Before Vince Gill became a bluegrass legend in his own right, he was an aspiring multi-instrumentalist looking up to the great musicians who had come before him, and the Stanley Brothers were certainly no exception. Raised in a musical family in Norman, Oklahoma, Gill experimented with multiple genres and styles of playing in his early years.
But no tune, bluegrass or otherwise, stuck with the future “Nicest Guy in Nashville” quite like this Stanley Brothers classic.
The First Bluegrass Song Vince Gill Ever Heard
In a 2023 Vulture interview, Vince Gill revealed the first bluegrass song he ever learned was the heart-wrenching Stanley Brothers standard “Think Of What You’ve Done.” “I’d heard “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and Bill Monroe,” he explained, “but that was the first one I actually set out to learn how to sing and play.”
Carter Stanley, the older of the Stanley family duo, wrote “Think Of What You’ve Done” in the late 1950s. The Stanley Brothers and their band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, first released the tune in 1958. The song itself is quintessentially bluegrass: a little bit of Appalachia and a whole lot of heartbreak. I’ll go back to old Virginia, the brothers croon, where the mountains meet the sky. In those hills I learned to love you; let me stay there till I die.
“It’s stuck with me forever,” he continued. “The Stanley Brothers had that blood-brother harmony that was so cool and reminded me of the Everly Brothers and the Louvin brothers, family-type things that I was so drawn to. Every now and then there’s a combination of voices that’s just really, really powerful. But when they’re related, when the bloodlines align, there’s something in there that makes it so special.”
How The Stanley Brothers Influenced Vince Gill’s Singing
While most bluegrass lovers will more quickly associate Vince Gill with his masterful guitar playing, he’s also an incredibly talented singer. But he didn’t always consider his voice to be a primary instrument. “For the longest time, I was too bashful to sing,” he told Vulture. “I could always hide behind my guitar, keep my head down, and duck any attention that was coming my way. Then, I wound up being in bands where I was the guy who could sing better than everybody else.”
When it came time for Gill to make the transition from strict guitarist to vocalist, he called upon his original bluegrass inspiration: the Stanley Brothers. In a 2019 interview with the Bluegrass Situation, Gill admitted that he kept the family bluegrass duo in mind when finding his own voice. “I was trying to either be Ralph Stanley or Phil Everly or Ira Louvin or whoever,” he said. “I was a high singer, so bluegrass was a natural fit. There have always been predominant high singers.”
Years later, Gill was able to create that same blood harmony that he loved so much as a young, aspiring musician with his daughters, Corrina and Jennifer Gill. “I feel that when I sing with my daughters,” Gill told Vulture. “I finally get to hear it in our voices blending together.”
Photo by AFF-USA/Shutterstock
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