Melisma Done Right

If you’re remotely into traditional bluegrass and haven’t seen this video, you may have been living in a cave.

I’m not posting it to alert you to newly-unearthed footage, but to highlight the melismatic Scots-Irish vocal style that is one of the building blocks of bluegrass music. If there’s a better example of that influence at work, I don’t know where to find it.

This is Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys, featuring the astounding Keith Whitley on “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone”.

The Real Source of Keith Whitley's Blues

Maybe Keith Whitley was just a really good singer. On the other hand you wonder why, if he felt this way, did he ever leave bluegrass for the bright lights of Nashville?

It's a legitimate question: For those of you who don't know, Whitley began his career as a duet partner to Ricky Skaggs while both were still teenagers in Sandy Hook, Kentucky. When Ralph Stanley was late to a gig in a nearby town, they entertained the crowd while they waited for the man with the 100-year-old voice.

When Stanley finally arrived, he heard two young voices that reminded him keenly of the way he had sounded with his late brother, Carter, as one of the pioneering acts of the then-infant genre of bluegrass.

Stanley hired both Skaggs and Whitley to join his band, The Clinch Mountain Boys. The music they made is some of the most legendary in all of bluegrass.

After his time with Stanley, and an equally-legendary stint with J.D. Crowe and The New South, Whitley went country. While he recorded some classics, they lack the depth of his bluegrass work. The lyrics may be emotional, but his delivery is as polished and remote as Music City itself.

Whitley struggled with alcoholism for many years -- most of those as a wildly-successful country singer in Nashville. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's more than mere coincidence.

Alcoholism killed Whitley at the relatively-young age of 34.

This is what we lost: Keith Whitley, singing George Jones, with J. D. Crowe and The New South.

This is "Tennessee Blues".

Just look at those two kids!

Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley were teenagers when they joined Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys. They were still teens when they recorded this, their first and only record as a duo, but you wouldn’t know it by listening.

“My deceitful heart keeps changing its mind,” they sing, “Hurting everyone but me”. Yet, they sing as though they’re in as much pain as the targets of their harmful flirtations.

From a psychological perspective, whether these boys knew it or not, that’s the absolute truth. That’s what makes this such a brilliant performance.

This is Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley with “My Deceitful Heart”.

One of the greatest bluegrass covers of a (country) rock song ever recorded. You’re probably familiar with Tony Rice’s justifiably-celebrated lead vocal, but this is something different, with another one of J.D. Crowe’s legendary lead singers, Keith Whitley.

Where Rice’s version is full of righteous anger, Whitley’s take (he’s actually singing low tenor here) is almost unbearably fragile.

This is J.D. Crowe and The New South with Keith Whitley, singing Gram Parsons’s great “Sin City”.

Another rare track recorded live at the Berkshire Mountain Bluegrass Festival.

Everyone loves Ralph Stanley’s solo take on this one but, for my money, the trio versions, like this one that he did with Keith Whitley and Jack Cooke, beat the solo a capella iteration for sheer mountain spookiness.

This is, of course, “O, Death”.

Last Call For A Legendary Lineup

A short set, a legendary lineup, and some lovely moments from Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys.

This was to be Keith Whitley’s last tour with the CMB. He left to work for J.D. Crowe – yet another legendary collaboration.

Listen for Whitley’s emotive ornamentation on the last verse of “Rank Strangers”; the stunning harmony singing on “Let Me Love You One More Time”; the way Dr. Ralph and Curly Ray Cline tear into “Lost Train Blues”; the unusual arrangement of “Gloryland”, with Jack Cooke on tenor and Whitley on baritone; Cooke’s beautifully-economical bass work throughout.

This is one of those sets that makes me wish Keith Whitley had stuck with bluegrass.

The Cox Family’s recording of this tune is sort of a big deal. After all, it ended up on the DVD documenting the “Down From the Mountain” tour by the “O, Brother, Where Art Thou” musicians. I like The Cox Family’s version, but Keith Whitley. And Ralph Stanley.

The little girl in the Cox version is serene — sad, but ready to go. The little girl in the Stanley/Whitley version can’t help but think of all she’s going to miss, and of how terribly her loved ones will miss her.

She is at the center of a tragedy she has seen played out more than once, and she can’t quite bring herself to try and comfort them. They’ll let themselves be comforted later, she knows, but in this moment, there is only grief.

Here are Ralph Stanley, Keith Whitley, and the rest of The Clinch Mountain Boys with, “I Am Weary, Let Me Rest”.

Here’s yet another concert from that storied line up of Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys: Skaggs, Whitley, Centers, Cooke, and Cline. This show took place about 10 months prior to the one I posted on January 25, 2015.

If anything, this one’s a better show, but maybe that’s because I’m in love with this set list: “Ridin’ That Midnight Train”, “Stone Walls and Steel Bars”, “Green Pastures”, “Black Mountain Blues” — excellent songs, brilliantly performed. Roy Lee Centers sounds particularly strong.

Enjoy this set from one of the greatest bluegrass bands to ever grace the stage.

One Great Train and Two Cabooses

First of all, those of you who know bluegrass music, consider this lineup of The Clinch Mountain Boys:

・Ralph Stanley (Banjo, Vocals)
・Roy Lee Centers (Guitar, Vocals)
・Keith Whitely (Guitar, Vocals)
・Ricky Skaggs (Mandolin, Vocals)
・Curly Ray Cline (Fiddle)
・Jack Cooke (Bass, Vocals)

Now, imagine that two out of the three who could be called internationally-famous are relegated to the back of the line. Yup, that’s what happens to Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley who, as teenagers, had joined the band just a year or so before.

That said, their featured number, “Don’t Cheat In Our Hometown” is one of the highlights of the set. Jack Cooke’s plain-spoken take on “Sittin’ On Top Of the World” is another.

The real standout is fiddler, Curly Ray Cline, who closes the set with “Orange Blossom Special”, fiddling the ode to that mighty train like it was the grandest, most terrible thing he had ever seen.

Who knows? Maybe it was.