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11. Hard Times
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
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11. HARD TIMES Among rolling hills and along winding river valleys, the narrow country roads that traversed the southern Appalachians could be dangerous. On the precipitous ridges where Carter and Ralph Stanley grew up, a vehicle sliding off the road into a deep ravine might not be found for weeks. In 1951, a car heading northwest from North Carolina toward Coeburn, Virginia, and Smith Ridge where the Stanley families lived would follow Route 421—a circuitous road that ran between Boone, North Carolina, and Mountain City, Tennessee. Passing through Shouns, Tennessee, Route 421 contained a curve that was on the daily route of a man from Damascus, Virginia, nicknamed the Old Prospector “because he was sure there was gold on top of Long Hope Mountain in North Carolina.”1 Growing up on his family’s farm in Trade, Tennessee, Joe Wilson heard the prospector’s surplus World War II Jeep early each morning as it passed south on 421 from Virginia, returning north in mid-afternoon. In August 1951, on the way back from a performance in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ralph Stanley learned the hard way that the Old Prospector’s reckless driving could wreak havoc on 421. A truck carrying six workers tried to pass the Jeep at the same time that Pee Wee Lambert dozed at the wheel of the Stanley car. Ralph was asleep in the back seat. The car struck the truck head on. “It knocked me out and I can remember waking up, just staggering along the road, seeing blood and not knowing where I was,” Ralph recalled.2 Facial cuts and a back injury hospitalized him for three or four days. He took several months to recover. Pee Wee was shaken, but not seriously hurt. The workers were “banged up,” some with broken bones. The Old Prospector drove on, oblivious to the accident . According to Ralph,3 “He always shorted the curve, and that’s what caused the collision.” The crash occurred at the end of a brief time in which—at Carter’s request—Ralph filled in with the Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys.4 Hard Times “Rudy Lyle played the banjo with Bill, and he was called into the service and I was helping them out on the road on some personal appearances until they could get a banjo player . . . ,” Ralph recalled. “But I didn’t want to go with them regular. And Pee Wee just went along with me on the week, ten days, whatever it was. And so we were coming [home] is when we had the wreck.”5 Accidents were common on the region’s hazardous roads. On August 16, 1930, a near-collision in Damascus took the life of one of the Stanley Brothers’ early influences, G. B. Grayson. Grayson, who was blind, had accepted a ride from a neighbor as he walked home from his brother’s house in Virginia to Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee. The seat in the roadster was full, so after placing his fiddle inside, Grayson stood on the car’s running board. While rounding a curve on U.S. Route 58, the roadster encountered a logging truck driven by yet another neighbor. Thrown from the running board, Grayson was killed. His death came not long after the musician had saved enough money to make a down payment on his childhood home. He was 42.6 Growing up to become a folk arts administrator who successfully nominated Ralph for a National Heritage Fellowship in 1984, Joe Wilson was a long-term observer of the brothers’ careers. In regard to their separation around the time of the accident, he speculated: “there was always a question of why Carter and Ralph weren’t working together at the time, and I think at one point it became convenient to say that Ralph wrecked and therefore [sic]—whereas probably something else was the problem. This gets into the complexities of relationships between brothers and bands. . . .”7 Years later, Ralph downplayed the break. “We wasn’t off very long and I just don’t remember where we went to from there . . . probably Bristol I guess. . . .”8 Before the brothers reunited, Monroe offered his former rival a job that Carter appeared to have sought: “Monroe had always been Carter’s idol, and the opportunity to tour with him fulfilled a lifelong dream,” wrote Gary B. Reid.9 When Monroe returned to Nashville for two recording sessions on July 1 and July 7, 1951, Carter became the...