Customer Reviews

Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times

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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.

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 Ralph's very old and you can't expect him to do it like he always did but the diehard mountain man has been replaced by someone who's playing the game - much the same qualities as he puts down in others in this book.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.

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.

I bought this book for my dad and read a few parts here and there before I gave it to him. It seems good -- I could hear Dr. Ralph's voice in my head as I read -- but there are no pictures, other than a collage in the front and back covers, and it's the same collage in the front and back! I was hoping for and expecting a lot of photos through the years. It isn't like there is a dearth of pics from which to choose, but maybe they had their reasons?

I bought this as soon as it was announced, and devoured it several times over. There is a lot interesting here but it is poorly-written and very poorly-edited. I don't mean the use of dialect (although that comes off somewhat forced) but the repetition and uneven coverage. As others have said, huge parts of the story are just airbrushed out as in a Soviet-style history. Carter's family, Ralph's first marriage (yes, just half a line on this), etc. I was amazed that Steve Sparkman, who has been playing an excellent Stanley-style banjo for the Clinch Mountain Boys since about 1995, is not even mentioned! He has kept Ralph's sound intact since Ralph got arthritic -- I've heard Ralph on stage giving him credit for this, but why not in this massive book? Mike Seeger is not mentioned except in an oblique reference to a "northern boy who once filled in" despite his hosting the Homespun video lesson by Dr. Ralph, and being a tireless promoter of the Stanley sound. James Allen Shelton has kept the great Shuffler cross-picking style alive and been a Clinch Mountain Boy for many years now, and his name is never called.

The pettiness and self-justifying nature of the man comes out in his various stories. He names John Duffey but for some reason is afraid to name Ron Thomasson, Mac Wiseman, Ernie Thacker and Sammy Adkins (easy to identify from the information given about them). I guess because they are still alive to defend themselves? He loves to talk about people behind their back, as it were, but then not name them. He does name Roy Lee Centers' murderer, but I guess he can do that because the man was convicted.

He's disingenuous also about the source of his banjo style and many of the songs. A deeper examination of the link between the professed Christianity and the love life of a road musician (very clearly alluded to) would also have been interesting -- but Ralph does not seem to see the contradiction.

Having said all that -- I am quite happy to own the book, if you have other sources (like this lifelong Stanley fan) you can read between the lines. He truly comes from another era, and the early part of the book on his childhood and the early days of the Stanley Brothers will transport you to a completely different mentality and way of life.

When it comes to country music history, Ralph Stanley has pretty much seen it all. Now, at age 82, he has partnered with author Eddie Dean to share some of that with the rest of us. The book they co-authored, "Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times," will, of course be especially appreciated by bluegrass fans, Stanley Brothers fans, and fans of the work Ralph has done since Carter's death on December 1, 1966. Others, even those that are not fans of Stanley or of bluegrass music, will find the book to be a remarkable snapshot of a pivotal period in American music history, a time during which musicians like the Stanley Brothers earned their livings through live radio shows, relatively primitive recordings, and driving countless miles from one paying gig to the next.

Stanley was born in 1927 in the Clinch mountains of southwestern Virginia and he still lives very near the old home place where he grew up with his older brother Carter. Carter and Ralph were still teenagers when they began performing as the Stanley Brothers and, for the rest of their lives, the brothers would depend on music to provide their living, difficult as that would often prove to be (think about the impact of Elvis Presley). Carter would be gone much too soon, dead by age 42 primarily because of an inability to control his alcohol consumption, but Ralph would find new lead singers to keep the music of the Stanley Brothers alive to the present day.

First to replace Carter was18-year-old Larry Sparks, but Sparks would be followed over the years by others, including an even younger Keith Whitley who joined the Clinch Mountain Boys with his singing buddy Ricky Skaggs. As Stanley recounts, Whitley would move on to a successful stint with J.D. Crowe before himself dying of alcohol poisoning when just on the verge of a career-making mainstream breakthrough.

"Man of Constant Sorrow" includes stories about many of the men that have been members of the Clinch Mountain Boys for the past six decades. Stanley shares both the good and the bad about his life and he does the same for the men with whom he worked all those years, even to providing details (as he understands them) of the murder of Roy Lee Centers and the legal system that let off his killer with the lightest of sentences imaginable. Stanley speaks often of losing band members to death or illness and addresses how difficult it was for him to fire various Clinch Mountain Boys over the years.

The beauty of "Man of Constant Sorrow" is that it is told in Ralph Stanley's voice, mountain dialect and spelling, included. The voice is so accurate (and, at times so rambling) that one has to believe that Dr. Ralph's contribution to the book was largely made via a recording device into which he spoke his memories and that Eddie Dean's job was to put everything in the proper order for a book presentation.

This stream-of-consciousness approach also contributes to an unpleasant surprise or two for those of us who know Ralph Stanley only through his onstage persona. Stanley, it seems, has a tendency to give praise to others with one hand while, with the other, explaining that he does it better than they ever did (be "it" music or some standard of behavior), and a willingness to tell degrading stories about the people he does not like or approve of, even if they are long dead. I was particularly struck by the paragraphs devoted to how delightful if was for the band to have a dim-witted picker on the road with them, someone at whom the rest of the band could always laugh to relieve the tension and fatigue of the road. This light streak of cruelty and lack of empathy in some of Stanley's stories truly surprises me and exposes an inability to see himself through the eyes of others.

"Man of Constant Sorrow suffers," too, from the glaring gaps left in its chronology. Very little is said about Carter Stanley's children and how they survived after Carter's death despite the fact that one of them, Jeanie, is herself an excellent bluegrass singer. There is also the matter of Ralph own first marriage, to which I can find only one quick reference where Stanley discusses his mother's reaction to his surprise marriage to Jimmie: "My first marriage didn't really count in her book. And not in mine, neither. I had to go through the bad marriage to be ready for a woman like Jimmie, I reckon." To those unaware of Stanley's first marriage, this is the equivalent of a neck-twisting double-take, and I still wonder where in his long story this failed marriage fits. Lastly, there is little mention of Ralph's own children, despite the fact that Ralph Stanley II was a Clinch Mountain Boy for about 20 years and that one grandson is a current member of the band.

Despite the gaps in the book, and, in my personal opinion , some of what Dr. Ralph reveals about his nature, "Man of Constant Sorrow" is a worthy addition to country music history and it deserves a wide audience. It is, after all, Ralph Stanley's story - and he gets to decide what he wants to share and what he wants to reveal about himself in the process.

Look, it's kind of interesting to read the life story of one of my heroes, and there is some OK stuff in here. Trouble is, its just not that good a read. Its poorly written and poorly edited (numerous spelling errors, a repeated paragraph on one page) which kind of takes the gloss of the story. Plus he lost me with the "George Washington" yarn about pushing down the teachers outhouse. That story was old when I was a boy and it makes me wonder what else he made up. I also wonder about the gaps in the story. He conveniently skips over his first marriage as if it never happened - I wish I could forget my first wife as easily! The Carter Stanley story is treated with the respect it deserves, but Carter's wife and kids are glossed over - can't even tell if they were at his funeral from Ralph's version of events.

A flawed book, of interest to fans only.

I grew up on a farm in North Carolina, before I became a newspaper reporter and then a stockbroker, and in reading this book it seemed like I underlined something on every page. Things like: "Two Stanley brothers in front, three Clinch Mountain boys in back, and just enough gasoline for a round trip: that's how we made the miles in the early days."

Ralph and Carter Stanley came down from the farm on Smith's Ridge in the deep, rolling hills of old Virginia and started on Farm and Fun Time on live radio back in the 1940's. Elvis came along in the 1950s, and television. A lot of things changed. The Stanley Brothers music stayed the same.

"I can't read a note of music and neither could Carter," Ralph says in this book. "We always played by ear, same as everybody did in the mountains...Carter was such a wonderful and talented MC, he could please any kind of crowd...He was so used to speaking off the cuff. He never planned what he was going to say, just like we never planned our sets. We sung whatever we felt at the moment and whatever requests we got from the audience."

But Carter took to drinking. "All I can tell you is over the years, it (alcohol) just kept tighening the grip on him, and there wasn't nothing I could do to unloose that grip." Carter died in 1966. Ralph carried on. A lot of musicians passed through his band. George Shuffler, Ralph writes, became like a third Stanley brother. Curley Ray Cline "could have more fun drinking a cup of coffee than a lot of people could have in a month."

I saw Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys perform when Carter was still alive and I've seen them many times since. Ralph's singing, that high, cracked voice, stays the same. "This music isn't about the notes you play, but the emotions you have," he says. That kind of sums it up.

I loved this book, but set it down with sadness. No one plows behind a mule any more. Everybody watches the same awful television shows. Kids don't grow up like we did, working the fields, swimming in the creek, coming in at noon to listen to hillbilly music on the radio. It's a time that's gone and won't come back. The musicians who came off those mountain farms soon will soon be gone too.

But the music remains, and country roads, and those misted hills of home.

Ken Byerly, author of Mountain Girl and other books.

I can hear Ralph's voice tell me the story of his life as I read through the pages of "Man of Constant Sorrow." Ralph is the greatest mountain singer/banjo player in the world. Listen as he tells about his humble beginnings with his beloved brother Carter, the struggles Ralph had after the passing of Carter, and the years of survival playing his music through the good and bad times. This book opens up and let's the reader see the private life of Ralph that the majority of fans never knew. I hope Ralph is inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame before his passing.

Ralph is a legend, a true mountain performer. Through out the book on numerous occasions, Ralph mentions that he is not really a bluegrass performer, he is a performer of the traditional music of the mountains; from sacred hymns from his childhood, to the writings of Carter and himself. Ralph is a man who has been through constant sorrow, and you can hear/feel it every time he sings.

I could not lay this book down, and I would recommend every fan of Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, to the Stanley Brothers, this book must be on your reading list. If you are a new fan and recently discovered Ralph, this will give you an inside look to his career and his love and passion for the greatest music in the world. The stories of fiddler Curly Ray Cline is priceless. A friend of mine use to travel with Curly in the late 70's, and he can tell some of the most hilarious stories of this legend. The personal story of Ralph is long over due, and I hope we have Ralph around for many years to come. A new generation needs to be introduced and to observe how the musical heritage of the mountains are suppose to be sung and played, and to have an appreciation for this legend. RIP Carter.

I thought the book was a good read on Ralph Stanley. He is an icon. The book is an easy read and gives you an idea of how rough his life was when he was younger. Ralph never sold out his music for money. He is the best of the best! and still going strong!