At the 2002 Grammy Awards, the Best Male Country Vocal Performance went not to a polished radio star but to a 75-year-old from the Appalachian mountains singing a terrifying song about mortality, completely a cappella. This deep dive traces Ralph Stanley from Big Spraddle Creek in Dickenson County, Virginia, to honorary doctorates from Yale and the highest honor the U.S. government gives to artists.

We explore the two musical dialects of his childhood, his father's Primitive Baptist hymns and his mother's clawhammer banjo, the $5 grocery trade that bought his first instrument, the Stanley Brothers' feud with Bill Monroe at Columbia Records, and the day James Brown snapped his fingers to the Clinch Mountain Boys at King Records. Then we follow him through the death of his brother Carter in 1966 and his second act as bandleader and mentor. ...