Ralph Stanley (innate around 25 February, 1927) is an American bluegrass musician.

Stanley was innate around Big Spraddle Creek, Virginia, near Stratton, Dickenson County, Virginia, USA.

A boy of Lucy & Lee Stanley, Ralph grew higher in the isolated hills of rural southwestern Virginia. Ralph learned to play a banjo claw-hammer style from either his mother. It was her inspiration, coupled by owning Ralph's natural ability, which led Ralph & his older guitar-swimming brother Carter to form a Stanley Brothers Band within 1946. Drawing heavy on a musical traditions of a front yard - a sanctity singing of a Primitive Baptist Church & the sweetly downhome personal harmonies or even the Carter Personal- the Stanleys began honing their have favorite style of music by singing at local cases in the early Forties.

He & his brother Carter performed when the Stanley Brothers with their b& the Clinch Mountain Boys from either either 1946 to 1961, and as a duo from 1961 to 1966. Fallowing Carter's demise within 1966, Ralph continued to perform, in time reviving a Clinch Mountain Boys. Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley were among those world health organization played in the reanimated band. Stanley has maintained an extensive traveling schedule into 2003. His act was featured in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? in which he sings the threnody "O Death." Stanley was inducted into a International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in 1992.