Nashville – July 23, 2014 – Trailblazing
musician Ralph Stanley has been elected a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in a class that also includes actor and
director Al Pacino, novelists John Irving and Annie Proulx, Pulitzer
Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, former Secretary of Labor Robert
Reich and oceanographer and discoverer of the Titanic, Robert Ballard,
among others.
In
May, Stanley was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree from Yale
University. It was his second such distinction, the first having been
conferred in 1976 by Lincoln Memorial University.
Stanley
will be inducted formally into the Academy at its headquarters in
Cambridge, Massachusetts on Oct. 11. The Academy was founded in 1780 to
recognize America’s foremost “thinkers and doers.” Among its past
members are George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Martin Luther King Jr. Current members include more than 250 Nobel
laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize-winners.
Recognized
as the leading exponent of traditional Appalachian music and a founding
father of bluegrass, Stanley has spread his sound around the world
during his 68 years of touring and recording. He began his career in
1946 as the younger half of the Stanley Brothers, a group then headed by
singer-songwriter Carter Stanley. The Stanley Brothers performed,
recorded and appeared on television together until Carter’s death in
1966.
In
the years following, Stanley built and led a band that at various times
featured such rising talents as Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Larry
Sparks and Charlie Sizemore. So significant was the Stanley sound in
the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? that Ralph rocketed from icon
to superstar. He was profiled by novelist David Gates in The New Yorker
and went on to earn a Grammy as top male country music vocalist, edging
out Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw and Lyle Lovett. To date,
he has won three Grammys.
Stanley’s
high, forlorn vocals are featured in the seven-million-selling O
Brother soundtrack album. In addition, he was the first performer to be
inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in the 21st Century. He is a member of
the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and a recipient of the
National Medal of Arts.
