Memorial Page for Ralph Stanley

Did you know? For the soundtrack of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", Ralph Stanley was meant to sing the old Appalachian dirge "O Death" with backing music. Instead he set his banjo aside and sang it entirely a cappella — the way he had learned it as a boy in his instrument-free Primitive Baptist church. After a few verses, producer T-Bone Burnett stopped him: "That's it." In his seventies, that lone voice introduced Stanley to millions.