Ralph Stanley will sit with David Letterman tonight (11/6) to discuss his autobiography, Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times.

Letterman has dubbed this week as Country Music Week on The Late Show, with musical performances each night from prominent Nashville entertainers. Stanley will close out this theme week talking about his very personal book, written with Eddie Dean. It covers Ralph’s life from early childhood with his brother, Carter, through their time together as The Stanley Brothers, and his own musical career after Carter’s passing in 1966.

We’ll have more to say about this deeply moving autobiography soon.

The Late Show airs on CBS television at 11:35 p.m. (ET/PT).

UPDATE 10:30 a.m. – We just got an update from Norma Morris, of Morris Public Relations, who handles publicity for Ralph Stanley:

“Letterman will mention the book, open it up and make some comments, but Ralph will not have the opportunity to sit down and discuss it. So he will perform one song, Room at the Top of the Stairs. The Letterman people have been just great.”

Ralph Stanley will be a guest today (10/14) on the Diane Rehm Show, broadcast on WAMU 88.5 FM in the Washington, DC metro market. He will join her live in the studio to discuss his autobiography, Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times, due for release tomorrow (10/15) by Gotham Books.

The show can be heard on WAMU online and is syndicated on 150 NPR affiliate stations all over the US. The segment with Ralph is scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m. (EDT).

Audio archives are maintained on the WAMU site, and today’s show will be available in the archive approximately one hour after the program ends.

UPDATE 1:00 p.m. – We just heard from WAMU’s Bluegrass Country host Katy Daley, who sent along a couple of photos from today’s visit from a number of bluegrass legends.

While Dr. Ralph Stanley was being interviewed (and line singing) with Diane Rehm, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen were across the hall on the air with Lee Michael Demsey on Bluegrass Country.  Hillman and Pederson sang a few songs live — Wait a Minute, Love Reunited among them — and talked their 45-years in the music business — Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Desert Rose Band.

They’re in town to play the Birchmere tonight with The Grascals.  Chris Hillman is giving a lecture on his career at the Library of Congress on Friday from Noon to 1.

Can’t You Hear the Mountains Calling is the title Rounder Records has given to a reissued Ralph Stanley CD that has risen from humble beginnings.

It was originally released as Sixteen Years on cassette tape in 1985 on Stanley’s Rivertracks label, intended for regional distribution, and then re-released ten years later on Copper Creek. Accompanying Ralph was one of the choice editions of The Clinch Mountain Boys, with Charlie Sizemore on guitar and lead vocals, Junior Blankenship on lead guitar, Curly Ray Cline on fiddle and Jack Cooke on bass.

Gary Reid of Copper Creek, an historian of the music of Ralph Stanley, speaks quite highly of this recording, and had at one time planned a repacked reissue on his label.

“I always thought this was one of the best efforts Charlie Sizemore did with Ralph.”

Rounder has now remastered the original recording and will release it yet again on September 22. Songs include:

Charlie Sizemore contributes some remembrances of this session in the liner notes, saying that it was recorded in the “old time way.” All the tracks were cut live on a single day in the studio, with all mixing completed on the next. He then tackles the question of why this recording succeeds so well in capturing the Stanley sound.

“While not entirely comfortable with the recording process, during the making of this record he almost seems to be having fun. Curly Ray Cline and Jack Cooke, veterans both, are on top of their game. Nevertheless, the configuration of this band is relatively new. Despite the long hours, complacency is not an issue. And if it has any designs on this recording session, Ralph makes short work of thwarting it ‚Äì not only by example, which is customary, but also with direct, spoken exhortations and admonitions, which is rare. At times he urges the band, in so many words, to stay alert. So part of the answer may lie here.

Or it could matter that Ralph produced and initially released this recording on his own rather than for a record company. Under no deadline and with no one looking over his shoulder, so to speak, he has no one to please but his fans and himself. Perhaps this freedom provides a lack of self-consciousness, at once energizing and relaxing him.”

This is one I will be eagerly anticipating.

CMT is reporting that derogatory remarks about Tim McGraw have been removed from the final copies of the Ralph Stanley autobiography due for release this fall.

CMT.com News ran a story last week detailing these remarks, which was removed from the site within a few hours.

They say that the publishers had contacted them about the story after it ran, leading to the following correction:

In copies of the book sent to critics in early July, Stanley criticized McGraw for his song selections and for perceived slights of Stanley at the 2002 Grammys. Earlier this week, CMT.com received confirmation from Gotham Books, publisher of Stanley’s autobiography, that the comments about McGraw remained in the author’s final edits of the book.

Far be it from a book publisher to send out review copies with inflammatory content to generate interest, so we presume that Dr. Ralph’s editor was successful in convincing him to tone things down a bit.

We’ll have our review copy soon, and will reserve comment further until we go though it ourselves.