Ralph Stanley - Down Where The River Bends

(Rebel SLP 1579) 25 May 1978

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Recorded on 29th March 1978 at Lemco Studios in Lexington, Ky. This album hasn't been reissued on CD...

This is the first of Ralph's albums to feature Charlie Sizemore and Junior Blankenship (although they had recorded Curly's Who's Gonna Mow My Grass? LP a couple of months earlier).

Four of the tracks were Bill Monroe numbers: Put My Little Shoes Away, Footprints In The Snow, The Old Old House and Little Girl And The Dreadful Snake.

Norma Fannin, the vice president of The Stanley Brother Fan Club wrote I Wanna Sing A Song For Carter, which Ralph had I think performed at the Hills Of Home festival in 1977 with David Marshall.^[1]

Pretty Woman was later recorded by Ralph II on his Carrying On CD, but co-credited to Ralph Stanley and Candace Randolph, whereas on this album only Ralph is given songwriting credit. It does sound very much like the work of Candace, who was in the Lost Kentuckians and had a few other songs recorded by Ralph.^[2]

For those with an advanced case of Stanley-itus, there is a very poor quality B&W video taken during the recording of I'll Just Catch A Train And Ride. Shot from the engineers booth (ie. through a plate of glass), it shows the band making last minute adjustments to the tracks arrangement.^[3]

Fred Huffman, who did the artwork for this and both Curly Ray's Who's Gonna Mow My Grass? and It's Bread And Water For... LPs, later designed the commemorative Blue Grass Boy belt buckle design that Doug Hutchens made for Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in 1987.^[4] He also did the artwork for I'll Wear A White Robe.

The album was also issued in Japan (Seven Seas GXF-6027).

• Ralph Stanley: banjo, vocals
• Junior Blankenship: lead guitar
• Curly Ray Cline: fiddle
• Jack Cooke: bass (*)
• Dan Marshall: mandolin
• Charlie Sizemore: guitar, vocals

NB: (*) vocal on Footprints In The Snow.

NB: Liner notes don't specify instruments/vocal parts for individual tracks, so the breakdown above won't be correct.

Other artwork / related images:

[1] See https://youtu.be/UFwGb_KsRw0?t=2m57s
[2] See the The Stanley Sound Today and Lonesome And Blue entries.
[3] See https://youtu.be/UFwGb_KsRw0?t=45m33s
[4] Bob Black's book 'Come Hither To Go Yonder' (p. 136)