Bluegrass music patriarch Ralph Stanley dies at 89

But it was a voice that kept an important song tradition in the American air for 70 years, before Stanley died Thursday from complications of skin cancer. The following year, the University of Illinois Press published a study of Stanley by John Wright called Traveling the High Way Home: Ralph Stanley and the World of Traditional Bluegrass Music. Though the film, a Depression-era take on Homer’s “Odyssey”, did well, it was the soundtrack that made the biggest impact.

Stanley’s official website announced his death. The soundtrack, produced by T Bone Burnett, also won a Grammy for album of the year. Morris calls Stanley “a dear friend” and notes his “mischievous smile and quirky sense of humor” before recalling the emotional effect his music had on his many fans.

Several Clinch Mountain Boys who played with Dr. Stanley went on to have successful solo careers, including Keith Whitley, Ricky Skaggs and Larry Sparks.

In the bluegrass world, his revered status was always assured. He and brother Carter formed the Stanley Brothers and their Clinch Mountain Boys in 1946.

Ralph Edmond Stanley was born February 25, 1927, near the mountain hamlet of McClure, Va. The place was the Clinch Mountain district of Virginia, where the state rolls to its mountainous, thin, westernmost point sandwiched between Kentucky and Tennessee.

Word of their talent (including Ralph’s legendary banjo style) led them to being signed by King Records, where they recorded such chestnuts as “Think Of What You’ve Done”, “Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem”, and “Rank Stranger”. She taught him clawhammer picking, which is a down-picking style. The brothers both joined up with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1951 before a vehicle accident briefly sidelined Ralph.

The brothers were swept into the burgeoning folk movement and they toured the country playing folk and bluegrass festivals during the ’60s, including the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and 1964. Ralph took over leadership of the group following Carter’s death in 1966.

The next year, Mr. Stanley, with Jim Lauderdale, received a Grammy for best bluegrass album, “Lost in the Lonesome Pines”.

He was part of the first generation of bluegrass musicians and was inducted into both the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor and the Grand Ole Opry.

“Ugh. like a punch to the heart. thank you God for Ralph Stanley. thoughts and prayers for his family”, Dierks Bentley added on Twitter. It’s so long overdue.

In his autobiography, he recalls the day Carter, just a teenager, got his first guitar, a mail-order instrument from Montgomery Ward: “An instruction manual came with the guitar, but Carter threw it away. I wanted to give it the old Primitive Baptist treatment”.