(Earlier this summer Dr. Ralph Stanley made an appearance down south at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. ENS contributor Ric Hickey was on hand and files this report)

The old man walks to the center of the stage as thunderous applause fills the air and ripples through the walls and the floor beneath him like a steady rolling tremor. Dressed in a sharp brown suit, he is flanked on either side by half a dozen men in blue shirts and black pants. The men wear broad grins under big white cowboy hats. Each cradles an acoustic instrument in his hands, dutifully awaiting their boss’s cue to commence. The old man’s face barely registers an expression of any kind, yet his eyes exude humility and gratitude. After a standing ovation of several minutes the applause finally begins to subside. The audience settles into their seats as he nods to his band to start the show.

With that, The Clinch Mountain Boys launch into the first song of the evening as their boss, the legendary Ralph Stanley, stands almost motionless at a center stage microphone. The voice that emanates from this 82-year old man still resonates with heart-wrenching emotion. His many trials, traumas, and triumphs inhabit every haunting note he sings.

Over the years there have been numerous line-up changes in The Clinch Mountain Boys, as dozens of fine Bluegrass pickers have filed through their ranks. These days it’s a family affair. The men on stage with him on this night, three to his left and three on his right, include his son Ralph Stanley II on guitar and his teenage grandson Nathan Stanley on mandolin. Having recently suffered 2 shattered femurs in an automobile accident, Nathan performs in a wheelchair. A mere 3 weeks since the crash, this is Nathan’s 2nd night back on stage with the band. Grandpa Ralph beaming with pride, he explains how young Nathan’s eagerness to return to the stage was so strong they just couldn’t keep him away any longer. The young man in the wheelchair saws away at his mandolin with an evangelical fervor and, even with both femurs broken and battered, miraculously taps his foot to the beat of each song.

For many years before young Nathan was even born his grandpa Ralph was already a humble titan of hillbilly music. Ralph and his brother Carter lead the original Clinch Mountain Boys for 2 decades before Carter’s tragic death in 1966. After a brief period of mournful doubt, Ralph returned to making the mountain music he loves and has been recording and performing all over the world ever since.

Ralph kept busy touring and recording, making a decent living for decades while humbly toiling away in relative obscurity. His name and music were known primarily to the cult of Bluegrass fans around the world until the year 2000, when the Coen brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? brought him the biggest success of his lengthy career. The story is well-known by now as the film helped to catapult Bluegrass music back into the national spotlight, lead by Dr. Stanley’s Grammy-winning rendition of “O Death” from the film’s stellar soundtrack.

Since then, ol’ Ralph has been busier than ever.

Tonight’s show follows a familiar formula. As he introduces the band throughout the set, Ralph cajoles each man to sing a song. The setlist seems flexible as Ralph occasionally asks the audience for requests, honoring each and every one. Standing with his hands at his sides for most of the performance, Ralph’s banjo is finally brought out on stage for him to play a song late in the set. The mere appearance of a roadie with Ralph’s banjo in hand elicits a roar of excitement from the crowd. As he gently removes his jacket and straps on the banjo, Ralph tells a tender tale of how he is always careful to never fold his jacket over a chair for fear of creasing the photo of his wife that he keeps in his breast pocket everywhere he goes. Though I’ve heard him say this onstage before, it is no less poignant hearing it repeated again tonight and the crowd audibly swoons with love and admiration. The soft, sentimental moment is then countered with an impressive and splashy display of Ralph’s infamous claw-hammer banjo style. Even at 82 he can still rattle the room with his flailing finger-work! Several choruses into the song, Ralph suddenly pitches the tempo up to double speed. The band stammers at first then rapidly catches up with him, their surprise manifested in big smiles across the width of the stage and throughout the sold-out theater.

Even after having seen Ralph Stanley on several previous occasions at various festivals over the past decade, I have to say that this performance is the best of his that I have yet seen. And this was, in fact, my second time seeing him and the Clinch Mountain Boys performing at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. “Birthplace of Bluegrass”, the historical marker says out front on Fifth Street, as this is where Bill Monroe and his band first performed hillbilly music in the configuration that would come to be known as Bluegrass. Perhaps even better known as the original home of the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman now functions as a live music venue that hosts dozens of concerts every year, representing every genre of music.

But these hallowed halls of “the Mother Church of Country Music” seem to resonate with an extra measure of ghostly grandeur when Ralph Stanley performs here. Countless times he has sung at the Ryman, perhaps more than on any other stage, and his dulcet vocals conjure a palpable stirring of the building’s incredible history.