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Etown's 18th Anniversary show with Ralph Stanley and Ramblin' Jack Elliott

Live Show: Thursday, Apr 23, 2009 7:00 pm
Location: The Boulder Theater

This special taping celebrating Etown's 18th Anniversary, features two icons of American music. First, the legendary Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys take the stage sharing songs from Ralph's 60+ years as a performer of bluegrass, old-time, and roots music. Host Nick Forster chats with the 82-year-old Stanley about his rich performance history and his recent involvement in current events. Then long-time, 'hard travelin' Ramblin' Jack Elliott takes the stage, with musical support here and there from Nick & Helen. And Nick and Jack have a one-of-a-kind Etown conversation you won't want to miss! Plus, there's a very special 'in-person' E-Chievement Award featuring a woman who is making real difference in the lives of urban kids. Don't miss this week's Etown!

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys
Ralph Stanley's voice is not of this century. Nor of the last one, for that matter. Its stark emotional urgency is rooted in a darker time, when pain was the common coin of life and the world offered sinful humanity no hope of refuge. Preserved in the cultural amber of remote Appalachia, this terse, forlorn sound is the bedrock of Stanley's inimitable style. But don't mistake an ancient voice for ancient ways. Stanley tours and performs with the vigor and elan of a rock star.

Now 81 years old, Stanley has been performing professionally since he and his older brother, Carter, formed a band in their native southwestern Virginia in 1946. Between that date and 1966, when Carter died, the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys became one of the most celebrated bluegrass groups in the world, rivaling in popularity such titans as Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs.

While he has long been revered by enthusiasts of folk, bluegrass and country music, Stanley has lately been commanding the kind of honors due a musical original. In 2003, he shared a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. The year before that, he won Grammys for Best Country Male Vocalist Performance (beating out Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw, Lyle Lovett and Ryan Adams) and Album of the Year (for his part in the O Brother, Where Art Thou? collection). In 2001, he was the subject of an admiring profile in the New Yorker, written by novelist David Gates, who traveled with Stanley for months gathering material. He is the central figure in the D. A. Pennebaker/Chris Hegedus 2000 documentary, Down From The Mountain.

Ralph Stanley still lives near the spot where he was born in a mountainous, tucked-away corner near the rugged Virginia-Tennessee border. It remains his cherished retreat from the rigors of the road and the 150 plus shows he continues to do each year.

Ramblin' Jack Elliott
One of the great American musical treasures, Ramblin' Jack Elliott has had a rich and storied life. As a budding musician, Jack developed his voice under the tutelage of Woody Guthrie, truck hitching across the country off and on for a couple of years with Woody, carrying "only razors and guitars." The pair eventually landed in the McCarthy-free enclave of Topanga Canyon CA in the 1950s, where Elliott played for James Dean and later married Dean's former flame. On the other coast, Elliott was also a fixture of the Greenwich Village scene, and once spent "three days and a lot of wine" listening to Jack Kerouac read On the Road. But it is his relationship with a young Bob Dylan that Elliott is perhaps most famous for, though back in the 1960s the up-and-coming Dylan was often mistakenly dubbed the "son of Jack Elliott." Today Elliott simply states "Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody."Ramblin'

Jack Elliott is one of folk music's most enduring characters. Since he first came on the scene in the late '50s, Elliott influenced everyone from Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. The son of a New York doctor, Elliott used his self-made cowboy image to bring his love of folk music to one generation after another.

Despite the countless miles that Elliott traveled, his nickname is derived from his unique verbiage: an innocent question often led to a mosaic of stories before he got to the answer. According to folk songstress Odetta, it was her mother who gave Elliott the name when she remarked, "Oh, that Jack Elliott, he sure can ramble."