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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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RALPH STANLEY
AND THE CLINCH MOUNTAIN BOYS
The
Barbican, London
May 27th 2009
Ralph
Stanley is within a cat’s whisker
of being the same age as my dear old Mum, and
let me tell you that she would find it pretty
difficult to stay on her feet for an hour and
a half, let alone sing and play the banjo, too.
Dr Stanley is one of the United States’
most enduring country music performers, but you
should understand that although his show is tinged
with Nashville shtick, his music (“what
we call old-time mountain-style bluegrass”)
couldn’t be further removed from the mass-produced
radio-centric pap that one normally associates
with the genre.
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| True,
some of it is cast in Country’s unique maudlin
style, such as “It’s springtime and
the robin built a nest on daddy’s grave”,
but at its best, the music and in particular, Dr
Stanley’s singing, comes from another time
and another place. Not that his voice tonight is
on top form, as he frequently reminds us with very
genuine apologies. This is not simply down to his
age, given that no-one (surely not even Mick Jagger?)
can expect to have the voice of a man in his prime
at the age of 82. No, sir! Dr Stanley and his Clinch
Mountain Boys are in London hot-foot from the 39th
Annual Memorial Weekend Bluegrass Festival, held
at the Hills of Home Park in Virginia (“now
you make sure you call by and make a visit to us
there next year”), where they performed for
three consecutive nights (I note that even Fairport
Convention haven’t yet got that indulgent
at their Cropredy Festival). Not surprisingly, the
strain is telling. And just to make things worse,
the band have lost their regular bass player since
son Ralph Stanley II wasn’t able to make the
trip, while grandson and mandolin prodigy Nathan
Stanley was left at home, having lost his passport. |
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The
exceptionally talented Kentuckian Steve Sparkman |
| But
the Clinch Mountain Boys have been around for over
fifty years and take such things in their stride.
Originally formed by Ralph and older brother Carter
(who died from chronic alcoholism in 1966), the
band, along with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass
Boys, were responsible for creating and popularising
the bluegrass style of music. They were noted for
vocal style and harmonies heavily influenced by
their membership of the Primitive
Baptist Universalist Church, a group found predominantly
in the Appalachians and which incorporated a minor-key
‘mountain’ style of singing into its
services. So it’s when Dr Stanley hits these
striking notes that he has the audience in his hand.
The current line-up boasts Virginian James A Shelton
on vocals and guitar, North Carolinian Dewey Brown
on fiddle and vocals, and the exceptionally talented
Kentuckian Steve Sparkman on banjo. Dr Stanley,
of course, is famed for his unique claw-hammer style
of banjo picking, learnt from his mother. Sadly,
his playing days are almost over and, to be honest,
we might have been better off without the one effort
he made. But the way in which the band carefully
shepherded Dr Stanley through the show, all taking
their turn at vocals and solos, was admirable. |
| Stanley’s
reputation with a new and international audience,
many unfamiliar with bluegrass, was established
through of a telephone conversation with T
Bone Burnett, who at the time was musical director
for the Cohen Brothers on their Odyssean film ‘O
Brother Where Art Thou? As a result, not only
were many of the songs used on the bestselling soundtrack
based on Stanley Brothers arrangements, but Dr Stanley
himself delivered the memorable ‘Oh death’.
Listen, and you’ll immediately appreciate
that most unusual style of singing. Hence, the song
is one of the highlights of the evening, along with
‘Man of constant sorrow’, a hit for
the brothers back in 1950. |
But it took a childhood memory from this elderly
gentleman to capture my imagination entirely,
when he and the band sang an ‘a cappella’
version of ‘Amazing Grace’, calling
each line of the song just as he heard them called
for the congregation as a boy in his ‘No
-hellers’ church with his mother. Apparently,
it’s called ‘lining out’, where
a leader not only calls or chants the words, but
also sets the tune and tempo, and which I learn
is “an outgrowth of seventeenth-century
psalmody of the British Isles and the American
colonies and of early eighteenth-century hymnody”.
Whatever its origins, it was a moment worth the
price of the ticket. -
Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate)
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Stanley on MySpace |
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