Ralph Stanley - Ralph Stanley

(DMZ/Columbia CK-85525) (US) / (DMZ/Columbia 510159 2) (Europe) 2002

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Following on from the success of T. Bone Burnett's 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou?' soundtrack, T. Bone made this eponymous album with Ralph at the Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, Tn.

It must have been sweet signing with Columbia, 50 years after being dropped by the label.

The album is quite radically different to Ralph's work with the CMB's, but it is still within the 'old-time' mountain field with a mix of Gospel, murder ballads, and old folk songs.

Ralph had previously cut I'll Remember You Love In My Prayers on Play Requests, but the version here is a chilling vocal solo with no accompaniment. Ralph had also previously featured an a cappella version of Great High Mountain on I Want To Preach The Gospel. The version here has an almost chaotic accompanyment of droning fiddles.

Some of the songs are ancient, as with Little Mathie Grove, a classic old English folk song/murder ballad from the 17th Century. This too, is well suited to Ralph's craggy vocals.

Evelyn and Suzanne Cox of The Cox Family provide harmony vocals on Look On And Cry and Hank Williams' Calling You.

Lift Him Up, That's All was later re-recorded with the CMB's for A Mother's Prayer in 2011.

Some copies of the CD come with a Macromedia slideshow with addtional B&W photographs of Ralph at his old school house and Church in Coeburn, as well as at home. Back in 2002 when the album was released, computers had much lower resolution, so the image size on modern dispays means that the slideshow is appears to be very small (and the program has to be run as Windows XP compatible).

There was also a promo video for Girl From The Greenbriar Shore, and two promotional CDS. One was a three track CD (DMZ/Columbia CSK 59413) with:- Barbara Allen, Stack O'Lee and Prince Of Peace. The other was a special 2-Disc version of the album exclusive to Amazon.com, where the second disc contained versions of Trouble Trouble and Long Black Veil. All five tracks are unavilable elsewhere...

Other promotional items included, rather bizarrely, a Ralph Stanley car air-freshner shaped like a cowboy hat.

Look out for the painting that was used for Ralph's Old Home Place LP in the background to a couple of the photos in the CD booklet.

• Ralph Stanley: vocals
• Norman Blake: guitar, weissenborn, mandocello
• Stuart Duncan: banjo, violin
• Mike Compton: mandolin
• Dennis Crouch: string bass

NB: Also, Evelyn & Suzanne Cox - harmony vocals on Look On And Cry and Calling You.

NB: Liner notes don't specify instruments/vocal parts for individual tracks.

Other artwork / related images: