Ralph Stanley and Ralph Stanley II

The first was cut on 15 December 1989 at Maggard Sound Studio in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, with the Clinch Mountain Boys of the day: Sammy Adkins on guitar and lead vocals, Ernie Thacker on mandolin, Curly Ray Cline on fiddle and Jack Cooke on bass. Ralph Stanley played banjo and sang lead and tenor, and the songs included three he had written with Earl Sykes, “Two Flowers Blooming,” “Breaks of the Cumberland” and “Dirty Black Coal,” alongside Bill Monroe’s “My Little Georgia Rose” and Reno and Smiley’s “Long Gone.” The boy’s part was small but it was his own: he sang “Haunted House” and played guitar on “Wildwood Flower,” and his father put his name and picture on the cover beside his own. First issued on tape, the album was reissued on CD by Copper Creek in 2000.

By 2013 Ralph II had sung lead in his father’s band from 1995 to 2008 and had since led a band of his own. He picked most of the songs for Side by Side and co-produced it with John Rigsby; his father wanted to make the record and left the choosing to him, while Mark and Dave Freeman of Rebel suggested a few. It was recorded at Appal Studio in Paintsville, Kentucky, with Ralph II on guitar, Ralph Stanley and Steve Sparkman on banjo, Rigsby on mandolin and fiddle and Randall Hibbitts on bass. On most of the songs the son sang lead with his father on tenor, and on four the elder Stanley sang lead himself, among them “Don’t Weep for Me,” which he sang unaccompanied. More than half the material came from the Stanley Brothers’ repertoire: “Wild Bill Jones,” “Carolina Mountain Home,” “Don’t Step Over an Old Love,” “A Little at a Time,” “Darling Little Joe” and “Six Months Ain’t Long” from their King years, Albert E. Brumley’s “Nobody Answered Me,” and Ernest Tubb’s “Are You Waiting Just for Me,” which Ralph II had heard on an old record of his father and Carter. He also brought back “Dirty Black Coal” from the 1989 album, singing the lead this time. Two songs were new, “White & Pink Flowers” and “Don’t Weep for Me,” both co-written by Gerald Ellenburg. Rebel released the album on 18 February 2014.

Ralph Stanley died on 23 June 2016, and his son took over the Clinch Mountain Boys name.