Customer Reviews

Classic Stanley

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THE FIRST TIME I HEARD THE 2 DISC CLASSIC STANLEY CD I WAS COMPLETELY SPEECHLESS. RALPH STANLEY WITH KEITH WHITLEY AND RICKY SCAGGS,I DONT KNOW HOW IT CAN GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT,NOT IN ANY TYPE OF MUSIC.

Nobody can perform Live Bluegrass better than Ralph Stanley and this CD captures him at his peak. This live double CD actually does a pretty darn good job of delivering the energy of a bluegrass festival Ralph Stanley performance to your CD player. It's full of gems like Ralphs introduction of Ricky Scaggs (who had just graduated high school). Keith Whitley's musical wizardry and Ralph's hard driving bluegrass banjo coupled with awesome vocals and instrumentals, jokes, and dialog make this a must have for any bluegrass fan.

This high quality recording of early '70s festival performance is an essential for any Bluegrass fan. Ricky Scaggs and Keith Whitley show their skills at the start of their careers. They play all of the favorites - the next best thing to being at a live show.

Classic Stanley provides us a clear, brilliant, and highly compelling window into the live performance of all five members of the best and most highly talented version of The Clinch Mountain Boys that Ralph Stanley ever assembled! Members of this band include Ralph Stanley, Roy Lee Centers, Curly Ray Cline, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. During the time When all five of these band members played together they constituted the best and most talented band to ever record bluegrass music! Ralph Stanley may have the best lead vocal voice to ever record bluegrass music. Roy Lee Centers has a lead vocal voice that rivals Ralph Stanley. Ricky Skaggs turned out to be one of the best lead vocalists to ever sing recent bluegrass music. Keith Whitley also had an excellent singing voice that blended so well with the voice of Ricky Skaggs. Thus it's easy to imagine just how very, very outstanding are all of the vocals on Classic Stanley. All members of the band most superbly play their bluegrass instruments. Curly Ray Cline is the most outstanding fiddler in bluegrass music. At least Ricky Skaggs is supremely talented on multiple bluegrass instruments. Therefore, both the beautiful instrumental parts and the thrilling vocal parts on Classic Stanley are outstanding bluegrass achievements and are a tremendous joy to listen to and most highly enjoy! Being a highly devoted long-time fan of Ralph Stanley, I own many Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys' secular and gospel cds and cd sets, and I have seen him live in concert. So what we have on Classic Stanley is the best bluegrass band ever assembled playing outstanding and thrilling mostly secular and some gospel bluegrass music in the best live performance of Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys that is available on cd! The sound quality of the Classic Stanley live performance is excellent, although not quite as good as some of Ralph Stanley's studio-recorded music. Classic Stanley is a two cd set that includes live versions of 32 outstanding Ralph Stanley mostly secular and some gospel bluegrass songs, one humorous song sung by Curly Ray Cline, and one record commercial by Ricky Skaggs. The harmonies on all 32 songs are so good and so special that they nearly take the listener's breath away. Each of these 32 songs is an outstanding bluegrass tune! Although, I am hesitant to choose a favorite song, I do believe that Rank Stranger, with Ricky Skaggs singing lead, is not only the best song on Classic Stanley, but is also my all-time favorite bluegrass song. On Classic Stanley the listener who is quite new to Ralph Stanley will be introduced to many "new" Ralph Stanley songs, while the highly devoted long-time Ralph Stanley fan will hear outstanding live versions of 32 songs that have been recorded before as studio versions on other Ralph Stanley cds. Going along with the 32 songs, we also hear spoken introductions to many of these songs. These spoken introductions give us both new information and humor about the songs and the performers. These introductions also bring us closer to these outstanding musicians and their thrilling bluegrass music. Ricky Skagg's record commercial and the one humorous song sung by Curly Ray Cline are also fun to hear. I am truly and highly thrilled to own, listen to, and most highly enjoy Classic Stanley! Classic Stanley marks a very high point in bluegrass music. Classic Stanley is a MUST BUY for every new or long-time fan of bluegrass music! Classic Stanley is a great treasure that preserves for us the best live bluegrass music that I have ever heard recorded on cd! One point of interest here concerns Ricky Skaggs. When Ricky Skaggs left Ralph Stanley's bluegrass band, he recorded one great bluegrass cd with Keith Whitley, then left bluegrass music for awhile to establish himself as a highly successful country music singer. As is fortunate for all bluegrass fans, Ricky Skaggs eventually returned to bluegrass music to assemble Kentucky Thunder and to join them in recording some truly outstanding bluegrass music. I also highly recommend Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder's bluegrass cds to you.

John

Ralph Stanley at his very best, which is actually every time he records.

He has several live albums, all of them as good as it gets, and this one

is there among the others with its own Ralph Stanley magic. All the way

along he has brought young talent into the Clinch Mountain Boys. He hired Larry Sparks in his late teens to replace Carter. Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitely are featured on this one in their late teens, probably the reason for the release of this concert on cd, I'm grateful to suspect.

This was in the time of Roy Lee Centers with Ralph and Curly Ray Cline.

A Ralph Stanley concert is best live, just seeing him, a small hillbilly man probably not 120 lb at 80, standing still at the mic, his lips hardly moving, his face never changing expression, singing as the soul of the Blue Ridge Mountains. At a Stanley concert in the mountains the audience sits in reverence. This concert carries the spirit of a Stanley concert from start to finish.

Only problem, no indication of when or where the recording was made. I date it approximately 1975 when the band had Ricky Lee on guitar, Curly Ray Cline fiddle and Roy Lee Centers singing lead with Ralph tenor, and had the drive of their concert at the Smithsonian in that time. Also the time of Live in Tokyo, another fine Stanley concert cd.