Ralph Stanley was the leading name in bluegrass in the late 1990s, embodying in both his music and his bearing the values of this most traditional form of country music.
Stanley, who has died aged 89, was rooted in the Appalachian terrain in which bluegrass grew, and from which his vast store of ballads, songs, banjo tunes and sacred music was harvested.
"As far back as I can remember, I had an old-time mountain voice, weathered and lived-in, like something you'd hear moaning in the woods late of a night," Stanley wrote in his 2009 autobiography, Man of Constant Sorrow.
After years of being celebrated by the bluegrass community, Stanley suddenly found unlooked-for new audiences. Doors and ears were opened by his cameo in the Coen brothers' 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The Coens and their musical adviser, T-Bone Burnett, also used his arrangement of Man of Constant Sorrow, which is threaded through the movie, and closed on a Stanley recording of Angel Band.
Stanley won a Grammy in 2002. In the wake of the film, his Down from the Mountain touring troupe was hugely successful. "The harvest came when O Brother hit," he said. "It took 25 years, but it was worth the wait."
Banjo on her knee
Unaccompanied hymns were a part of Stanley’s upbringing, in Dickenson County, southwest Virginia, close to the Kentucky line. His mother Lucy played banjo, and his father Lee sang old-time songs around the house and in church.
Stanley first sang in public at the age of eight, when his father called on him in church to lead the congregation in a Baptist hymn.
Ralph and his brother Carter began making music together, the latter playing guitar and singing lead, Ralph playing banjo and singing tenor harmony. In 1946 they formed their first band; in 1947 they made their first recordings, for the small Rich-R-Tone label.
Stanley’s immense bluegrass reposes not only in his own work, but in the careers of younger musicians who played with him, from Larry Sparks and Ricky Skaggs to more recent sidemen such as Don Rigsby and Stanley’s grandson, Nathan.
In 1976 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Lincoln Memorial University and thereafter enjoyed being addressed as “Dr Ralph”. He also received awards from the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Ralph Stanley is survived by his wife Jimmi, two sons, two daughters and seven grandchildren.