ellen Smith 2:15
(traditional)
7. Darling Do You Know Who Loves You 2:50
(Billy Cox)
8. Shout Little Lulie 0:55
(Ralph Stanley)
9. Bound To Ride 2:31
(Ralph Stanley)
10. Meet Me Tonight 3:35
(Carter Stanley - Ralph Stanley)
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11. My Long Skinny Lanky Sarah Jane 1:44
(Ralph Stanley)
12. Little Bessie 0:51
(Ralph Stanley)
13. Train 45 2:52
(Ruby Rakes)
14. John Henry 1:16
(Ralph Stanley)
15. Little Birdie 1:36
(Ralph Stanley)
16. Drifting Too Far From The Shore 3:12
(Charles E. Moody)
17. Orange Blossom Special 1:49
(Ervin Rouse)
18. Nine Pound Hammer 2:22
(traditional)
19. Feast Here Tonight 1:57
(traditional)
20. Tragic Love 1:50
(Dee)
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Recorded at the studios of WCYB Radio in Bristol, Virginia, March 24, 1956 Recorded by Larry Ehrlich
Originally released as a private pressing, "a personal thank you from Ralph for friends only," and sold only at concerts.
LINER NOTES
I was born and raised the red brick tenements of Chicago's south side. Socially, culturally and attitudinally light years from the ridges and low ground of Western Virginia. How then did two boys from those ancient mountains reach across time, space, geography and background to touch the very hearts and souls of tens of thousands of seeming strangers such as me? It was simple really, What they said, and especially they way they said it, held up a mirror so that we knew our own fear of lost loves, capricious turns of fate, unfulfilled lives, and the hope something better were not singular. Above all, they sang of death?before and after. In other words, they told us of things we already knew, and they told it in ways thrilling, beguiling and comforting.
I first met Carter and Ralph Stanley when I was about twenty years old and they were not much older. They were in personality and temperament seemingly quite different from each other. Carter was engaging, outgoing and conversational. Ralph, while friendly, was reserved, deferential and rarely said much. I probably have never seen two men as close to one another as were the Stanley Brothers. When they sang together the perfection of that closeness was there for the world to hear. And yet their voices were very different, one from the other. Carter sang with the greatest ease of any singer I have ever watched. His unique, impeccable phrasing and timing were the result. He had the most tender voice I have ever heard. I have never heard a lead singer I would consider his equal. Of Ralph Stanley voice, what can be said? It is a voice like no other voice. I have heard people say that Ralph's voice sounded old when he was young and that he has grown into his voice. I don't think so. I think Ralph's voice has always reflected a mysterious blend of the cerebral and the instinctual that reflected his life experience at the time. Since Carter's death Ralph's voice has changed. More and more it has echoed the pain of loss, emptiness, incompleteness. More and more it is the voice of grief.
The recording was made one spring night in 1956, in Bristol, Tennessee. After a long day of radio show, barn dances, hog auctions and the like, Carter, Ralph, Curly Lambert, Ralph Mayo and I went to WCYB studios around midnight where I set up a mike, asked the Stanley's to sing some of the old traditional songs and turned on the tape recorder. The result is what you hear. It was all done on one take without rehearsal or planning.
I hope that you will find real pleasure in reaching back across the years to spend an evening with the Stanley Brothers.
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