Curly Ray Cline - ...And His Lonesome Pine Fiddle

(Melody MLP-17) 1969

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Curly Ray's first solo album, was recorded 15th Feb 1969 and released initally on William M. Jones' 'Melody' label.

As Ralph recalls in his book, he underwrote the first pressing as Curly was extremely reluctant to take the risk.^[1]

Unlike most of the later albums, this is a pretty much a pure fiddle album. The exception being Kentucky Fox Race which mixes in a recording of Cury's foxhounds with the band. Not entirely successful, but an interesting experiment nonetheless. Ralph later recalled, how whilst on a fox hunt "Curly Ray stopped to catch his breath and rest up a while and then pulled on my arm. 'Lord won't you listen to that music?'. 'Well", I said, "I don't hear nothing but them dogs a-barking. But it was music to his ears".^[2]

The album was issued on the Melody label in two covers - red and green, with the green version being more common. I think that the red cover was the first pressing, as it looks like a printing mistake was made with the size of the front cover photo which wasn't cropped properly. i.e. the left/right hand sides are printed as photo-'screen' rather than the background red ink, suggesting perhaps that a different photo (or different aspect ratio) was originally intended. This was corrected for the green cover, which the photo cropped correctly. My red cover copy is also stamped "JUL 31 1969" on the rear cover & paper inner record-jacket. The front cover also has the 'Pine Tree' with background mountains clouds in white, whilst the green cover just has the 'Pine Tree' in black.

The green label cover layout was retained when the album was later reissued by William M. Jones' on his Pine Tree imprint (Pine Tree PTSLP 553) c1979. This version has the 'Pine Tree' logo/text added to the bottom right hand corner of the front cover, and is re-mastered with different dead-wax markings to the Melody version(s).

A couple of years later, the album was reissued again in a yellow cover (Old Homestead OHS 90142) 1981. The master here too is re-cut.

Sound wise: My Melody label copy (Green sleeve) has some nasty looking warp marks and dimples on the vinyl, but they don't significantly affect play.

• Curly Ray Cline: fiddle, vocals
• Melvin Goins: bass
• Larry Sparks: guitar
• Ralph Stanley: banjo

Other artwork / related images:

[1] Ralph Stanley / Eddie Dean's book "Man Of Constant Sorrow" (p. 345-346)
[2] Ralph Stanley / Eddie Dean's book "Man Of Constant Sorrow" (p. 339)