The Complete Columbia Recordings

The Stanley Brothers

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What the Angel Band Might Sound Like

It's difficult to find a bad Stanley Brothers record. The Virginia brothers Carter (who died in 1966) and Ralph (still kicking and busier than ever thanks to the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?) had a songbook that wasn't terribly huge. Over an extended career, they recorded multiple versions of many originals, including the mythic "Man of Constant Sorrow." As a result, even the low-budget anthologies sold in truck stops are fine introductions. This single-disc set, which contains recordings from 1949 to 1952, offers great performances (and sparkling CD transfers) of the group's core repertoire.

The Stanley Brothers, who called themselves the Clinch Mountain Boys when they first got together in 1947, were unjustly less famous than bluegrass pioneers Bill Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs, but their influence on country music is inescapable. The basics of the Stanley sound didn't change much from the duo's first recordings (on the regional Rich-R-Tone label) to these masterful performances from the late '40s: This is humble, affect-free singing, often in wide and brotherly harmony, that offers stories of tragic deaths (often of children) and expressions of undying faith.

The recordings the Stanleys made during a three-year stint at Columbia rank among the duo's most creative. Most of the twenty-two tracks are originals, and several of them ("Drunkard's Hell," "Pretty Polly," "Man of Constant Sorrow") represent a fresh, uncluttered approach to Monroe's bluegrass. These tunes carry the wisdom of mountain-dwellers and wanderers, and they're delivered in calm, level-headed, pretension-free tones. More fervor creeps into the selections that are outright expressions of faith: When these two describe how the "Angels Are Singing (in Heaven Tonight)," even the most cynical urban sophisticates might find themselves shaken or, at the very least, stirred.

Genre: Country
Released: 1996, Columbia
Key Tracks: "Angels Are Singing (in Heaven Tonight)," "Man of Constant Sorrow," "Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet"
Catalog Choice: Earliest Recordings: The Complete Rich-R-Tone 78s; Man of Constant Sorrow
Next Stop: Patty Loveless: Mountain Soul
Book Pages: 735–736

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