A portrait of Ralph Stanley has been commissioned for the Ralph Stanley Museum, to be created by renowned portraitist Kenneth Hari. The finished painting will be unveiled this summer at the museum in Clintwood, Va where it will reside as a part of their permanent collection.

Hari is a long-time fan of country and bluegrass music, who has painted portraits of Bill Monroe, Chet Atkins and Hank Williams in addition to other celebrities like Dustin Hoffman, Salvador Dali and Norman Rockwell. He traveled to the museum in early April to do sketches of Dr. Ralph in a live sitting, Hari’s preferred and universal policy on creating portraits of living subjects.

We spoke with the artist recently, and he shared some thoughts about meeting the good doctor.

“I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Clintwood to see Dr. Stanley and create my sketches. The countryside is beautiful and the people were all terrific.

The museum itself is a jewel, and meeting Dr. Stanley was a great pleasure. I recall standing with him amidst the exhibits, and he looked up at me with a smile and said ‘Can you believe this? In my lifetime to see this?’

The man just has an aura about him… an elegance, and a wonderful way with people.”

Hari said that the commission was paid by an anonymous donor specifically with the condition that the painting be given to the museum. He hopes that he will be able to create several portraits from his sketches, and indicated that the museum portrait will depict Ralph with his signature Stanleytone banjo.

Larry Pierucci, Hari’s business representative, tells us that there are loose plans for poster prints from the Stanley portrait, which would be issued to benefit the Stanley Museum. Prints of a number of existing Hari portraits are available online.

An unveiling is planned for sometime in August at the Ralph Stanley Museum.

Museum director Aaron Davis is understandably eager to have the painting hanging on the wall.

“We are extremely excited to see the final product, as we’ve seen Mr. Hari’s work and know that this will be an incredible addition to his portfolio and a wonderful new item for the Museum & Center. Mr. Hari mentioned that this portrait will be here long after he and Dr. Stanley are gone, and that’s one of the great things about working with an artist of Mr. Hari’s caliber–this portrait will remain as a one-of-a-kind piece that helps to tell the story of mountain music for many years to come. The only difficult part of this process is waiting for it to be completed! We have some idea of the final version based on work we’ve seen, but it doesn’t make the waiting game any easier as we move towards the unveiling. We’re looking forward to being pleasantly surprised!”

Music Of Coal - Various Artists (Lonesome Records & Publishing CD 071); two CDs with 70 page book, released in 2007

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. (more…)

Rounder Records has posted an interview with Charlie Sizemore on their web site. The occasion for the interview is his recent Rounder CD, Good News, but Charlie also talks about the influence of Ralph Stanley and The Stanley Brothers on his music.

In the interview, Sizemore recalls how he came to join Stanley as a member of The Clinch Mountain Boys.

It was 1977…I was playing with with Melvin and Ray – the Goins Brothers. I played lead guitar. During this time, I became fairly well acquainted with Keith Whitley. In September of that year, Renfro Profit, who was playing guitar with Ralph, left the band. Keith wanted to get me into the band playing lead guitar, so he asked me to come down and play the shows with Ralph at Ralph’s festival. Ralph liked what he heard and everybody seemed happy, and Keith said he’d give me a call. I left there thinking – and I think virtually everyone around was thinking – that I was going to work with Ralph playing lead guitar. It didn’t turn out that way because Danny Marshall, who had previously played with Ralph, ended up getting the job.

Then Keith left the band in November of 1977. Ralph asked me to sing a few songs with him, and I did. And then he asked me if I would come on stage with him and sing a few songs, and I did. And he said I’ll call you on Monday. And guess what? He called me on Monday. That’s how it began and lasted for the next nine years…

You can read the entire interview on the Rounder site.

Bluegrass legend and Grammy Award winner Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys bring the sounds of traditional bluegrass to
Columbus when they perform at the Riverfront Amphitheater, Genoa Park, on Friday, August 17 at 8 p.m. as part of Music in the Air’s Rhythm on the River series. Admission is free. Contact mita@columbus.gov with any questions.

Music of Coal: Mining Songs from the Appalachian Coalfields is a new two-CD box set released by the Lonesome Pine Office on Youth here in Virginia.

The set contains 48 songs covering topics from coal mining history to union organization. The set was produced by Jack Wright who also wrote the extensive liner notes, which are contained in nicely printed book accompanied by historical photographs of the coal industry.

Songs were contributed to the project by such artists as Ralph Stanley, Dwight Yoakam, Natalie Merchant, Tom T. Hall, Blue Highway and the Carter Family.

The set can be purchased for $35 directly from the Lonesome Pine Office on Youth. Supplies are limited to 5000 units so they won’t be available forever.

Here’s a description of the Lonesome Pine Office on Youth and their mission.

The Lonesome Pine Office on Youth advocates for the needs of youth and families with the objectives of positive youth development, empowerment of families to solve their own problems effectively, identification and coordination of local resources, and through these efforts, the creation of safe and healthy communities which prevent delinquency.

Nathan Stanley is the grandson of bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley. At just 14 years old Nathan is already playing mandolin in his grandfather’s band, the Clinch Mountain Boys. The band includes three generations of the Stanley men as Nathan’s uncle Ralph Stanley II also plays with the group.

Nathan has just announced the release of his second solo CD, He Suffered For My Reward. As the title might imply, the CD focuses on the bluegrass gospel music so strong in the Stanley tradition.

Nathan and his grandfather jointly produced the CD which features performances by gospel vocalist Judy Marshall, along with Nathan’s fellow band members Jack Cooke (bass and vocals), James Alan Shelton (guitar), Steve Sparkman (banjo), and Dewey Brown (fiddle).

Many of the songs on the CD will be familiar to fans of the Stanley music. Cry From The Cross, Traveling The Highway Home, and Take Your Shoes Off, Moses were all made famous by the Stanley Brothers or Ralph himself. The album also features two songs in the a cappella style of Nathan’s grandfather Ralph.

When asked about the CD, Nathan responds

This album is real special. It’s the first one my grandfather and I made together—just him and me.

Yeah, there is something special about that. Especially when your grandfather is Ralph Stanley!

We got the news about this CD, but we don’t have any info about a release date or audio samples.

This post comes from our semi-regular correspondent, Richard F. Thompson. He writes from England, where he is also a longstanding contributor to British Bluegrass News, a quarterly print publication where he also briefly served as editor.

Although the actual signing took place a few months ago, Rounder Records has recently announced the signing of revered bluegrass singer, band leader and attorney Charlie Sizemore.

At the same time, Rounder has announced the August 14th release of Sizemore’s first album for the label, Good News (ROU 0591). The 14-track CD is the first new studio album from Sizemore in five years. As of today (6/19), there are no audio samples on the Rounder site, but one track from the new CD, I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up, can be previewed on Charlie’s MySpace page.

A powerful songwriter whose songs have been recorded by Ralph Stanley, Jimmy Martin, Doyle Lawson and Dry Branch Fire Squad to name a few, Charlie Sizemore contributes four new original songs to Good News. Among them the tongue-in-cheek Alison’s Band, reflecting Sizemore’s dry sense of humour that fans have to come to love. Other highlights include songs by Dixie and Tom T. Hall, Harley Allen, and veteran songwriter Hank Cochran. While Sizemore considers the record a bit “rough around the edges,” this is only in the sense that the record was recorded pretty much straight-ahead and live in the studio. With Good News Sizemore and co-producer Buddy Cannon shared the common goal of wanting to make a record that feels like and sounds like the records Charlie heard and liked while he was growing up.

Sizemore’s vocals are as restrainedly powerful and as unique as ever, and he considers co-producer Buddy Cannon to be his equal as the moving force behind the record and its making. Though it was done “live and quick,” Silver Bugle is a song the idea for which, Sizemore has carried around with him for the last fifteen years. (more…)

As part of the official welcoming ceremony for the Queen of England’s visit to Virginia, Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys will headline a special tribute to the state’s musical heritage. The show is scheduled for 1:00-5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 3 in Richmond’s Capitol Square, and the public is invited to attend.

Bluegrass and traditional string music are well represented on the show, with guitarist Wayne Henderson, fiddler Montana Young, bluegrass band No Speed Limit, and Gerald Anderson and Spencer Strickland all slated to appear along with the good Doctor.

A number of blues, country and jazz acts from Virginia will also appear, and there is no admission fee.

The Queen is visiting the US to mark the 400th Anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown Colony. She will sample bluegrass of another sort this weekend when she makes a trip to Churchill Downs for the 133rd running of the Kentucky Derby.

More details about the Queen’s visit to the US can be found on the British Monarchy Media Centre web site.

Dr. Ralph Stanley will be celebrating his 80th Birthday tonight at a dinner to support The Ralph Stanley Museum & Traditional Mountain Music Center in Clintwood, VA. The dinner begins at 6 PM at Meadowview Convention Center in Kingsport, TN. The evening will feature performances by the ETSU Bluegrass Band along with a few surprise guests.

The dinner will be serve yourself buffet-style and is priced at $100 per guest. All proceeds will go to support the museum’s operating and programming needs. The museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation and a portion of the ticket price may be tax-deductible.

Tickets may be purchased by calling the museum at 276-926-8550. More information about the museum, and this event, can be found on the museum’s website at ralphstanleymuseum.com.

The three CD reissues from Rebel that we previewed last month are officially released today.

These include a first-time-on-CD reissue of JD Crowe’s classic Bluegrass Holiday, and compilations of new-to-CD Gospel cuts from Ralph Stanley, Mountain Preacher’s Child, and a budget-priced Seldom Scene compilation project, Different Roads.

More details about all three can be found in our earlier post.

You can listen to audio samples from Bluegrass Holiday, Mountain Preacher’s Child and Different Roads in the iTunes Music Store.

Rebel Records is continuing their laudable efforts to get classic LPs released on CD, and/or for digital download. Many serious bluegrass fans had feared that much of the recorded legacy of bluegrass music might become unavailable when digital media took the lead some years ago, but thankfully, the opposite has been the case.

Due on April 3 from Rebel is one great re-issue, and two compilations that will be welcome additions to many bluegrass CD libraries.

Bluegrass Holiday from JD Crowe was first released on LP by Lemco in 1969, was re-released on King Bluegrass in 1973, and yet again on rebel in 1981. The band featured Red Allen on guitar and lead vocals, Doyle lawson on mandolin and tenor vocal, Bobby Slone on bass and fiddl and Crowe on banjo and baritone vocals.

Recorded in just two days in December 1968, this record introduced Crowe and his Kentucky Mountain Boys to a bluegrass audience outside of Lexington, KY where they had a successful regular club show at a Holiday Inn - hence the album’s name.

Material on this debut release was taken from their Holiday Inn set list, and included a number of bluegrass standards (My Little Girl In Tennessee, Before I Met You, Orange Blossom Special, Train 45) plus some of their arrangements of songs like Philadelphia Lawyer and Will You Be satisfied That Way.

The Rebel CD re-issue also contains four bonus tracks, previously released as 45 RPM singles from King, and not found on the original LPs, including the original Crowe recording of Black Jack.

Fans of Ralph Stanley’s Gospel music have much to rejoice with the release of Mountain Preacher’s Child. This anthology includes 14 tracks from his 1980s Rebel LPs, all available for the first time on CD. They are taken from previous Stanley records I’ll Wear A White Robe, Snow Covered Mound and I Can tell You The Time.

This is the plaintive, almost primitive vocal sound that has drawn so many fans to Dr. Ralph in recent years, here featuring one of his stronger singing groups. (more…)

We are all the richer for this set of remembrances of our beloved Ralph Stanley, contributed by Richard Thompson, just as we are for Stanley’s life-long dedication to bluegrass and Appalachian music. We hope that everyone will read this entire piece.

As Dr. Ralph Stanley contemplates his 80th birthday today (2/25/07), he might have cast his mind back sixty years to when he, with his older brother, Carter, began his career in “old-time mountain music, what they call bluegrass.” Surely as a 20 year old he would never have dreamt that his life would evolve the way it has. A recording career, firstly with Rich-R-Tone then with Columbia, Mercury, Starday, King, Jalyn, Wango, Cabin Creek, Blue Jay, Jessup, King Bluegrass, Rebel, Freeland Records, his own Stanleytone label and then back to Columbia, stretches the whole way through those six decades. In doing so, he has recorded with a wealth of fellow bluegrass and country music artists as well as stellar sidemen in his Clinch Mountain Boys band.

He holds the Living Legend award from the Library of Congress and was the first recipient of the Traditional American Music award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. One of his proudest achievements is the honorary doctorate in music that Lincoln Memorial University conferred on him in 1976. In addition to all these, he has been a member of many top profile tours such as The Legends Of Bluegrass (1987) and Down From The Mountain and made personal appearances at many prestigious venues. He has achieved world wide acclaim with personal appearances in countries as far afield as Japan and the UK, not to mention the terrific universal impact of the Coen Brothers hit film O Brother, Where Art Thou? that has teenagers relishing his music through his rendition of O, Death, which is featured in that film and earned him the Grammy award for Male Country Vocalist, 2002. He has won two other Grammy awards and had several other nominations.

He has a book about him [Traveling The Highway Home by John Wright; University Of Illinois Press]. He has a museum named in his honour in Clintwood, Virginia, on the Crooked Road. He is a member of the esteemed Grand Ole Opry, having joined in January 2000, and as recently as November last year he received the ultimate accolade from the nation in the form of the National Medal Of Arts, presented in the Oval Office of the White House by President George W. Bush.

He has featured in many widely-circulated non-music publications, one of the latest being last November’s edition of Vanity Fair.

He is an American music icon.

A few of his friends and colleagues and a relative speak richly of him on this special day. (more…)

This post is a contribution from Richard Thompson, a founding member of the British Bluegrass Music Association, and a semi-regular correspondent and contributor for The Bluegrass Blog. He is also a longstanding contributor to British Bluegrass News, a quarterly print publication where he also briefly served as editor.

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.

More great bluegrass is on tap in this Saturday night’s Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. The Del McCoury Band and Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys are featured this week, as are The Whites and Jesse McReynolds & The Virginia Boys.

GAC TV is running a live program on Grand Ole Opry Live this Saturday, but none of the bluegrass acts are slated during this 8:00-9:00 p.m. segment.

Ralph and The Whites will perform in the 7:30-8:00 and 11:00-11:30 slots, Del in the 9:00-9:30 and the midnight to 12:30 a.m. spots, and Jesse in the 10:30-11:00 segment (all times EST).

If you can catch WSM over the air - as a large portion of the south central US can do - you can tune in at 650 AM, broadcasting from Nashville. If not, you can catch the live WSM audio stream online to hear the program, which runs from 7:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, January 27.

Del and Ralph will also appear on tonight’s Friday Opry show (1/26), which is not broadcast. WSM does record the show, and audio from selected performances will be posted on their WSM audio archives page by early next week. Selections from Saturday night’s show will be posted there as well.

We posted yesterday that Ralph Stanley had been hospitalized last week with a mild case of pneumonia. We just heard from his publicist, Norma Morris, who shared this good news:

“He was in the hospital for a few days, but he is home now and preparing to go out on the road on Thursday. Just talked with him and he thinks he is fine now.”

Can’t keep a good man down - isn’t that what they say?

The venerable Dr. Ralph Stanley has been in the hospital in Big Stone Gap, VA since earlier this week, suffering from pneumonia. We asked Lee Olsen, who handles Ralph’s dates with Keith Case & Associates, and he suggested that Dr. Ralph was doing fine.

“Ralph has a relatively mild case - the doctors are saying he’ll be released in a few days and we expect that he will be playing his dates on the following weekend. The date this weekend are being played by his son, Ralph II.”

James Allen Shelton, who plays guitar with The Clinch Mountain Boys, and also serves as their road manager, shared a message widely by email on Friday (1/5) saying that Ralph was feeling fine, but that the doctors found some fluid still in his lungs, and expected to release him this weekend, or Monday.

We all hope to see him on his feet, and on stage with the band, as soon as possible.

There are a number of other bluegrass artists with Grammy nominations announced yesterday.

Rhonda Vincent and Bobby Osborne are nominated in the Best Country Collaboration With Vocals category for Midnight Angel, from Rhonda’s All American Bluegrass Girl CD.

The Del McCoury Band received a nomination for The Promised Land in the Best Southern, Country, Or Bluegrass Gospel Album category.

Then, of course, we have the Best Bluegrass Album category. Those nominees are:

See the complete list of nominees on the Grammy web site.

UPDATE 8:00 a.m. Also receiving a Grammy nomination yesterday was Ralph Stanley. His A Distant land To Roam CD was nominated in the Best Traditional Folk Album category.

This post is a contribution from Richard Thompson, a founding member of the British Bluegrass Music Association. He is also a longstanding contributor to British Bluegrass News, a quarterly print publication where he also briefly served as editor. He wrote the Roots & Branches column for International Country Music News for some years, and is now preparing a factbook (catalog of important events) on the life of Bill Monroe.

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. (more…)

Earlier this year, Rebel Records reissued a pair of classic Ralph Stanley recordings as iTunes download exclusives. Now comes word of two others, recently available again from the iTunes Music store.

Down Where The River Bends was first released in 1978, and marked the Clinch Mountain Boys debut of Charlie Sizemore as a lead vocalist and Junior Blankenship on guitar. This pair remained with Stanley for the next ten years, and were also featured on the other new Rebel iTunes reisuue, Memory Of Your Smile, initially released in 1982.

These two Stanley reissues are only available in the iTunes Music Store, where audio samples of each track can be heard, with instant download purchase enabled.

Rebel announced this summer that they would be making many of the out-of-print titles in their catalog available as download-only reissues, and have a pair of albums from the Forbes Family as well as the prior Ralph Stanley projects now up on iTunes. No further download reissues are expected this year, but more will be announced in January 2007.

Yesterday’s edition of The Knoxville News Sentinel published an interview with Ralph Stanley, written by Wayne Bledsoe.

The initial thrust of the piece is Stanley’s recent receipt of a National Medal of Arts Award. Continuing from there, the article also delves into the early days of bluegrass when Ralph was performing with his brother Carter, and his belief that the folk and bluegrass festivals that sprang up in the 1960s may have kept bluegrass music from sliding into obscurity.

Bledsoe gets Stanley to share a number of refections on his life in bluegrass music.

“When we started, we didn’t know if it was gonna last a week or a month or years,” says Stanley, “but I never dreamed I’d still be doing it after 60 years.”

You can read the entire article on the News Sentinel web site.