About the Book

A giant of American music opens the book on his wrenching professional and personal journeys, paying tribute to the vanishing Appalachian culture that gave him his voice.
He was there at the beginning of bluegrass. Yet his music, forged in the remote hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia, has even deeper roots. In "Man of Constant Sorrow," Dr. Ralph Stanley gives a surprisingly candid look back on his long and incredible career as the patriarch of old-time mountain music.
Marked by Dr. Ralph Stanleyas banjo picking, his brother Carteras guitar playing, and their haunting and distinctive harmonies, the Stanley Brothers began their career in 1946 and blessed the world of bluegrass with hundreds of classic songs, including aWhite Dove, a aRank Stranger, a and what has become Dr. Ralphas signature song, aMan of Constant Sorrow.a Carter died in 1966 after years of alcohol abuse, but Dr. Ralph Stanley carried on and is still at the top of his game, playing to audiences across the country today at age eighty-one. Rarely giving interviews, he now grants fans the book they have been waiting for, filled with frank recollections, from his boyhood of dire poverty in the Appalachian coalfields to his early musical success with his brother, to years of hard traveling on the road with the Clinch Mountain Boys, to the recent, jubilant revival of a sound he helped create.
The story of how a musical art now popular around the world was crafted by two brothers from a dying mountain culture, "Man of Constant Sorrow" captures a life harmonized with equal measures of tragedy and triumph.

Product Details

Media: Hardcover Book, 452 pages

Language: English

Publisher: Gotham Books (Oct. 31st, 2009)

ISBN-10: 1592404251

ISBN-13: 9781592404254

Dimensions: 6.40 x 8.90 x 1.60 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.50 lbs

• Categories: General Composers Musicians Biography and General Composers Musicians Autobiography General Country Music and General Bluegrass Music