Musicians
- Cowboy Copas — Lead Vocals
“Purple Robe” is by Odell McLeod, who recorded and broadcast as Mac Odell. Born in Roanoke, Alabama, in 1916, he sang on radio in New Orleans and Chicago before settling at WLAC in Nashville after the war, wrote for Acuff-Rose, and made records for Mercury and King; his other sacred songs include “Thirty Pieces of Silver” and “The Battle of Armageddon,” which Hank Williams recorded. No recording of “Purple Robe” by Odell himself has turned up. The first was Cowboy Copas’s, cut at Castle Studio in Nashville on 25 September 1952 and issued by King that December with “Some Fine Morning” on the other side; Copas recorded it again for Starday in 1960.
The song retells the trial of Jesus: falsely accused, mocked and beaten by soldiers in the judgment hall, found blameless by Pilate and still sent to the cross by the crowd. The chorus dwells on the robe and the crown of thorns. The Gospels differ on the robe’s color — Matthew calls it scarlet, Mark and John purple — and the song’s refrain uses both.
The Stanley Brothers recorded it at the King studio in Cincinnati on 15 September 1959, at a session where King’s owner Syd Nathan barred fiddle and mandolin, so Carter Stanley and Bill Napier played guitars behind George Shuffler’s bass and Ralph left his banjo aside; King released it on the gospel album For the Good People in 1960. Ralph Stanley kept it in his repertoire: he recorded it again for Rebel in 1975 with Keith Whitley in his band, with Joe Isaacs on A Gospel Gathering in 1995, and once more in 2004. The Lewis Family, Wade Mainer and the Dry Branch Fire Squad are among the many others who have recorded it, some under the title “Scarlet Purple Robe.”
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