Ralph Stanley Quotes

There's nothing purer than Janette Carter with an autoharp.

Early Bluegrass is my favorite kind of music, not to many people know that.

This is the bunch of songs I did first, and it's just the type of thing I do. I am a Carter Family girl, so the record is book-ended with Carter Family songs.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is 'traditional plus.'

I was about 14, and I got hooked on the music of the Stanley Brothers.

I always loved country gospel from back when I was a teenager in high school and started listening to bluegrass quite a lot.

I was about 16 years old years when my father took me to a square dance festival in North Carolina. For the first time in my life, I found there was music in my country that you never heard on the radio, and you didn't hear on the juke boxes, and in theaters. I fell in love with it, especially the long-necked banjos.

I don't listen to the radio too much, but usually I listen to Stanley Brothers and Ralph Stanley more than I do anybody!

I was never into the Bluegrass, Bill Monroe and stuff like that.

My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.

I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.

I was reared on folk music.

I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.

I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.

A lot of great bluegrass comes out of Kentucky. There's a lot of great music, like the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. There's a lot of bluegrass intertwined with country music.

The first music I remember hearing was the traditional songs of Kentucky - things like 'Roll Along Kentucky Moon.'

I'm pretty sure in my older years, I'll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

My parents were on the Grand Ole Opry. They traveled all over the country singing hillbilly music. That's what they called it back then. They were friends with Roy Acuff and the Delmore Brothers and the Carter Family. And all of my brothers and sisters who were older than me started on the show, after they were big enough to hold a guitar and sing.

I was like, 'Man, bluegrass - that's like Roy Clark playing banjo on 'Hee Haw.' I'm a huge 'Hee Haw' fan. But I didn't know about bluegrass. It seemed like old people's music.

There are a whole lot of Carter Family songs.

The Delmore Brothers is hit music - very, very popular - and it still retains that rural flavor and simplicity. I always think of it as family music, really, because families sang it.

I kind of have found my identity through the music, through the roots music of North Carolina, and kind of realized that that's my identity as a North Carolinian.

I challenged myself to carry on the style of guitar that my grandmother did: the Carter scratch.

Mostly I listen to old-time music, some bluegrass, some Americana stuff, too many to name. But of the younger acts, there are The Freight Hoppers, who were big in the '90s, and The Foghorn Stringband from Oregon, and there's a lot of young string bands coming up now, basically punkers who play acoustic instruments forming new bands.