Album: Ralph Stanley

Ralph Stanley, Columbia

The great patriarch of traditional country music, 75-year-old Ralph Stanley, has, either solo or with his brother Carter, released more than 170 albums since he started performing in 1946, and still plays more than 150 shows a year. Unlike most country artists, he has never diluted his style with pop or rock crossover projects, and even on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, which brought him back into the public arena, the high, lonesome sound of his a cappella solo "Oh, Death" cut through the good-time picking and ebullient harmonies like a chill wind. So, it's no surprise to find that, even in the company of the producer T-Bone Burnett and a session crew of the finest young Nashville cats, this high-profile "comeback" album sounds as antique as ever. Alongside further a cappella gospel moans, a small combo featuring mandolin, banjo, fiddle and guitar lends vivid support to traditional ballads such as "Henry Lee" and "Death of John Henry", songs steeped in sex, death and religion, the classic allegorical tools of folk music. The one anachronistic note comes in "Lift Him Up, That's All", in which a sinner is depicted vainly "telling the Saviour all about race pride", a pointedly anti-racist sentiment possibly intended to counter any misconceptions aroused by the use of "Oh, Death" in O Brother's Ku-Klux-Klan scene.