An abridged version of the story will appear in a forthcoming edition of British Bluegrass News magazine.

On this date (1 March) 60 years ago the Stanley Brothers recorded the now classic The White Dove for Columbia Records.

It was a song that Carter Stanley wrote while on the road according to what he told Mike Seeger, shortly before he passed away,

"I have done the most songs that I have written at night. A lot of times travelling; you know, nobody saying much, your mind wanders, one thing to another. I guess  you’d call it imagination. I remember very well when I wrote ‘The White Dove’. We was coming home from Ashville, North Carolina, to Bristol, Tennessee, and I had the light on because I wanted to write it down and Ralph was fussing at me for having the light on. He was driving and he said the light bothered him, but he hasn’t fused any more about that."

About 10 years later Ralph confirmed that, when speaking to Bob Cantwell,

"It was one of his first songs. He was in the back seat of the car writing that and by the time we got to the radio station near home we had a verse and chorus worked out. I don’t know what caused him to think of the white dove except that he was studying on it, how it could affect you‚Ķ"

The White Dove was the second song recorded, among eight that they did that day during a session at Castle Studio, in the Tulane Hotel, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Three out of the four, including The White Dove, were given different treatment from the normal Stanley Brothers’ approach to their trio arrangement.  At the suggestion of Art Wooten, they introduced a high baritone vocal, with Pee Wee Lambert and Ralph Stanley singing above Carter Stanley’s lead.

The White Dove was paired with Gathering Flowers for the Master’s Bouquet on a Columbia 78, No. 20577, released on 4 April, 1949. In addition to Carter Stanley (guitar), Ralph Stanley (banjo) and Lambert (mandolin), the recording featured ‚ÄòJay’ Hughes (bass) and Bobby Sumner (fiddle).

We know from symbolic traditions that white doves are associated with love and devotion, peace and unity. They mate for life and strive to return home. Although we’re not sure exactly what Biblical reference Crarer Stanley may have had in mind in writing the White Dove, there are several connections with scripture from the Holy Bible.

We learn in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 8, that after forty days of the great flood, Noah was still on the ark when he first released a raven to search for land.  Then Noah sent forth a dove to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground, but the dove found no place to set her foot and returned to the ark.  Noah waited another seven days and again sent out the dove.  This time the dove returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf, a sign the waters were receding.  Noah waited another seven days and sent forth the dove again and she did not return, an indication of having found land.

In the New Testament, the book of Mark, Chapter 1, we are told John the Baptizer met Jesus in the Jordan river and baptized Jesus.  When Jesus came up out of the water the heavens opened and the Spirit descended upon him like a dove.  This image is contained in the lyrics of Sweet Holy Spirit by Joe Isaacs and recorded by the Isaacs on their project Heroes.

Joe writes:

From newadvent.org we find reference to two doves on a funeral monument sometimes signifying the conjugal love and affection of the parties buried there.  Perhaps Carter Stanley was thinking of that symbol when he wrote:

The New Advent website noted above also reflects that doves on a sarcophagus signify the peace of the departed soul, especially if it bears an olive branch in its beak.  In the "White Dove" perhaps Carter Stanley was mourning in sorrow, as the white dove, since mother and daddy are dead, an image associated with home and family in the Clinch Mountains where the brothers were born and raised.

Jeanie Stanley, Carter’s ‚Äòbaby girl’ shared her thoughts about The White Dove  ‚Ķ..

"My father wrote this particular song one night while he and Ralph were travelling. Ralph was aggravated because my father had the light on and it was bothering him. Then Ralph got miffed because my Dad had killed off their mother and father in the song when he heard it.  Needless to say, it became one of my father’s most well-known songs. The words just touch your very soul and are like darts to the heart.  It is probably Carter Stanley’s ’signature song’ so to speak. I think it tells of a mournful yearning for what becomes lost to some in their quest to find themselves. The person my father refers to in this song has come full circle. It is basically autobiographical in nature.  It was always one of my favorites."

It has been a song, as Ralph Stanley noted, that is “the backbone of the Stanley sound”. [Gary B Reid]

Recorded Sources -

• Columbia Master CO 40507 The Stanley Brothers & The Clinch Mountain Boys 1949-52 (Bear Family BCD 15564 AH)
• The Stanley Brothers – Clinch Mountain Bluegrass (Vanguard 77018-2) Recorded at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival
• The Stanley Brothers Stanley Series Volume 4 Number 1 (Copper Creek CCCD 5513) Recorded at New River Ranch, Rising Sun, Maryland – July 29, 1956
• The Stanley Brothers And The Clinch Mountain Boys The Essential Gospel Masters (Varese Sarabande 302 066 669 2) includes the 1959 King version of  White Dove [King single 5233]

The work of coal miners has long been commemorated in song, disasters have led to contemporaneous ballad type songs and personal acquaintance with victims of the industry has led to intense, heart-rending insights into the side-effects of working below ground. Many songs have been found during song-catcher expeditions – some of those recording are found here, others have been written by those with a social conscience as a form of protest at times of strife. As well as embracing the social ramifications, political, historic and economic aspects of life in coal mining communities.

The industry ‘captured’ labour at a very young age and the picture of a disheveled youngster on the cover is a evidence of that. It’s a refection of the level of poverty for the often big families that boys had to go to work in the mines to help boost their father’s income. There has seemingly been very little scope for avoiding the pits. Not many people have been able to follow Ron Short’s advice in Set Yourself Free.

The collection is sub-titled Mining Songs From The Appalachian Coalfields and, in fact, the music chosen is pared down to music from southern Appalachia and to that by local talent. There is a mixture of styles – big band, jazz, old-time (in its various sub-sets, including string band), traditional country, bluegrass, folk, blues, boogie-woogie and choral.

Also, the performances are by people from a variety of classes; miners, labour organisers, activists, religious leaders and professional musicians. The quality of these vary, just as the sound quality of the recordings themselves vary, but some tracks do feature well known pickers; Mike Seeger, Jimmy Gaudreau, Jim Watson, Wayne Benson, Robert Bowlin, Glen Duncan, Mike Bubb, Jamie Johnson and Jimmy Mattingly included.

The recordings themselves span a century, beginning with the opening song on the first disc – Down In A Coal Mine an excerpt from The Edison Concert Band and made in 1908. Other recordings from the early part of the last century include Mining Camp Blues by Trixie Smith (1925); He’s Only A Miner Killed In The Ground -Ted Chestnut (1928); Coal Miner’s Blues – The Carter Family (1938) and Sprinkle Coal Dust On My Grave – Orville Jenks (1940), sung to the same melody as Sunny Side Of The Mountain.

A few songs are performed a cappella style. Among those are by Hard Times In Coleman’s Mine by Aunt Molly Jackson (recorded in 1937); Coal Black Mining Blues by Nimrod Workman (1972); That 25 Cents You Paid by Sarah Ogan Gunning; Fountain Filled With Blood by Elder James Caudill and Choir (2007); West Virginia Mine Disaster - Molly Slemp.

Several are sung with just one instrument, usually a guitar. Examples of these are the afore-mentioned song by Orville Jenks; The L & N Don’t Stop Here Anymore by Jean Ritchie; Black Waters by Jim Ringer and chorus; Roof Boltin’ Daddy – Gene Carpenter; Coal Town Saturday Night by Randall Hylton.

An exception is Dorothy Myles’s soulful, rather religious rendition of What Are We Gonna Do?, with sedate piano accompaniment.

Many songs get the bluegrass treatment. Among those are Dream Of A Miner’s Child by Carter Stanley, with his daughter, Jeannie, and brother Ralph and the Clinch Mountain Boys; Union Man from Blue Highway; Blue Diamond Mines – Robin and Linda Williams; Miner’s Prayer written by Kentuckian Dwight Yoakam and sung by him, with assistance from Ralph Stanley; Nick Stump – Deep Mine Blues; Tom T Hall – I’m A Coal Mining Man; Kenneth Davis, a former member of the Clinch Mountain Boys, with a performance of the Earl Sykes/Ralph Stanley song Dirty Black Coal; Don Stanley & Middle Creek – A Strip Miner’s Life and Ralph Stanley II – Daddy’s Dinner Bucket.

In Those Mines features claw hammer banjo, by the song writer Becky Buller, as her band leader Valerie Smith sings this contemporary song. Russell Moore provides harmony vocals.

Among the contemporary acoustic style songs [or bluegrass sans banjo] are Thirty Inch Coal by Hobo Jack Adkins; Explosion At Derby Mine – Charles Maggard; Coal Dust Kisses – Suzanne Mumpower-Johnson; Coal Tattoo – Dale Jett; You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive by the composer Darrell Scott. This sounds as though it was recorded in front of an audience.

The last track of this set is by Natalie Marchant, who offers a folky version of the anthemic Whose Side Are You On?

In the country mould is the Merle Travis classic Dark As A Dungeon, performed with just his own guitar for accompaniment; another Travis song, Sixteen Tons by Ned Beatty and There Will Be No Black Lung (Up In Heaven) performed by Rev Joe Freeman. It is in part a recitation, very reminiscent of Roy Acuff.

The song titled Black Lung used in this collection is not the well known Hazel Dickens’ song by that name, but one inspired by the meagre monthly compensation cheque that his maternal grandmother received, written and performed by A J Roach. Ms. Dickens’ vast repertoire of coal mining songs is represented by The Yablonski Murder, a tale about the politics in the industry.

As concept albums go, this collection takes its place among the finest. Presented in a book format measuring approximately 10 inches by 6 inches, it contains two CDs with a total of 48 tracks. The book itself has an Introduction, written by producer Jack Wright, a Sanctus contributed by Archie Green, the doyen of coal mining music scholarship with his book Only A Miner, and to whom the anthology is dedicated, and Foreword by Jon Lohman of the Virginia Folklife Program. Additionally, it comprises a brief essay giving some background to the song and/or the singer, innumerable black and white photographs, most courtesy of Helen Lewis and lyrics.

Also, the book remembers that mining wasn’t an exclusively male preserve with a few brief references to the experiences of female mine workers. Of course, women were significant in holding their, often large, families together, supporting their men folk domestically as well as often championing their causes in their invariably shared tumultuous lives.

Music Of Coal is a very valuable documentation from the perspective of the workers in a treacherous industry that is nevertheless so necessary as it provides a fundamental need in all our lives. It does well to remind us of the many sacrifices that have blighted lives and the landscape in earlier times of Appalachian coal mining.

Time-Life will release a three-CD boxed set from the Stanley Brothers in April. The Definitive Collection: 1947-1966 marks the 60th anniversary of the first recordings that Carter and Ralph Stanley did together and includes three previously unreleased tracks and three songs never before available on a CD. Highlights include The White Dove, Rank Strangers, How Mountain Girls Can Love, Pretty Polly and O Death. The project includes a special introduction by Ricky Skaggs and a biographical essay written by historian Gary Reid of Copper Creek Records, and also features many rare photos.

The Definitive Collection: 1947-1966 comprises 60 tracks in all. The previously unreleased cuts are all live recordings: Will You Be Loving Another Man – ca. 1955 – is from a performance at Bean Blossom, Indiana, Sugar Coated Love was recorded on July 4, 1961, at Oak Leaf Park in Luray, Virginia, and is a Carter Stanley/Bill Monroe duet and Tell Me Why My Daddy Don’t Come Home is from an August 1962 personal appearance at the Ash Grove in Hollywood, California.

The recordings new to CD include Hide Ye In The Blood, from the Wango archives, and Dust on the Bible from the Cabin Creek LP (CC 203). The booklet comprises 39 pages, with lots of photographs, including several that have never been published before.

Gary Reid shared a few comments about this new box set, and how he came to be involved.

“I had done some previous work with Time-Life in helping to put together their Classic Bluegrass Collection, an 8-CD/120 song collection that is being sold on half-hour infomercials on various TV stations. While working on that project, my point man at Time-Life, Joe Sasfy, told me of the label’s desire to do a career retrospective on the music of the Stanley Brothers.

While there have been boxed set collections on the music of Carter and Ralph, they have tended to document a certain era of their career (ie, the Mercury years, or the Starday and King years). This is the first collection to feature a complete overview from start to finish. In picking the tunes, we obviously wanted to get the essential tracks (ie, The White Dove, The Fields Have Turned Brown, Angel Band, Man of Constant Sorrow, etc.) but we also wanted to get some obscure things that even the most die-hard Stanley collectors wouldn’t have.”

Gary also mentioned that Ralph Stanley is aware of this retrospective, but had no hand in selecting the songs or photos.

Time-Life shows April 3, 2007 as the release date, and it will be available on their web site, and surely from other bluegrass resellers as well.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Carter Glen Stanley’s passing in a Bristol, Tennessee hospital. He was just 41 years old. As Ricky Skaggs comments below, it is hard to appreciate that forty years since Carter Stanley succumbed to an illness that had been troubling him for a while.

Despite such a passage of time Carter Stanley’s music can be enjoyed well onto the 21st century and beyond. A brief glance at the Fresh Sounds In The World Of Bluegrass column in the latest edition of the IBMA newsletter, International Bluegrass, will reveal that Carter Stanley’s name is noted twice as the source of songs on recent recordings by Dave Evans and Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain. This is indicative of a bluegrass legacy that has really stood the test of time.

We have asked a number of people to share their thoughts about Carter Stanley. I should like to thank them all for their contribution and we must acknowledge particularly the help that James Alan Shelton and Jeanie Stanley have provided during the course of compiling this tribute to Carter Stanley.

Current lead guitarist for the Clinch Mountain Boys, James Alan Shelton, who wrote in the October edition of Bluegrass Unlimited about Carter Stanley’s last full show – at Bean Blossom, October 16, 1966 – has admired Carter Stanley from afar.

“To me, Carter Stanley was the greatest natural lead singer who ever lived. He sang right on pitch and his song writing was second to none. As the front man and emcee for the Stanley Brothers he always had a way of saying just the right thing to introduce a song, or maybe tell a joke or a story about the songs to keep the show moving along. He was also a good rhythm guitar player. By all accounts he was a highly intellectual person, a deep thinker, who was on a different level than most people. I felt like he carried himself with a lot of class. My only regret is that I never got to meet him. But by first hand accounts from people who did know him, I think he would have been a friend.”

Ricky Skaggs, along with the late Keith Whitley, grew up singing Stanley Brothers songs. In one notable incident, the duo were invited on stage to cover for a delayed Ralph Stanley, who, when he heard them, was so impressed with their renditions of classic Stanley Brothers’ songs that he invited them to join the Clinch Mountain Boys when they were old enough to go on the road. Ricky and Keith made several recordings with and without Ralph. As they say, the rest is history. But Carter Stanley is far from history as far as Ricky Skaggs is concerned.

“It’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since the passing of Carter Stanley. I just listened to him sing ‘Angel Band’ just last night on my iPod. I just saw a great picture of him and Ralph with Joe Meadows and Bill Lowe from ‘55 in this months BU. His music is still so important in Bluegrass. He was a song writers’ song writer, such a great MC on stage, he had everything it took to be a superstar in his Genre. I can only imagine how Ralph has missed him all these years. But Ralph did the only thing he could do. He went on! Thank God he did. What a testament to this music that we all love, Stanley Brothers music. It’s real, it’s honest, it’s from the heart and soul, it’s the sounds of heaven. Rest well Carter, we all love what you left us, and I’ll see you again someday.”

Charlie Sizemore was lead singer with the Clinch Mountain Boys for about nine years from shortly before his 17th birthday in November 1977. Subsequently he formed his own band and has released praiseworthy albums on Old Homestead and Rebel Records.

“I saw Carter Stanley only once – in the late winter or early spring of ‘66 at the Salyer Elementary School in Royalton, KY. I was five years old then, but I do remember being excited about seeing the Stanley Brothers. I recall telling my father that I didn’t know there were three Stanley Brothers. He replied: That’s Melvin Goins playing the bass. (There was only a three piece band at that show.) I got Carter’s autograph that night. I still have it.

You need to understand that where I grew up in Eastern KY, the Stanley Bros. were a huge deal. Much more so than Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs. Being drawn to music and having a houseful of Stanley Bros. records at my disposal, I had learned most of their songs mostly by osmosis before I finished elementary school. My brother John and I used to set up a fake microphone and pretend to be the Stanley Brothers.”

Big Stanley Brothers fan Dudley Connell credits Carter Stanley as the major reason why he became a bluegrass musician.

“It was Carter Stanley’s distinctive and emotive voice than inspired me to want to sing bluegrass. Carter could sing “Pig in a Pen” and make you feel sorry for the pig. No one before or since has had such an influence on my singing or what I look for in a singer. In my opinion, he was/is simply the best. I once asked Bill Monroe who was his favorite lead singer in the history of the Blue Grass Boys. His answer, “Well, Carter Stanley was the best natural lead singer I ever had”. Enough said. Enough said.”

Legendary banjoist from Maggie Valley, North Carolina, Raymond Fairchild has often spoken affectionately of Carter Stanley and speaks highly of him here with this brief but heartfelt testimonial..

“Carter Stanley was a master of his art, picking and singing mountain music. He was among the best song writers I ever knew. Carter played rhythm guitar with thumb and finger picks and he sang lead from his heart, and he also was among the best MC’s of his day. Carter Stanley had it all, a god-given talent and one in many that could do it all, and do it right. Forty years has passed since his death. There will never be another Carter Stanley. Still missing you Carter.”

After Carter Stanley’s death brother Ralph turned to Larry Sparks to take on the role of guitarist and lead singer in the Clinch Mountain Boys. This was a job Sparks had for about three years before he went on to form his own band. Here Larry Sparks remembers some earlier times with both Stanley brothers.

“I played some shows with Carter Stanley in 1965-66. I can remember him as being one of the best stage leaders ever. He knew what to sing, how to sing it and how to entertain his many fans. I think Carter was no doubt the most heartfelt singer in bluegrass up until his death in 1966. He gave to this music what it needed. I treasure getting to know him for a little while.”

For an international perspective on Carter Stanley, I asked Barry C Lane, an English friend, who has a long history of involvement in the British bluegrass music scene, for his thoughts about Carter Stanley

“I remember the day I walked in to ‘Greenwood Record Sales’ shop in Bradford. It was a dull, cold, damp day and I was looking to see what new bluegrass LPs my friend ‘Goff’ [Greenwood]had received into stock. The day was not brightened up by the sight of any new goodies but more the opposite, as Goff related that Carter Stanley had died.

I had missed seeing them in London earlier in the year as the grapevine on the folk club circuit only told me that the Stanley Brothers had played, the week after the event. Now it was December and the loss was all the more intense. I didn’t realise he was even ill in those pre ‘Bluegrass Unlimited’ days.

I had been playing guitar and singing, with Ray Hipworth doing the banjo… and he could do that sort of octave staccato lick that Ralph used so often. We tried doing the Stanley Brothers songs but it never sounded right, for the brothers had a harmony which was all their own. I could mimic Carter (badly) but neither of us could emulate the tenor of Ralph. We missed their sound by miles! There have been very few in the UK who could get anywhere close to the Stanley sound.

My great sorrow on hearing the news of Carter’s death was that the Stanley Brothers unique sound would be lost for ever. We were not favoured with many available records by the Stanley Brothers in the mid 1960s but the brothers had recorded so much material that I have spent the last forty years catching up on the stuff and although the Stanleys and Ralph’s later work greatly out number albums by any other artist in my collection, there are still a few titles that I haven’t got. It was only relatively recently that video of the brothers could be added to the records. It all shows how much I still miss Carter after all these years.”

I don’t think anybody would disagree with me when I say that Gary Reid is the premier authority on the Stanley Brothers’ music. He has written notes for recordings by the Stanley Brothers for each era of their recording career. Additionally, he has compiled two four-CD boxed sets of Stanley Brothers’ Starday and King recordings and, through a series of live recordings, Reid has issued a selection of concert recordings from a number of their personal appearances made during the duo’s heyday.

“Having recently celebrated my 50th birthday, it’s amazing to me to look back and realize that I’ve been enamoured with the music of the Stanley Brothers for 33 years. I discovered their music, and the music of Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs, by accident, while sifting through stacks of albums that a high school instructor had loaned me ‚Äì things have never been the same since!

Although I was exposed to a lot of different performers in the field of bluegrass, it was the music of Carter and Ralph Stanley that has stuck with me the most over the years. As a team, they were ‚Äì in my book ‚Äì hard to beat. It’s hard to articulate in words the emotional power of their music that makes it so compelling. I had occasion to speak with Bud Reed a year or so ago ‚Äì he was the husband of the late Ola Belle Reed and a partner in the legendary 1950s country music park known as New River Ranch. As someone who witnessed many of the top acts in the music during the genre’s golden era, it was a strong statement on his part when he said, quite simply, that Carter Stanley was the best lead singer he’d ever heard.

The qualities of the duo have been noted a lot of times‚Ķ the sincerity of their vocals and the blend they achieved with their harmonies, the tender themes of love, loss, and sorrow in their songs, and the instrumental prowess that each of the brothers achieved on their respective instruments. In addition to the 500 or so songs that the duo recorded, I’ve collected numerous hours of live concert recordings and interviews ‚Äì in the process, I’ve been struck by the genial nature of their delivery on stage. Carter’s MC work was always personable as he related to the audience tidbits about the songs they performed.

As far as anniversaries go, I wish this was one that we didn’t need to remember or honor ‚Äì certainly not that Carter Stanley isn’t worthy of our adoration. Rather, I wish the guy was still around so that I’d have had the chance to know and appreciate him in person. As much as I’ve read about and enjoyed Ralph Stanley’s music over the years, being able to know and connect with him is far more meaningful and insightful than learning about him second-hand.

In any event, I’ve enjoyed coming to know Carter Stanley as best as I’ve been able to do. I look forward to coming to know him better as the years roll on. If his rewards here on earth were not what they should have been, hopefully he can take comfort in the fact that a growing legion of people continue to discover and admire his artistry. It’s probably safe to say that his popularity and sphere of influence is greater today than it was in the twenty years of his professional life. It’s been an honor to have played a small part in helping to keep his legacy alive and growing.”

Editor’s note: Richard Thompson is due our thanks and admiration for compiling these remembrances of Carter Stanley, whose contributions as a singer and songwriter represent some of the most precious gifts we have received since the birth of bluegrass music.