The Stanley Brothers - Earliest Recordings

(Revenant REV-203) 1997

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This is an anthology of the Stanley Brothers recordings for Jim Hobart Stanton's 'Rich-R-Tone' label, which they made at the start of their professional career. As such it captures the youthful Stanley's as they developed from being a Mainer style string band to playing Bill Monroe influenced bluegrass.

It is the second time the Rich-R-Tone recordings have been reissued together. The material was first compiled on LP as Their Original Recordings in an adulterated form in 1966, and there is a later CD compilation Earliest Recordings on Rounder which sounds a lot brighter, than the Revenant version.

CD playing time is 34:44 which compares to 35:07 on the Rounder release. The difference is accounted for more abrupt cut-off's at the beginning/end of tracks. Comparing the audio spectrum's, the Revenant release has heavy attenuation above 6kHz, whereas the Rounder cuts off around 16KHz. This means that while the Revenant version has much less noise, it also loses all the brightness and sounds a bit like someone is playing the CD down a phone line. It comes with a 20 page booklet with detailed liner notes by Gary B. Reid, as well as numerous rare photographs of the period. The liner notes and most of the photo's are near enough identical to that found on the later Rounder CD.

Revenant have also re-released the collection on clear vinyl (Revenant REV-6004) and CD (Revenant REV-203) 2003, with a white sleeve. I don't have those versions, but looking at the Spectral distribution from a sample track on Revenant's website it appears to be the same quality as the 1997 version.

For basic information surrounding the sessions see the entry for the Rounder Earliest Recordings: The Complete Rich-R-Tone 78s CD.

For much more detailed information on these sessions, check Gary B. Reid's The Music Of The Stanley Brothers book, pages 6-19, 33-35 and 39.

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