Search - Ralph Stanley :: Songs My Mother Taught Me & More

Thanks mostly to Earl Scruggs, most of the banjo music heard today is of the three-finger variety, distinguished by its intricacy and its circular motion--in short, its "roll." But Lucy Smith Stanley, Ralph's mother, and her 11 siblings picked up the banjo long before the Scruggs style became popular. Her technique, the traditional clawhammer style, is a more percussive, raw-sounding method in which the player brushes all of the strings with downward (or upward) strokes rather than fingerpicks them individually. Although Ralph Stanley eventually became proficient in both styles (and the in-between two-finger style), he first learned the clawhammer style from his mother as a young boy and he still has a soft spot for the old-time technique. This charming collection focuses exclusively on the original style (and many of the first tunes Stanley learned from ma) and combines studio and live recordings from the 1970s to the 1990s. --Marc Greilsamer