Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys - The Complete Jessup Recordings Plus! (2016)

Back in the rock and roll-dominated early 70s, not many people were paying attention to the sound of traditional bluegrass as practiced by one of its greatest artists, Ralph Stanley, and his band The Clinch Mountain Boys. But there were two very notable exceptions. Due to a flat tire, Stanley and the Boys were late for a gig in Fort Gay, West Virginia when the club owner spotted two kids with instruments in the crowd and invited them on stage to fill the time. As Ralph tells it, I walked in and these two boys were singing the Stanley Brothers music better than the Stanley Brothers. I began naming some more of our old songs and I couldn t mention one they couldn t sing. They said the Stanley Brothers had always been their favorites and you could tell by hearing them that we had. They said they would like to record an album of our songs, as a tribute... Well, those two boys were, of course, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley, and the album initially titled Tribute to the Stanley Brothers by Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs, but later changed to Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys Featuring Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs after they officially joined Ralph s outfit was recorded in January 1971 with The Clinch Mountain Boys backing up the duo. Thus was formed one of the greatest bluegrass bands of all time, and certainly Ralph s finest post-Carter Stanley aggregation, with Roy Lee Centers on banjo and vocals, Curly Ray Cline on fiddle, and Jack Cooke on bass joining the two youths and Stanley. Soon after Whitley and Skaggs got out of school that Summer, they went into the studio with the band to record Ralph Stanley s first record for the Michigan-based Jessup label, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys Sing Michigan Bluegrass, which featured a bunch of songs Stanley had never done before. A mere five weeks later, the group went back into the studio to record their second and final Jessup album, Gospel Echoes of the Stanley Brothers, which delved into the Stanley Brothers deep and rich library of gospel songs. Now, Real Gone Music is proud to gather all three albums recorded by future superstars Whitley and Skaggs with The Clinch Mountain Boys together for the first time, boasting two CDs and 34 tracks of some of the hottest playing and most haunting singing you ll ever hear, remastered to send a shiver down your spine by Mike Milchner of SonicVision. Liner notes by Grammy-winning writer Colin Escott and rare photos accompany.