For Immediate Release
March 28, 2006
An Appalachian Summit:
Ralph Stanley Sings The Carter Family
DMZ/Columbia Unveils
13-Song Tribute Album May 30
Nashville,
TN--Two of the greatest talents in the
history of Appalachian music converge May 30 when DMZ/Columbia Records presents
Ralph Stanley: A
Distant Land
To Roam—Songs Of The Carter Family. Still a commanding presence at 79, Ralph
Stanley re-ignites the drama of these Depression-era classics that first
thrilled him as a boy.
Backing Stanley on this beautifully produced and
packaged homage are his band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, legendary singer and
autoharpist Mike Seeger and bassist Dennis Crouch. The album is executive produced by T Bone
Burnett—the musical force behind the soundtracks of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Walk The Line—and co-produced by Larry
Ehrlich and Bob Neuwirth.
“Ralph Stanley is like an uncle to
us and now that all my uncles are gone, Ralph’s singing is even more
precious. This album of classic folk
songs is one of his best.” says Garrison Keillor, who has featured the Grand
Ole Opry star and three-time Grammy winner several times on his A Prairie Home Companion radio show.
David Gates, a senior editor of Newsweek
who also profiled Stanley
for The New Yorker, says “A Distant Land to
Roam is indispensable: [Here is] the foremost interpreter of traditional
country music singing some of the great canonical songs. . . . [This is]
one of his most moving recordings."
Notes Jon
Weisberger, contributing editor to No Depression: “Ralph's stirring, mournful voice is a
perfect match for the Carter Family's songs.
Mike Seeger's autoharp and James Alan Shelton's ‘Carter lick’ guitar act
as wonderful bridges between the past and present. It is great to hear The Clinch Mountain Boys
behind the master once again. ”
From 1927, when they made their
first recordings, until they disbanded in 1943, A. P., Sara and Maybelle Carter
were the collective voice of rural America. Hailing from Maces Springs, Virginia—just a
few mountainous miles from where Stanley was born—the Carters enriched country
music with a torrent of soulful ballads and hymns, among them “Bury Me Under
The Weeping Willow,” “Keep On The Sunny Side” and the incomparable “Wildwood
Flower.”
Stanley chose 13 rarer gems for
this tribute: “God Gave Noah The Rainbow
Sign,” “Little Moses,” “Worried Man Blues,” “Longing For Home,” “Motherless
Children,” “Storms Are On The Ocean,” “Keep On The Firing Line,” “Engine 143,”
“I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes,” “Orphan Child,” “Hill Lone And Grey,”
“Waves On The Sea” and “Distant Land To Roam.”
The Carter Family made its first
recordings in Bristol,
the small Appalachian town that straddles the Virginia/Tennessee border. And it was in this same hamlet 19 years later
that Stanley
would launch his radio career with his older brother, Carter. Over the next 20 years—until Carter’s death
in 1966—the Stanley Brothers became one of the most beloved and influential
acts in the burgeoning field of bluegrass music.
The element that set the
Stanleys most apart from
other bluegrass duos was Ralph’s high, forlorn tenor voice, an instrument that
seemed to convey all the world’s griefs and regrets. It was—and is—a voice perfectly suited to the
Carter Family laments. “I met all of the Carters,” Stanley
recalls, “and I got to know A.P. pretty well when Carter and I were doing our
early radio work on WCYB in Bristol,
Virginia.”
Besides thrilling to
Stanley’s timeless music, buyers of A Distant Land To Roam will also rejoice
in the album’s cover art, created by Brian Willse,
and the dramatic photos of Stanley,
created by Jim McGuire.
Adds Sony Music
Nashville president John Grady, “We all have musical heroes. One of mine is Ralph Stanley. To me, he is Elvis Presley. He is easily one of the most important
musicians in American history. There is,
has been, and always will be ONE Ralph Stanley.
Thank God he is in my lifetime.”
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Contacts:
Norma Morris, Morris Public Relations, 615 952-9250, norma@morrispr.biz
Craig Campbell, VP Press & Publicity, Sony Music
Nashville, 615 858-1314, craig.campbell@sonybmg.com