Stanley Brothers – The Complete Columbia Stanley Brothers

Ralph and Carter Stanley didn’t invent bluegrass — that bit of history belongs to Bill Monroe — but these brothers from McClure, Virginia, expanded and enlivened the form, and in the process became one of the music’s strongest forces. With haunting, high-lonesome harmonies and sharp instrumental skills, they brought soulful depth to a musical style that, in the late 1940s, was fresh, exciting, and ripe for development.

In 1949 the Stanleys were just coming out of their shell. They had already been recording (for the small Rich-R-Tone label) and playing (a regular show on a Bristol radio station), but signing with Columbia — their first major-label contract — brought them out of the hills and into the national spotlight. This was a move not taken lightly even by the master himself: Bill Monroe was upset by their signing, and he eventually quit Columbia in 1950 and signed up with Decca.

This CD collects all 22 of the Stanleys’ Columbia sides, recorded between 1949 and 1952. Carter Stanley was the duo’s guitarist and lead singer, and brother Ralph — the quiet one — sang harmony and played banjo. Both are credited as songwriters, but it was Carter who handled most of these duties.

Compared with their work later in the decade, the majority of these songs have a more straightforward feeling associated with bluegrass’s roots in mountain folk music. The melodies move gently and in single file. What’s missing on many of these songs is the raging instrumental spirit with which Monroe had defined the genre only a few years earlier. The brothers’ vocal style, too, has yet to fully mature. Carter generally starts the song on his own, with Ralph’s high, thin tenor threading its way into the chorus like a spooky messenger from another world.

The duo’s harmony style — which would soon become one of their most distinct characteristics — is much more fully developed on the their mid-1950s sides. These are easily found on last year’s excellent CD compilation Angel Band: The Classic Mercury Recordings. (A curious note: both CDs use the same Stanley Brothers portrait on the cover.)

While the recording quality on the Columbia collection may not be as clean as on the Mercury CD, the beauty of these early sides is that they live and breathe a raw purity that only gets muffled (however unintentionally) the further the brothers get from their Virginia mountain home. Family, love, God and death are key elements of the life Ralph and Carter grew up with, and in a song like “Gathering Flowers for the Master’s Bouquet”, these subjects unfold with the “dust to dust” earthiness of an Appalachian vision:

Let us be faithful ’til life’s work is done
Blooming with love til the reaper shall come
Then we’ll be gathered together someday
Transplanted to bloom in the master’s bouquet.

This disc is also an excellent opportunity to hear the Stanley Brothers in the thick of their stylistic development. It’s a long way from the folksy approach of early songs such as “Little Glass of Wine” and “The White Dove” to the rhythmic urgency of “The Old Home” and the greater vocal and instrumental complexity of “A Life of Sorrow”.

One of the great joys of bluegrass is that it has remained closer to its roots than other forms of country music. The songs on this Columbia collection strike so close to the soul of the Virginia hills that you can almost smell the earth and the rain and the Blue Ridge pines.