Kentucky Traveler

by Ricky Skaggs

  Now, here Dad had scraped meat off his face, and right there beside him was the mirror he coulda used to prevent all that bloodshed! He was looking at himself in the mirror and feeling sheepish. He couldn’t hardly believe it; he was so gotten about that! Well, the whole bus just roared, and Dad had a good laugh about it, too. ’Course, Curly Ray had a field day and was crowing, “Hobert about tore half his face off without a-knowin’ there’s a dang mirror right there bigger’n he is!”

  Poor Dad. It was quite an introduction to the world of outdoor bluegrass festivals, where you had to rough it best you could. It was a real eye-opener to see thousands of people camped out for three days in tents or sleeping in cars. This was a different crowd than the one you’d get at the Astro Inn or at Jim & Fay’s. This was a mixed crowd, with Yankees and even city folk.

  There were a lot of young people there, too. It was the first time I ever saw hippies. They had long hair, they were strangely dressed in colorful clothes, and they really loved this old mountain music. They had more fun than anybody. They danced to every song, even the gospel songs. I’d never really seen that before. I’d seen those people in the Holiness Church dance to gospel, but this was wild. It sure didn’t look like the mountain clogging I’d seen back on Brushy Creek.

  Ralph had Keith and me rehearsed and ready to go for the tribute. He needed us for the high-trio sound from the ’40s and early ’50s, the classic Pee Wee and Carter era. We were essential to telling the whole story, because Ralph wasn’t doing those old songs with his new band. He had left them in the past and moved on.

  Soon it was show time. Time for Carlton Haney to tell “The Stanley Brothers Story,” or “stoh-ree,” as he pronounced it in his western Carolina brogue. Ralph and the band played, and in between songs, Haney narrated the saga of two brothers who left their mountain home to roam far and wide, playing their music together for twenty years before Carter’s tragic end. Waiting in the wings, Keith and I got a peek at the huge crowd, a sea of strangers far as the eyes could see. It made me shake a little bit. Ralph introduced us, and we went out and sang “Lonesome River” and “White Dove.” We did “Angels Are Singing in Heaven Tonight,” and honestly, I believe they were. I believe that we had heaven’s approval. This was meant to be!

  A lot of the fans had never heard Ralph perform these songs on stage in the years since Carter had died. It was a wonderful surprise, and we got three encores. The clapping was as loud as thunder. Dad was there of, course, and he came by after the show to congratulate us. He was so proud. “That’s the best I ever heard,” he said. “That was the biggest hand anybody got all night, when you’uns went up there with Ralph!” Well, me and Keith were just glad we hadn’t messed up and embarrassed Ralph. We didn’t know we’d stepped into an important chapter of bluegrass history, when the music had matured to the point where it could look back on its past and honor its creators. Everybody was talking about the two young kids with Ralph Stanley, how it was part of a new youth movement. Bluegrass had always been an older people’s music, and now there were a lot of young people in the crowd to see the Bluegrass Alliance, the Country Gentlemen, and other progressive acts. Bluegrass was bringing hippies and rednecks together. Even ol’ Ralph Stanley, he was singing them lonesome ol’ high mountain harmonies with a couple of teenagers!

  The Atlantic Monthly had a story about the resurgence of bluegrass around that time, and it focused on the festivals that had grown into a nationwide grassroots phenomenon. The writer made special mention of me and Keith, and how we were carrying on Ralph’s music to a new generation. “Two young Kentucky musicians created a sensation by playing and singing in an absolutely perfect imitation of the early Stanley Brothers,” reported the article, called “Believing in Bluegrass.” “To hear the whole group, then, is to hear not only Ralph and Carter Stanley, but also a kind of geological record of their career, collapsed into some of the most hair-raising and beautiful harmonies in any music.”

  The writer saw this as a watershed moment in the history of bluegrass: “An art may perhaps be said to have come of age when it can refer to itself.” Bluegrass was “all growed up” and out of the mountains and out in the world. And we were helping it along.

  Nobody was more tickled than Ralph. He told us he was going to hire us out the rest of the summer at twenty-five dollars a day for show dates. Then, during the school year, we could work part-time traveling on weekends and holidays. After we graduated, he said, we could join the band full-time. It was a dream come true!

  And that was how it happened. When classes started up in the fall, we’d do show dates with Ralph whenever we were able—and sometimes when we really shouldn’t have. We were like two physics majors with the chance to go out on the road with Einstein. Getting paid for learning! How could being stuck in a classroom stack up next to picking a mandolin on stage with Ralph Stanley?

  The only letter or number I cared about was “F-5”—as in the 1922 Lloyd Loar Gibson that Pee Wee Lambert had played and, especially, the 1923 F-5 Lloyd Loar Gibson Bill Monroe played. The legendary F-5 models, from a batch of only a few hundred made. Hand-cut from maple wood, hand-assembled, hand-varnished, tested, and signed by the master luthier Mr. Loar himself! When he started out, Bill had a decent instrument, an F-7 Gibson. But when he saw that F-5 Loar in the window of a Florida barbershop and bought it for $150, he found his musical partner for life. A great instrument inspires you, and after Bill got hold of that F-5, it was like he was struck by lightning. He wrote hundreds of songs and changed American music.

  The story of Monroe’s mandolin was holy writ for bluegrassers everywhere. At the time, though, an F-5 was something I could only daydream about, as unattainable as the Holy Grail. I had just bought a brand-new A-5 Florentine Gibson. It wasn’t great, but it was all I could afford. Keith called it the Red Bomb.

  I still did my best to make school a priority. I can remember there were times I’d get back home from the road at four o’clock on a Monday morning, take a bath—’cause we didn’t have a shower in those days—catch the bus, and ride the thirty miles to high school in Louisa, which was the county seat. I was the first to get on the bus in the morning and the last off in the evening. It was long ride back and forth, and I usually slept most of the way.

  My teachers at the high school were lenient about letting me make up tests and homework. There was only one, my English teacher, who didn’t see it that-a-way. She wanted me to get an education, and she came out strong against anything that interfered with classes. For her, school always came first, didn’t matter if it was Ralph Stanley or whoever. So, if I missed an English test, her attitude was sorry for your luck. I know she was only doing what she thought was best.

  The other teachers were more understanding. One of the best was Andy Wheeler. He was from Blaine, and he always helped me make up any work I missed. Mr. Wheeler and many of the other teachers knew I’d been playing music since I was five, and they knew how serious I was about it. They also understood I was working for a bluegrass star. It meant something to them; Ralph Stanley was a respected figure. They saw that I was working toward my future.

  Later that year, we were finishing up school, and Ralph took us on full-time. Actually, I never did graduate with my class. I needed one credit to graduate from Louisa High School, and I promised my mom I’d take the correspondence course to do it, but I went right to work with Ralph as soon as classes ended. She forgave me for it, but I know how bad she wanted me to have a high school diploma, and I never did get one. Mom only made it to the fourth grade, and I know she wanted better for us kids.

  But sure enough, Keith and I both left school behind and never looked back. Except for a job I had for a bit, playing music has been my profession and my calling ever since I was sixteen years old. Going full-time felt great, but we still didn’t feel like real Clinch Mountain Boys just yet. See, the band members all had their own stage outfits. They were these real sharp-looking suit jackets, finely tailored and embroidered, almost like
tuxedoes. There were four different styles that went with black dress pants. But there was a matching pair we liked the best: One had a solid gold lamé coat-jacket with black trim and swirls sewn on; the other was the same design but reversed, black with gold trim and swirls. We thought they were the coolest, especially the solid gold coat, and we asked Ralph when we could get our own stage jackets. “Well,” he said, “I reckon I plumb forgot about that, and I apologize. Next time we go through Cincinnati I’ll suit you boys up.”

  Good as his word, after our next show date in Cincinnati, Ralph pulled the bus over to a store in the black section of town. Inside, there were suits and dress pants and costume gowns and shoes and wigs and everything else you could imagine, a world of crushed velvet bell-bottom slacks and suede dinner-club tuxes. This was the place for the coolest stage outfits in the music biz, where everyone from James Brown to Jim & Jesse did their shopping.

  This was still the era of the flashy Nudie suit, and glitter was still a good thing. There was a dress code for entertainers, especially for country and R&B performers. Even if you weren’t the best musician in the world, you could still look the best when you went on stage, and folks expected as much. Country music fans wanted their stars to have some sparkle.

  This place had it all. Rack after rack, rows upon rows, floor to ceiling. We found our gold jackets, and we got fitted right then and there. Once we saw ourselves in the mirror, well, that was the moment when it finally seemed real. We were really in Ralph’s band, and we’d made it as professional musicians. We felt like a million dollars, even if we had to borrow money from our parents to pay for our new threads.

  It’s strange how a coat jacket can make you feel like you done made it, but there you are. You can see for yourself how sharp they look, ’cause that’s what we’re wearing on the cover of Cry from the Cross and several other albums as well. I know the saying is that good taste is timeless, but now I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those!

  * * *

  Cry from the Cross was the first full-length record I ever cut with Ralph. It was baptism by fire. It was Ralph’s second sacred album as a solo artist, and the first bluegrass recording to feature a cappella gospel singing. Me and Keith had somehow walked into another new chapter of bluegrass history, but you’d never have known it if you were in the studio at the time.

  For one thing, the studio was in the engineer’s remodeled basement outside Washington, D.C. I remember coming down the stairs, thinking, Is this where Sinatra makes a record? Is this what a studio really looks like? His name was Roy Homer, and he had nice equipment and vintage mics and all. Still, it was kinda makeshift, though I didn’t have anything to compare it with except the Whitleys’ garage. Roy had a tiny control room partitioned off behind glass, and he let us know when the tape machine was rolling. He had a mixing board where he could bring the volume on the banjo or mandolin up or down or whatever else was needed to get the levels right. I’ll bet tape and all the session didn’t cost a thousand dollars. Part of the reason was we finished the whole album in one day.

  We cut the songs straight to two-track, with Roy mixing it live. There were no overdubs, no chance to fix any flubs like nowadays. If you messed up, you had to do it all over again. We didn’t need many second takes, though. I got to play some twin fiddle with Curly Ray on the title song, and the mandolin and the other backup parts were straight-ahead, too, so the playing came easy.

  The gospel singing was a different story. We had to go to church—Ralph’s old country church from his boyhood, that is—and learn to sing the old-time Primitive Baptist way. So we practiced while we were on the road. When I say “on the road,” I mean in the vehicle, going seventy miles per hour or faster, and at all hours of the day and night.

  Anytime we were traveling, in the car or the camper or the bus, Ralph wanted something going on. Usually he wanted some music, but it didn’t really matter what: He liked having people up and awake while he was driving. You could be talking, singing, joking, or laughing. That was just part of the deal when you rode with Ralph. He didn’t want a lot of dead air and watching the scenery going by. Back in the early days, he’d probably rode more than enough miles with him and Carter not speaking a word from Florida to Ohio.

  Having a couple of gung-ho teenagers in the band pepped things up. Ralph had been on the road for twenty-five years, and that was an awful long stretch playing one-nighters. Me and Keith gave him a shot of energy. Ralph could see it through our fresh eyes, and I think he was able to enjoy the road more then than he had for years.

  So we did a lot of rehearsing on the road. Ralph would throw us new songs, and we tried to catch ’em. Mostly, we worked out the vocal arrangements on the gospel songs Ralph had picked. It was a good thing the songs were a cappella, ’cause we didn’t have a guitar inside the car. There wasn’t room to play, anyway, with the whole band crammed into a Bonneville station wagon that Ralph had bought to replace the bus. We’d sing, and we’d sing some more, until Ralph was satisfied we’d got it. As usual, Ralph would be driving, and he’d lead us like an old-time preacher would his flock of parishioners, a little congregation headed up the highway. He’d say, “Awright, boys, I’m just gonna line out an old gospel song, so listen up,” and that was all we needed to know. “Sinner maaaannnnnn, so discouraged, while traveling through this laaaaaaaaand.” He’d stretch those lines and ornament every syllable the way only Ralph could, and you knew there was no singer alive who could render a hymn with more power and conviction. And we’d follow every crook and turn of his voice. When he’d start lining out another song, we knew we had it right. And all the while the Bonneville barreled into the night.

  Cry from the Cross earned Ralph his best reviews since Carter had died. It was hailed as a landmark in bluegrass, especially for the raw beauty of his a cappella gospel. “Sinner Man” and “Two Coats” gave Ralph a way to showcase his tenor as an incredible lead instrument, the voice that would thrill millions thirty years later. This was the album where Ralph was finally ready and able to step out of Carter’s shadow and shine in his own right.

  I can still remember the photo shoot for the album cover. We were all lined up in our stage suits on a hill under a huge cross, and it was a cold and windy day. Curly was about to have a fit like he was gonna freeze to death, saying he felt like Hitler having to stand there ramrod straight and serious. It really is a photo for the record books. We’ve all got that classic bluegrass gospel look of reverence on our faces, where you’re not looking at the camera, you’re looking at the cross or up in the clouds! That probably started with Bill Monroe and the gospel albums he did for Decca in the 1950s, where the covers usually had a side profile of Bill looking off camera with an attitude of somber reflection. Ralph was one of the first solo artists in bluegrass to feature the whole group on the front cover, and I think it had a big influence on later bluegrass gospel albums.

  Ralph was generous about letting the band members have something of their own to sell, too. He helped me and Keith record some albums under our name. We did our first, Tribute to the Stanley Brothers, in a few hours before a night show in Dayton. I always remembered that we cut it on January 8, ’cause there was an old fiddle tune called “Eighth of January” that the old-timers in eastern Kentucky used to play. It seemed like a good omen to make our first record that day.

  Back then, I’d have done anything for Ralph. I was eager to please, sometimes too eager. One time we stayed at a motel after a show, and I offered to clean Ralph’s banjo. ’Course, I had a banjo at home and knew how to take it apart and clean it and spiff it up nice and shiny. I thought shiny was good. So while Ralph was out getting something to eat, I gave his ol’ Gibson Mastertone archtop the full job with cleanser and brush. I took it apart, scrubbed the corroded metal parts, put it back together, and had it looking brand-new.

  When Ralph got back in the room, I handed it back to him, and his face got white. He said, “Well, thank you, Rick, you did a fine job there.” But I knew something w
as wrong.

  Ralph figured I was just gonna dust his banjo with a rag, and here I’d gone and wiped out all the precious ol’ patina and crud that gave it the sound he liked. I had cleaned all of that funk off and down the drain forever! I had no idea what I was doing. He never reprimanded me, never said a word about it. It was only years later that I realized what I’d done.

  Ralph was my boss and mentor, but my musical father was still Bill Monroe. Not just ’cause we both played mandolin. There was some kind of bond we’d established on that night in Martha, so long ago, and it just got stronger through the years, right until the day he passed on.

  Traveling with Ralph’s band, I would see Mr. Monroe at the festivals, and I could always count on him for a word of advice or encouragement. I still called him “Mr. Monroe,” or “Mr. Bill.” I would have never called Ralph “Mr. Stanley,” and I’d never have dreamed of calling Mr. Monroe “Bill.”

  Mr. Monroe was big physically, and he had a presence about him. He didn’t say much, and he didn’t smile much, either. He commanded authority just by coming into a room. He was almost like Bigfoot. When he walked the festival grounds, sometimes you’d see the crowd scatter like scared deer.

  There were stories you’d hear about Mr. Monroe, too. He didn’t take guff from nobody. He was hard on his band, hard on himself, hard on everybody. When he was younger, he was a real brute, and he didn’t mind proving it. He told me, “When me and Charlie would fight people, there weren’t ten men that could take us.” They’d put their backs together and bare-knuckle all comers. Later on, when a musician made a pass at his daughter Melissa, he told him, “Boy, if you touch her, I’ll break you in two like a dead stick.” And he wasn’t fooling around.

  A lot of people thought he was arrogant and kind of ornery, but the fact was Mr. Monroe was a very shy and insecure person. He had a lazy eye, and he got picked on by his brothers and everybody else. By the time he was a teenager, he’d lost both his parents, so he’d grown up mostly on his own. He didn’t have no family, really, outside of his Uncle Pen, and he was always looking for the love and respect he couldn’t find at home. He learned how to survive by steeling himself, and becoming tough physically and mentally. He built a hard shell around himself. Course, I didn’t know all this personal history at the time. I just loved and respected him, and he responded to that. And I was extra lucky because our meeting back in Martha got us started on the right foot, and it set the tone for how we got along. I was always very respectful, and he was as nice as he could be. I’d always try to visit with Mr. Monroe at the festivals when I was with Ralph.