Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times [Hardcover]

Ralph Stanley (Author), Eddie Dean (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2009

A giant of American music opens the book on his wrenching professional and personal journeys, paying tribute to the vanishing Appalachian culture that gave him his voice.

He was there at the beginning of bluegrass. Yet his music, forged in the remote hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia, has even deeper roots. In Man of Constant Sorrow, Dr. Ralph Stanley gives a surprisingly candid look back on his long and incredible career as the patriarch of old-time mountain music.

Marked by Dr. Ralph Stanley’s banjo picking, his brother Carter’s guitar playing, and their haunting and distinctive harmonies, the Stanley Brothers began their career in 1946 and blessed the world of bluegrass with hundreds of classic songs, including “White Dove,” “Rank Stranger,” and what has become Dr. Ralph’s signature song, “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Carter died in 1966 after years of alcohol abuse, but Dr. Ralph Stanley carried on and is still at the top of his game, playing to audiences across the country today at age eighty-one. Rarely giving interviews, he now grants fans the book they have been waiting for, filled with frank recollections, from his boyhood of dire poverty in the Appalachian coalfields to his early musical success with his brother, to years of hard traveling on the road with the Clinch Mountain Boys, to the recent, jubilant revival of a sound he helped create.

The story of how a musical art now popular around the world was crafted by two brothers from a dying mountain culture, Man of Constant Sorrow captures a life harmonized with equal measures of tragedy and triumph.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Stanley's life spans the history of recorded bluegrass and country music, but his high, lonesome voice encompasses human suffering throughout time. Born in 1927, Stanley and his brother and first singing partner, Carter, grew up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia where Stanley learned old-time music in a Primitive Baptist church and from his mother, who picked the banjo clawhammer style. As a young man he often doubted his future as a musician, farming and working briefly in a sawmill, before committing himself to the music business. He stuck with it after Carter's alcohol-accelerated death in 1966 even though his career did not prove lucrative until very late in life when he was featured on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. He won the 2001 Grammy for best male country vocal performance, besting the likes of young commercial country star Tim McGraw, of whom Stanley writes, [W]ouldn't know a real country song if it kicked him in the ass. Stanley's plainspoken narrative is told in a rural diction as though he were sitting in the front seat of an old Ford headed down the mountain for his next show. His story is a comprehensive and endearing cornucopia of authentic mountain music, place, family, friends, rivals, faith, love, life, death and the road. (Oct.)
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Review

"The life chronicled in this autobiography is right out of Southern Gothic lit... The level of detail renders Stanley''s tales as captivating as his music."
-Rolling Stone

"A delightful, outspoken surprise... An often tart yet affecting music memoir."
-Kirkus (starred review)

"After all these years [Stanley''s] tongue is still sharp."
-Wall Street Journal

"[Man of Constant Sorrow] is a lot like the man himself: warm, folksy, down to earth, plainspoken, a little blunt and prickly at times."
-New York Times

"No less than the oral history of a quintessentially American music scene."
-Mother Jones

"This late-in-life memoir is a classic- remarkably frank, detailed, revealing, and from time to time it rises to the level of plainspoken poetry. The master of old time singing and clawhammer banjo pulls no punches as he recalls his rural Virginia mountain boyhood, the Stanleys'' slow rise to success, his career restart after his alcoholic brother''s death in 1966, and musicians he played with, from Bill Monroe to Keith Whitley and even Bob Dylan. He settles a few scores, shares his inner thoughts on matters social, political and spiritual, and tells his tale in a flowing, engaging style that''s no doubt also a credit to Virginia journalist Dean."
-American Songwriter (five stars)

"In the prologue to Man of Constant Sorrow Ralph Stanley writes: ''I''ve always done my best to honor what God gave me. I''ve never tried to put any airs on it. I sing it the way I feel it, just the way it comes out.'' With music writer Eddie Dean, he relates his life in the same speaking voice - honestly and with extraordinary detail."
-Austin Chronicle

"As fascinating as Stanley''s personal revelations are, this book''s greatest value lies in his documentary-like descriptions of the hardships rural musicians faced in the 1940s and ''50s-crowded cars, band rivalries, long and dangerous roads and hand-to-mouth living."
-BookPage

"Man of Constant Sorrow brims with Stanley''s homespun wit as he recalls vivid tales of the church and sawmills of his youth, which served as the wellsprings for the Stanley brothers'' halting, soulful music; their days with King Records, when they were label-mates with soul legend James Brown; and the personal struggles Stanley faced after his brother''s alcohol-related death."
-American Way

"With music journalist Dean''s help, Stanley has put his speech on paper. Every word about his hardscrabble upbringing, how Carter and he built livings in music, his perseverance after Carter''s untimely death in 1966, the many personalities he has worked with and admired, and much more, is vibrant with it. Perhaps in the future this lovely book will occupy a position in American autobiography like that of Huckleberry Finn among American novels, as the great vernacular example of its kind."
-Booklist (starred review)

"Man of Constant Sorrow is an invaluable book...You''ve never heard anything like this story, but if you care anything about great American voices, at the microphone or on the page, you won''t miss it."
-Newsweek

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Gotham (October 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592404251
• ISBN-13: 978-1592404254
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #577,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great view of a unique life, December 27, 2009

By 

Peter Wernick "Dr. Banjo" (Niwot, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times (Hardcover)

Ralph Stanley's way of speaking is in itself a throwback to an earlier time in a relatively isolated mountain
region of the South. And on top of that, even as a child, people said he was the boy with the 100 year old voice.
In his own words, with good shaping and organizing by Eddie Dean, he tells of his early life, his start in the music
business and many details of all the miles traveled and the people along the way. While he repeatedly says he doesn't like
to talk much, he talks plenty in this book, and in some ways I wish it could have been longer, since there's a lot to
tell in a life as long and far reaching as his has been.

One thing that makes it especially interesting is a look into Ralph's ways as a leader, as a family man, and as a man
who's sometimes called on to make moral judgements. Not everything he says or thinks fits into neat categories, and so
there are surprises and plenty of things to make you think.

If you're a fan of his music as I have been, this book provides a great complement to the songs and sounds. If you're not,
this book will provide a great entry point.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disapointed..., January 7, 2010

By 

Compans (VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times (Hardcover)

I'm a Stanley fan of about 25 years. This book is appropriate to the Ralph Stanley of 2009, in his third career - as the grand old man of bluegrass. I must confess he lost me about 8 years ago when his show became more of a circus than anything else. I was lucky enough to see him when he still played the banjo, Curly Ray on fiddle and the band just driving the p*ss out of the music. Somehow, something vital has gone. Ralph's very old and you can't expect him to do it like he always did but the diehard mountain man has been replaced by someone who's playing the game - much the same qualities as he puts down in others in this book. I used to RUN down to the stage on Smith Ridge to see him play, to see something REAL. A commodity fast becoming an impossibility to find, especially in entertainment. What we get now is a show. I'm a musician and I understand the craft, but somehow he always managed to transcend mere performance. This book strikes me as something similar. Does Ralph really have that much respect for Bob Dylan? Ralph II is on film stating that Ralph didn't know who Dylan was before he recorded with him. I love that notion, true or not. Does he really think that the truly awful version of Lonesome River on Clinch Mountain Country was 'one of the best versions' or is he playing the showbiz game? There was a mountain code that I admired in Ralph and others, which he commends in Pee Wee Lambert in this book - the golden rule. Don't speak ill of people, especially not to the press. I was quite taken aback by his 2 pages slandering John Duffey and how he couldn't cut the high baritone on the (amazing) version of Lonesome River recorded in the 70s. This remains one of the most powerful vocal performances (by all concerned)that I have ever heard. Poor old Curly Ray got a whole chapter but much of that was Ralph harping on his 'feeble minded' nature towards the end of his career. In a way it's interesting to hear Ralph speak more candidly but I get the impression (as I have from his stage act over the last several years) that he feels he's reached a position whereby he doesn't really need anyone else, or the fierce integrity that the true fans fell in love with. The excellent book Travelling the Highway Home seems to me to be a truer voice, though it was Ralph still in his second career. His voice here seems to me to be heavily ghost-written in much the same way as the present incarnation of Ralph Stanley has been ghost-written by T Bone Burnett, Nashville producers and West Coast stylists attempting to appeal to some larger demograhic. The style of 'a writin' is kindly, what I'd 'a call pretentious-like. Kindly professional hillbilly, like I was 'a sayin' earlier if you catch my drift.
The fact that Ralph sold out so completely is a tragedy greater than the death of Carter or his mother. At least they went to their graves with their beliefs intact. Ralph deserves all the success - financial and otherwise that he's recieved over the last few years. But I can't help thinking how lucky we are that it didn't come earlier, else many of the recorded jewels he speaks about in this book wouldn't have happened. I miss him.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling reading for the Old-Time music fan., November 27, 2009

By 

docsavage98 "docsavage98" (Monticello, KY USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times (Hardcover)

Having come across bits and pieces of the Ralph Stanley story over the years, it was good to finally get to read it in his own words. I did note that some parts had the language sanitized over previous reported interviews (mostly taking out cussing and putting in milder language)
The book gives an inside look to the world of the 1930's on in the mountains and across the U.S. trying to make a living in a changing genre of music.

I highly recommend it.