I think - I really think my voice has gotten better in the last two or three years. I don't know why. I've been doing a lot of - a lot more lead singing, and everybody tells me that my voice was better than ever and I agree with them. Maybe I've learned to do more with it. I don't know what.
Ralph StanleyYou give out the words and then sing them. You give out the words, you know, and the people can hear what you're giving out, and they sing that song or that line and they do the same thing again.
Ralph StanleyYou know, if you use instrument, why, you have to stay on perfect time - timing. And if you do a cappella - I'm so bad, just wonder, you know, maybe I'll sing one verse this way and one verse another. And if you're doing it a capella, you don't have to keep any time. You can just go out as far as you want to with it.
Ralph StanleyMy first banjo? My mother's sister, my aunt, lived about a mile from where we did, and she raised some hogs. And she had - her - the hog - the mother - they called the mother a sow - of a hog. And she had some pigs. Well, the pigs were real pretty, and I was going to high school and I was taking agriculture in school. And I sort of got a notion that I'd like to do that, raise some hogs. And so my aunt had this old banjo, and my mother told me, said, which do you want, the pig or a banjo? And each one of them's $5 each. I said, I'll just take the banjo.
Ralph StanleyMy father was a logger. He cut timber and hauled it out of the woods and had a sawmill. They sawed it into lumber. And, you know, the mines needed things they call timbers and collars and so forth, and they used collars on the railroad track that they put the rails on. And he - that was his occupation, just a sawmill man and a logger.
Ralph Stanley