Gary Reid’s new book The Music of the Stanley Brothers
Music Tomes: Aside from the discography you have a one-man show on the music of Carter Stanley. What drew you to the music of the Stanley Brothers enough to devote so much time to it?
Gary Reid: I first discovered the music of the Stanley Brothers in 1973. A political science teacher at my high school had been to a police auction in downtown Washington, DC, and among his winnings were stacks and stacks of mostly then-recently country music albums. He offered to let me have any of them I wanted for the sum of 33 cents apiece; it’s probably no coincidence that LPs rotate on the turn table at the rate of 33 RPMs per minute! In any event, mixed in with all of those country LPs were two albums by Bill Monroe, two by Flatt & Scruggs, and one by the Stanley Brothers. I wasn’t looking for bluegrass at the time. I wasn’t all that familiar with the genre. But… when the needle touched down on those five albums, something magical happened and I became an instant convert.
As I soon came to find out, the DC where I grew up was a hotbed for bluegrass. Groups like the Seldom Scene and the Country Gentlemen dominated the local music scene. Being a newbie to the music, I listened to all of it for a while, but… there was something about the music of the Stanley Brothers that pulled me in. There was an emotional intensity to their singing that was missing from a lot of the other bluegrass styled groups. Unknown to me at the time, Carter Stanley was a troubled individual… he had a lot of ache and pain in his life. He channeled that hurt into his music though a bevy of songs he wrote about lost loves, aging parents at home, and, occasionally, the solace that could be found in the bars and taverns that supported the music of the Stanley Brothers over the years.
Added to the mix were the trademark harmony vocals and individualistic style of banjo playing of Ralph Stanley. For whatever reason, the combination of the talents of the two brothers struck a responsive chord in me that remains unabated to this day.
MT: In the pre-Internet days, what techniques and methods did you use to gather detailed information?
GR: My own research started with a copy of a Ralph Stanley Fan Club Journal which contained a basic discography of the Stanley Brothers. As I would come across various tidbits of additional or conflicting information, I started making notes in the margins of the Journal. Some of this info came from articles in publications such as Bluegrass Unlimited. I did a lot of corresponding with scholars…Neil Rosenberg, Charles Wolfe, etc. I was fortunate, too, that I lived not far from folks like Pete Kuykendall and Walt Saunders… people who shared an interest in the recordings of the Stanley Brothers and who did their own research prior to mine. I also made a lot of phone calls to the musicians who helped make the recordings; sometimes I made road trips for in-person interviews. Some of my early memorable jaunts were to Valdese, North Carolina, to interview George Shuffler, and to Detroit, to interview Bill Napier.
MT: How does your career running a record label influence how you put together the discography? Likewise, how did putting together such an in-depth discography influence what you do at the label?
GR: Researching the discography probably had more of an effect of shaping the label than the label shaping the discography. I started Copper Creek Records in 1978. By this time, I had been involved in researching the recording career of the Stanley Brothers for about three years. The immersion into the study of their recordings eventually fueled a desire to do more than just study other people’s recordings; I wanted to make some of my own! By fits and by starts, the label took off. In some respects, the early recording career of the Stanley Brothers shaped our early recording activities. A number of Carter and Ralph’s earliest recordings were made in the studios of local radio stations. So, it seemed natural for some of our first recordings by the Johnson Mountain Boys to be recorded in that manner… engineered by popular DC disc jockey Gary Henderson at WAMU in Washington, DC. Being aware of session sheets and master numbers and the like… early on I tried to keep track of our own catalog of masters in a similar manner. But, by the time Copper Creek was started, the process of recording was much different. Unlike the early days of the Stanley Brothers, when unions dictated that four songs were to be recorded at a three-hour session, new technologies allowed songs to be built by layering tracks over a period of time; songs were no longer created on one specific date anymore. So, attempts to emulate the bookkeeping end of making recordings from days gone by quickly went out the window.
MT: What are you currently working on?
GR: Musicologist/DJ Dick Spottswood and I are putting the finishing touches on a “best of bluegrass” 4-CD set for the folks in Nashville who own the old King and Starday catalogs. Several of Carter Stanley’s children have approached me about doing a book about their father. As was mentioned in your opening question, I have been working on a one-man play, A Life of Sorrow – the Life and Times of Carter Stanley. I started working on the play about 5 years ago. I’d never done any acting before, so I signed up for several semesters of acting at our local community college. To hone my newfound thespian skills, I began auditioning for a host of community theatre productions; to date I have about 60 productions to my credit as an actor, producer, and stage manager. The impetus for this was a desire to do something that would put me in touch with people who knew and saw the Stanley Brothers years ago. Sadly, that generation is fast fading away.
MT: Can you recommend some of your favorite music tomes?
GR: As an offshoot of my record collecting and research, I have, out of necessity, also become a book and magazine collector… so I can learn about the music I have collected. Some that I consult fairly often to trace the histories of songs are Country Music Sources by Gus Meade and Dick Spottswood and Country Music Records by Tony Russell. Some books I might buy because they contain an account of just one song, such as Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky, which profiles Jilson Setters’ (aka James Wilson Day) performance of a ballad performed by the Stanley Brothers called “Come All You Tenderhearted.” In an attempt to trace the histories of the many gospel songs that the Stanley Brothers recorded, I began collecting paperback shape note hymnals that were issued back in the 1920’s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s by publishers such Stamps-Baxter, Winsett, and Vaughan. With a collection that now numbers 900+ separate such publications, I was able to source all but 2 or 3 of their sacred recordings. Lately, in attempt to get a clearer perspective on the Stanley Brothers’ place, or lack thereof, in the broader country music scene of the day, I’ve been collecting 1950s magazines such as Country Song Roundup and Country & Western Jamboree. Reviews of their recordings were oftentimes panned for being too backwoods, or too hillbilly… traits that today endear them to a legion of loyal followers.