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Genre:
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Release Date: 10/07/2008
Ralph Stanley is one of very few
bluegrass banjo players who still occasionally takes off the steel fingerpicks and plays in the older, more traditional clawhammer (or "frailing") style. It's a more modal and percussive approach, one that carries with it the rough-hewn charm of old-time
string band music rather than the flashier, more commercial appeal of
bluegrass. This 18-track set (half the tracks are new to CD) is drawn from
Stanley's long run with
Rebel Records and includes him playing the banjo in the clawhamer style he learned from his mother when he was 11 years old. The virtuoso speed and considered slickness of
contemporary bluegrass are nowhere to be found here, but that doesn't mean this is a radically different
Ralph Stanley, it's just
Stanley working closer to his
string band roots. The approach is still the same, and his singing is still full of mountain
gospel as he searches for meaning and redemption in the old songs.
~Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
;)
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