Jack Lynch & The Lee Brothers - In Memory Of Carter Stanley / I Can't Forget You

(Jalyn 45-312) 1967

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On this rare single, In Memory Of Carter Stanley re-uses the melody from The Hills Of Roane County (aka Roane County Prison), and unfortunately Roy Lee Centers' vocals are slightly distorted.

Don Reno and Bill Harrell also cut In Memory Of Carter Stanley on their 'The Most Requested Songs' LP (Jalyn JLP-119) - with George Shuffler on bass, and Ralph also cut it for his The Bluegrass Sound Of... LP in 1968. Finally the Clinch Mountain Boys, with Ralph absent and Roy Lee Centers on banjo, recorded another version in June 1971, although that didn't get released until the Classic Stanley 2xCD set in 1995.

The flip side, I Can't Forget You has better fidelity, with good vocal from Roy Lee Centers.

Interviewed in John Wright's 'Travelling The high Way Home' book, Jack Lynch recalled:- "That song, 'In Memory Of Carter Stanley', I'll tell you exactly how that started. A fellow by the name of Red Duty, he was an inspector for General Motors, I believe in Detroit.... He was the one that redid Carter's D-29 - looked like a 45? - Red was the guy who did that. And he used to perform quite a bit with the Stanley Brothers. He'd guest with them, sing a few songs. Real nice fellow. He come and visit me in Dayton when we'd all get together there at my place."

"... Anyway he had started this song and he said that Bill Monroe said he'd record it but he never did and Red got disenchanted with it. I said, 'Red, what are you going to do with that song?' He said, 'Jack, I'll tell you what,' he said. 'You want it, you can have it.'"

"So I took the song and rewrote it. I changed it somewhat and put different music to it. The music that we have now is not the music that Red had. And I published it and then later we recorded it - Roy Lee Centers, Fred Spencer and our band - and then little later I got Don Reno and Bill Harrell, they recorded it. And then when we recorded 'The Bluegrass Sound' Ralph said, 'Well, everybody else has recorded it. I guess I might as well too, if you don't mind.' I said, 'No, not at all.'"

"So we put that on Ralph's album and I believe it was the best cut that had of all of them. Our cut that Roy Lee sung the lead on was real good but the engineer got a lot of distortion in it and we just had to drop it. After the original pressing we just dropped it because it was distorted real bad....'"

Likely personnel incl:

• Roy Lee Centers: banjo(?), lead vocal
• Jack Lynch: bass
• Paul 'Moon' Mullins: fiddle
• Fred Spencer: guitar?

Many thanks to Steve Wisner for enabling us to hear this one and for the 45 label scans!

Other artwork / related images: