Jimmy Martin and Ralph Stanley

The two had worked together before. Martin played guitar and mandolin at Stanley’s sessions of 14 and 15 July 1969 at the Starday studio in Nashville, which produced “Hills of Home” and “I Only Exist,” and in 1975 they sang “White Dove” together at Stanley’s bluegrass festival at McClure, Virginia, a performance Rebel released on a live double album.

The 1980 sessions were produced by Tommy Hill at Gusto’s studio on Dickerson Road, with Kenny Ingram also on banjo, Vernon Derrick on mandolin, Stanley’s fiddler Curly Ray Cline, Earl Gray on bass and Glenn Davis on drums. The first day produced “Roll On, Buddy, Roll On,” “In the Pines,” “Footprints in the Snow,” “Rabbit in the Log,” “I’m Going Down the Road,” “I’m Coming Back but I Don’t Know When” and “Sunny Side of the Mountain”; the second added “God Gave You to Me,” “Stone Walls and Steel Bars,” “I Only Exist,” “Let Me Walk, Lord, by Your Side” and “The Old Crossroads Is Waitin’.” The original LP also included “Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die” and “Darling Brown Eyes.”

They met again in the studio in 1992, when Martin sang with Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys on “All the Good Times Are Past and Gone” and “The Old Cross Roads” for Stanley’s Freeland recordings, made at Music Row Audio in Nashville.