Old-time mountain music pioneer Ralph Stanley has recorded an album of duets that will include Dolly Parton and Gillian Welch among the guests. The new album, Clinch Mountain Sweethearts, is scheduled to hit the racks on September 26th.

"It's real fine," says the clawhammer banjo player. "We got some good singing, and some good ladies sung on it. Everybody done a perfect job." The album isn't the first time Stanley has done a CD of duets: 1997's Clinch Mountain Country -- which featured collaborations with Bob Dylan, Junior Brown and Alison Krauss -- remains his best seller to date.

Possessed of one of the most envied tenor voices of the genre, Stanley cut some landmark recordings with his guitar-playing/songwriting brother Carter as part of the Stanley Brothers. When Carter Stanley died in 1966, Ralph formed the Clinch Mountain Boys, who at one point included Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley. Though often referred to as a bluegrass musician, Stanley's music echoes his youth in the Clinch Mountains of Virginia rather than the newer bluegrass, which evolved after the second World War. "I was playing music long before it was called bluegrass," he clarifies. "That's fine with me if they want to call [my music] bluegrass but I call it old-time country music, mountain music."

The seventy-four-year-old Stanley still works between 150 and 170 dates a year, a pace he's kept for most of his fifty-five years as a working musician. "We don't have an open weekend this year," states the man affectionately known as Dr. Ralph since his 1976 honorary degree in music from Tennessee's Lincoln Memorial University. When not on the road he stays close to the land where he was born and runs his small farm near Coeburn, Virginia.

His a cappella version of "Oh Death," as well as a Stanley Brothers version of "Angel Band," is featured on the platinum-selling O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack, which held the Number One position in the Billboard country music charts for nine weeks.

And Stanley has no immediate plans of lightening his work schedule. "Well, I've always enjoyed doing it and I like to meet people," he says. "Seems like we've been in demand, so I like to be accommodating."

The track listing for Clinch Mountain Sweethearts:

Ridin' That Midnight Train (with Iris DeMent)
Will You Miss Me? (with Pam Tillis)
Little Willie (with Patty Mitchell)
Oh, Death (with Gillian Welch)
Loving You Too Well (with Dolly Parton)
The Memory of Your Smile (with Maria Muldaur)
Are You Tired of Me My Darling (with Sara Evans)
Weeping Willow (with Joan Baez)
I'll Never Grow Tired of You (with Kristi Stanley)
Rank Stranger (with Gail Davies)
Trust Each Other (with Iris DeMent)
Angel Band (with Chely Wright)
You Win Again (with Melba Montgomery)
I'm Ready to Go (with Jeannie Seely)
Farther Along (with Lucinda Williams)
I'll Remember You Love in My Prayers (with Valerie Smith)

GIANLUCA TRAMONTANA
(July 20, 2001)