Tribute to the Stanley Brothers cover

Tribute to the Stanley Brothers

Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs

Album · 1971 · Jalyn JLP 129

Tribute to the Stanley Brothers (Jalyn JLP 129) was the first record by Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs, two Kentucky teenagers whom Ralph Stanley is said to have heard singing in a bar in Fort Gay, West Virginia, and mistaken for a jukebox playing the Stanley Brothers. They recorded it on 8 or 9 January 1971 (the sleeve notes say the 9th; Skaggs remembered the 8th) in a few hours at the Jalyn studio in Dayton, Ohio, before a night show, with Ralph Stanley and Jack Lynch as producers. Ron Thomason later said that the parents of Whitley and Skaggs paid for the session.

Whitley plays guitar and sings lead, and Skaggs plays mandolin and fiddle and sings tenor. Behind them are members of Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys: Curly Ray Cline on fiddle, Ron Thomason on mandolin, Roy Lee Centers on banjo and Jack Cooke on bass; Stanley himself, by Thomason’s account, played only a little banjo and sang on at most a song or two. The twelve songs are Stanley Brothers repertoire, among them “Lonesome River,” “White Dove,” “Little Glass of Wine,” “We’ll Be Sweethearts in Heaven” and “Our Last Goodbye.” Whitley and Skaggs soon joined Stanley’s band, and the LP was reissued with the same number as a Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys record featuring them.

Tracklist

  1. 1 Ralph Stanley Interview 3:42
  2. 2 Little Birdie alt version 1:59
  3. 3 Takle Your Shoes Off Moses 2:26
  4. 4 Lonesome River alt version 3:29
  5. 5 That Lonesome Old Song 3:13
  6. 6 Poor Rambler 3:02
  7. 7 Lil' Maggie Pretty Polly 3:41
  8. 8 Will You Miss Me alt version 2:55
  9. 9 Don't Cheat In Our Hometwon 2:51
  10. 10 I’m a Man of Constant Sorrow alt version 2:55
  11. 11 Katy Daily 2:55
  12. 12 Little Glass of Wine alt version
  13. 13 White Dove alt version

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