By DAVE SHIFLETT Ralph Stanley, the hillbilly (his term) musician best known for his 2002 Grammy-winning rendition of "O Death" in the Coen brothers movie "O Brother Where Art Thou?," may be 82 years old and play songs nearly as ancient as the southwest Virginia hills where he was born (and still lives). But after all these years his tongue is still sharp, as he shows in "Man of Constant Sorrow," a memoir that may send some cowboy hats spinning along Nashville's Music Row. Dr. Stanley, as he likes to be known—the doctorate is honorary, from Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn.—dispenses a few lashes along with his rollicking account of 60 years as a banjo-picking bluegrass performer, though none will do lasting harm. Born in Dickenson County, Va., on Feb. 25, 1927, Dr. Stanley came up hard. He describes a Christmas when all he got was an orange and a handful of rock candy. In 1939, his father bolted for a younger woman and "never even said goodbye." Career options were as stark as his home life, basically limited to working in the coal and timber industries. "If you didn't go digging you'd be out logging," he writes. "They'd get you one way or the other." Death lurked in the mines. "I had asthma and figured I'd smother down there." Music seemed a safer option, though as it turned out the trade also had a pretty high body count. He and his older brother, Carter, took up music together, with Ralph playing a used banjo and Carter learning how to play a $3.45 guitar from Montgomery Ward. Thus began a partnership that would last for 20 years. The Stanley Brothers performed in local lumber camps and wherever else they could land work. They took off for a few years while both young men served in the military—Ralph enlisted two weeks after graduating from high school in 1945, World War II already over. When the brothers reunited onstage, they got a break when a Norton, Va., radio station gave them a daily show, sponsored by Piggly Wiggly grocery stores. The life of a traveling musician is hardly glamorous in Dr. Stanley's telling. He writes (with help from Eddie Dean) of occupational hazards such as knifings, shootings, surly club employees and low-paying gigs. Another hazard, encountered in the 1950s: a fellow named Presley. "Elvis just about starved us out," Dr. Stanley says, recalling how country-music records and performance opportunities plummeted with the advent of Presley and rock music. "We got used to eating a lot of Vienna sausages." Yet the biggest scourge was liquor. Alcoholism killed Carter Stanley at age 41. He died in 1966, hemorrhaging so badly on the way to the hospital "that when they opened the back door of the ambulance, there was blood running out onto the ground." While not making excuses, he mourns that his brother died "a poor man" who "never did give up on the dream that finally done him in." More ravages of alcohol among Dr. Stanley's bandmates: Singer Roy Lee Centers was pistol-whipped and shot to death after a booze-fueled argument, and another singer, Keith Whitley, died of alcohol poisoning at age 34. Makes the Grateful Dead sound like a junior-varsity outfit. For all that, the author has mixed views about distilled spirits. "Now some might say the gospel and liquor don't go together," he writes, "but they can work fine if you know the proper amounts." He insists that while he was behind the wheel on long nighttime drives, singing hymns while slowly sipping Jack Daniels helped keep him awake "and probably saved us from many a car wreck." Sage advice perhaps, though likely to get him on the MADD watch list. He takes a few jabs at Nashville, reminding us that Music City has turned its back on legends such as George Jones. The "younger crowd would rather us old-timers go under the wheels of our tour buses and be done with it." The good doctor could have cut a lot deeper without fear of being charged with malpractice. On the sunny side, the success of the "O Brother" movie soundtrack, which producer T-Bone Burnett heavily stocked with mountain music, strikes Dr. Stanley "as proof people are craving our type of country music, and when they get a chance to hear it, they can't hardly get enough of it." Dr. Stanley has other passions. He ran for clerk of court and commissioner of revenue in Dickenson County a few years ago, but says his efforts were undone by party shenanigans. He's proud of his membership in the Masons, whose ranks, he notes, have included Harry Truman and Colonel Sanders. And, after a lifetime of singing hymns, he got himself baptized at age 73. But first and foremost, Dr. Stanley is a traveling musician, still logging 100,000 miles a year with his band, the Clinch Mountain Boys. If he burns a few bridges with this book, there's little doubt that he knows a back road or two that will take him safely home. —Mr. Shiflett is a writer and musician in Virginia who posts his original music at Daveshiflett.com
