It happened this past week -- the death of Ralph Stanley, considered a founding father of modern bluegrass music, though he himself preferred the term "mountain music."

Born in rural Virginia, young Ralph made a fateful decision, as he told us in a 1984 interview:

"My mother gave me a choice, where she'd either buy me a sow pig or a banjo," he said. "And if I'd got the pig I would have started raising hogs, but I decided to get the banjo."

Ralph Stanley and his brother, Carter, went on to form the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys in 1946.

To watch the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys perform "Worried Man Blues" click on the player below:

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys perform "Honey In the Rock":

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys perform "Rank Strangers to Me" in 2012:

After decades of performing on the folk music circuit, Ralph Stanley broke through to a wider audience in the 2000 film, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" His rendition of the traditional song "O Death" added extra menace to this scene of a Ku Klux Klan rally:

And at a Nashville concert of "O Brother" music that became its own film (called "Down From the Mountain"), Ralph Stanley and friends closed out the show with another traditional song, "Angel Band":

Oh come angel wings,

Come around me stand.

h bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home.

Oh bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home.

Ralph Stanley was 89.



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