Ralph describes my acquaintance with him at Berryville when someone asked him where he got his mandolin player ‘‘He come up to me one day and said ‘I’ve got to pick.’ so I told him to get on the bus.” They played all over this country and have even made foreign tours, playing many folk festivals during the big folk boom.
They were the first to carry the music to college campuses.
And for over a quarter of a century they stuck closely to the old-time mountain sound. They used lead guitar more than any other group. They were among the first to record with three-finger banjo. The Stanley Brothers were giants in the field of bluegrass music. The Clinch Mountain Boys take pride in the old-time music they play, too. We decided that while this may be true, there are certainly some close running seconds. We once talked about the possibility of having the ugliest band on the road. What could be a tremendous burden of hard travelling performances is enjoyable because each member knows he’s with friends. How does the group see itself? They like to work together and get the job done. Sometimes the senior members came looking for us to make sure we got our rest, but as often as not this only added a fiddle, banjo, and distinctive tenor. (Thank heavens this was never recorded.-How did Curly and Ralph sleep, or even stand it for that matter?) As junior members of the group, Roy, Jack, and I had a lot of fun at the festivals and we spent a lot of nights pickin’ and singin’ ‘til the wee hours. Jack added a new dimension to travelling at night, because now we had a trio. I think he was thankful to find out he could keep me awake just as well by taking Joe Frazier’s side in his fight with Cassius Clay.Ī few weeks after I came along so did Jack Cooke. I like Roy’s singing and if he was a little hoarse at some shows it was probably because I’d have a couple of hundred requests for him to do every time I got behind the wheel of the bus. I got to know Roy best at night because he generally rode shotgun for me, and when we weren’t on the road we went “parking-lot-picking”’ together. Roy understands this and approaches it with admiration for Carter while seeing the need to fill his proverbial shoes as well as possible. By the nature of his job he is always in the shadow of Carter Stanley. Roy Lee is a man who occupies a unique position in bluegrass. I call this the existential album because Curly’s format was to have a hundred alarm clocks set to go off in the recording studio, but the listener would never hear them because Curly would “beat ’em” and shut them off. (“We don’t have nothin’ like that back home by the creek.”) Curly finally came out of the bathroom which was at least 175 degrees by then sayin’, “Boys, if you don’t turn that air-conditioner down we’ll all be sick.” An alarm clock never gets to go off when Curly’s around, and so he decided to make an album called Curly Ray Beats the Alarm Clock. We told him to turn the dial on the wall (an electric heater) all the way up. One day in Oklahoma (110 degrees in the shade) Curly got up before anyone else in the motel and couldn’t get any hot water. When Curly loses you in conversation, however, he picks you up with a one-liner: ‘‘Boys, it’s too bad that the saxophone player for that band that won the old-time music contest had to be sick.” or ‘‘Jack, how many people are in the Cooke Duet now?” or looking for some tomato plants he had hidden under a tree, “Boys, they’ve gone they’ve gone!” Curly will take a rib too and play along with it just for fun. But here the footing was only a little more firm, because Curly is not only in touch with the national and state scene but also knows who holds office and who he won it from in most of the cities and counties east of the Mississippi. I abandoned that ship when I detected Curly’s interest in politics. This turned out to be like talking to Einstein about relativity or Ralph Rinzler about Bill Monroe. When I first met Curly I thought I should talk to him about fox hunting and/or fiddling. Curly Ray, the ‘‘Old Kentucky Fox Hunter”, is a political buff, ex-miner, born comedian, existentialist, and, alas, a fox hunter.
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