The bluegrass is greener closer to shore

Ralph Stanley made me cry.

The octogenarian bluegrass music legend, who first struck Clinch Mountain gold with brother Carter back in the day and achieved even greater fame as one of the elder statesmen of the genre, didn't swat me with his cowboy hat. He didn't throttle me with a banjo string. He didn't poke me in the eye with a band member's fiddle bow.

But he made me cry.

Dr. Ralph – he got his honorary doctorate of music from Lincoln Memorial University in Harro-gate, Tenn., so he's more adept at showcasing an advanced banjo lick than diagnosing a kidney stone – isn't at the N.C. State Bluegrass Festival this weekend, where I'll spend more than a little time considering it is on my doorstep and the hottest thing going locally since this summer's Liver-mush Festival.

But I was on the lookout for Dr. Ralph anyway.

He's sneaky.

He snuck right up on me and made me cry 30 or so years after I heard my first bluegrass tune, af-ter I drifted too far from the shore and waded hip deep in pop and rock and blues and funk and finally swam back to high lonesome and realized they could all live happily ever after in my record collection. ... I mean my digital music collection.

It would make a better story to say that first bluegrass tune, at least the first one I can remember, came from our tight-knit family gathered on the porch of the old home place, crickets chirping, guitars and banjos ringing down the holler as grandpa laid into "Soldier's Joy" on the fiddle.

"Play us another'n, Grandpa!"

"That's enough for tonight, Little Scotty. You got plowin' and ringworm treatment tomorrow."

"Aw, shucks. I'm always a-gettin' the ringworm treatment."

But it didn't happen that way.

No, that first bluegrass tune buck-danced right out of the console TV that was my constant child-hood companion "Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed." Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs drove "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the theme song to "The Beverly Hillbillies," right into my slowly developing childhood brain and I loved it.

Other kids sang along with Big Bird while I told Jed over and over that Californy was the place he oughta be.

I got Flatt and Scruggs records for Christmas, and that dynamic duo took their place just a notch below my childhood musical hero, Johnny Cash, on my Hit Parade of 1971.

Then, I got "hip."

Suddenly Everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting. There was Afternoon Delight all over the place. Somebody Shot the Sheriff, but from what I understand, it was in self-defense.

Everybody did the Hustle. Nobody did the Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

And I drifted far, far from the shore.

But, on a night years later in Asheville, Dr. Ralph rowed out to get me. I had waded back a ways on my own, a little at a time, with the Bill Monroe box set, some Stanley Brothers reissues.

Dr. Ralph stood on a darkened stage, a plywood life raft, and whipped out the a cappella version of "O Death" that would earn him a well-deserved Grammy Award.

A feeling came over me. I feared I was seeing the light.

"Lord, not now," I thought. "The beer stand is still open."

It was pure emotion, joy and sorrow all at once. I felt at that moment I had forever reconnected with that music. Tears ran down my cheeks.

That mean old Ralph Stanley made me cry.

No, Dr. Ralph isn't at the N.C. State Bluegrass Festival this weekend, but he is out there somewhere. I'm warning you. Be on the lookout. He'll sneak right up on you. It happened to me.

Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion and a columnist for the Media General News Service, N.C. Contact him at P.O. Box 610, Marion, N.C. 28752 or e-mail rhollifield@mcdowellnews.com.