MUSIC: Ralph Stanley Live Review

Bath Festival: Ralph Stanley
Bath Pavilion (Fri 29 May)

Left to right stand four generally well-filled blue shirts, charcoal grey ties and trousers. Respectively they clothe men clutching fiddle, banjo, guitar and double-bass (or “bass fiddle”). The instruments sing and their voices are of the angels. Soon, a man clad all in black will stand among them. Ralph Stanley has been performing since 1946, and now stands held by a solitary spotlight singing ‘O Death’ acapella. Words fail us (save to say that we’d guess 50% of you, recalling the ‘O Brother…’ soundtrack, are now thinking ‘Oh, him…’). It’s an elemental voice, a wind-blown mix of sand and wood and salt. It sounds a millennia or two older than its 82 years, the witness to every last event that’s happened since. Put simply, it’s the definitive mountain voice. Like Aretha with soul, or Muddy Waters with electric blues, Ralph Stanley came in on the ground floor of his chosen musical form and unwittingly cast its sound in his own image. Every subsequent bluegrass vocalist stands inevitably, respectfully in his shadow. Besides setting them, tonight he also rolls the standards out: ‘Pretty Polly’, ‘Little Maggie’, ‘I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow’. When he leads a four-part acapella harmony for ‘Amazing Grace’, time stands still.