The Stanley Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, and “Rank Strangers to Me” in Our Modern Times

The famous Stanley Brothers song “Rank Strangers to Me” has a mysterious meaning that inspired Bruce Springsteen writing about the alienation of modern politics.

Arthur E. Brumley

I wandered again,
To my home in the mountains,
Where in youth’s early dawn,
I was happy and free.
I look for my friends,
But I never could find ’em.
I found they were all
Rank strangers to me.

According to Ralph Stanley’s autobiography, in the 1950s the Stanley Brothers were on their way to a performance, driving on a Sunday through Bristol, Virginia. Listening to the radio, they heard the song, “Rank Stranger to Me.” The song, performed by the Willow Branch Quartet, immediately grabbed Ralph and his brother Carter Stanley.

In “Rank Strangers to Me” (sometimes referred to as “Rank Stranger”) the singer recounts visiting their old hometown. But as they go through the town, they do not recognize anyone and all of the people are complete (“rank”) strangers.

“The song was all about feeling a stranger in this world, even with your own family and friends and neighbors, and how the next world would make all that right,” explained Stanley. The brothers soon added the song to their act, shortening their recorded version of the song to fit on a 45 rpm record.

Initially released as a single, the song then appeared on the Stanley Brothers album Sacred Songs of the Hills. Ralph later noted that “it became the most popular song the Stanley Brothers ever sung.”

The Willow Branch Quartet was based in Bristol and included Wilda Dillon singing lead and her mother, Ettie Dillon, singing alto. As others have noted, Wilda’s soprano lead singing gave the group a unique sound along with the harmonies of a family singing together.

According to Wilda’s son Gary Combs, the group had found the song in the Stamps-Baxter gospel songbook.

 Albert E. Brumley, who lived in Missouri and wrote “I’ll Fly Away” and other songs, wrote “Rank Strangers to Me” in 1942. After the Stanley Brothers recorded their version of “Rank Strangers to Me,” a number of artists continued to cover the song, including Porter Wagoner, Freakwater, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, and Crooked Still. Bob Dylan included the song on his 1988 album Down in the Groove.

Brumley, who was born in 1905 and passed away on November 15, 1977, lived to see many of his songs, including “Rank Strangers to Me,” become classics.

One may wonder too whether “Rank Strangers to Me” may have inspired a similarly themed song written by Percy Mayfield, “Stranger in My Hometown.” That song reflects the flip side of “Rank Strangers to Me,” with the singer feeling like the stranger back in their hometown. Elvis Presley recorded “Stranger in My Hometown” in 1969, releasing it on Elvis Back in Memphis.

The Meaning of Rank Strangers

“Rank Strangers to Me,” like a good episode of The Twilight Zone, can haunt you. The idea of returning to a place where you should feel at home but discovering that everyone is a stranger has a supernatural element to it. One may wonder what meaning Brumley was trying to convey with the song.

Because Brumley wrote the song as a hymn, there is a good reason to assume that Ralph Stanley’s initial impression of the song is correct, that it has a religious connotation. We are all strangers in the earthly world, only to find our true place when we go to heaven.

But what makes “Rank Strangers to Me” a great song is that it never explicitly lays out the religious meaning, leaving the song open to interpretation. Similar to other religious songs like “The Great Speckled Bird,” the spirituality of the song dwells in the mystery it presents, allowing our imagination and own interpretations to guide our feelings.

In the Stanley Brothers recording, they highlighted the mystery of the song with their arrangement. Unlike their other recordings, the song alternates between Carter’s voice on the verses and Ralph’s loud wail on the chorus. Ralph later explained, “We wanted it to be like somebody surprising you from behind. Like somebody waking you up and everything seems different and you don’t know if you’re awake or still dreaming.”

The Rank Strangers In Bruce Springsteen’s “Long Walk Home”

Bruce Springsteen has used the mysteriousness of “Rank Strangers To Me” to reference that song’s title phrase in a more political context. On his 2007 album Magic, the Stanley Brothers hymn (with perhaps a dash of Elvis’s recording of Percy Mayfield’s “Stranger in My Hometown”) provided inspiration for Springsteen’s song “Long Walk Home.”

It’s gonna be a long walk home;
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me;
Gonna be a long walk home,
A long walk home.

In town I pass Sal’s grocery;
Barber shop on South Street;
I looked in their faces,
They’re all rank strangers to me.

Springsteen’s song “Long Walk Home” begins with it’s own mystery. The singer recounts that the night before he was on his former lover’s doorstep wondering what went wrong. She slipped an unnamed item into his hand and then “was gone.” The singer sees his hometown in the distance and realizes it is going to be a long walk home.

The singer recognizes places in his home town, but as quoted above, like in “Rank Strangers to Me,” does not recognize the faces: “They’re all rank strangers to me.”

Like the Stanely brothers song, Springsteen’s song is elevated by the mysteries. What went wrong with the relationship? Why can’t the singer recognize the faces in his hometown? Who is the “pretty darling” he is asking not to wait up for him (if the night before he was going through a breakup)?

But the deeper meaning of the song is revealed by the context of the writing and the timing of the release of the song. Many of the songs on the album Magic reflect Springsteen’s frustration with American society at the time, following the reelection of President George W. Bush after the unnecessary Iraq War. Indeed, Springsteen has explained “Long Walk Home” as about a singer realizing that those “he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers.”

The meaning of the song resonates in present day for Springsteen and many others. More recently, on November 6, 2024, following the second election of Donald J. Trump the night before, Springsteen opened his show in Toronto with “Long Walk Home” and its reference to the struggle to understand one’s fellow citizens. The song, which along with “Land of Hope and Dreams,” Springsteen called “a fighting prayer for my country,” reflected the frustration of many Americans wondering how their fellow citizens could have voted for such a man.

One may struggle with the question of how your friends could support the choices made by this president. In the year leading up to the second election of Donald Trump, I saw many posts on social media by friends and family complaining about things that Pres. Biden had allegedly done or failed to do and how Trump would do them better: fix the economy immediately, stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine, help North Carolina better recover from a disaster, protect kids, “drain the swamp,” etc. But in the months after Trump’s election, when he has done the opposite of many of those things, I have seen the same people defend Trump no matter what he does. These include defenses of cutting aid to disaster relief , taking actions that may lead to the suffering and deaths of others, random acts upsetting the economy, more corruption, etc.

Why are so many still supporting these choices they would not have supported from another president? Who are these people I thought I knew? Why did they seem to care about something one minute and then defend the opposite the next? Why are they allowing people to suffer? Of course, I’m sure that many people on the other side of the political spectrum similarly struggle to understand the “strangers” with different views than them.

I suspect this feeling of alienation is why Springsteen continues to include “Long Walk Home” in current performances. He is asking the question many of us are asking about people we once thought we knew.

And that is why, whether you agree with the politics or not, the alienating feeling of not understanding your friends and family remains with us so many years after the Stanley Brothers first heard the haunting sound of “Rank Strangers to Me” on the car radio.

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Ralph Stanley

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Kasey Chambers: “We’re All Gonna Die Someday”

Kasey Chambers released “We’re All Gonna Die Someday” on her 1999 album “The Captain” in a more joyous take on the phrase recently used by Sen. Joni Ernst.

Recently, during a town hall event in Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst was confronted about a Republican bill that would cut Medicaid. A voter argued that people would die as a result of the bill. Sen. Ernst replied, ““Well, we all are going to die.”

Following some outrage, Sen. Ernst subsequently doubled down on the adequacy of her response, seemingly mocking critics with a video of herself taken in a cemetery.

Sen. Ernst’s now infamous statement reminded me of a kinder use of the phrase in a song by Australian singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers. In “We’re All Gonna Die,” Chambers has a more joyous take on the reminder of death. She uses the phrase as a sing-a-long that ultimately reminds us mortals to enjoy life because we are all gonna die.

Well, it hurts down here on Earth, Lord;
It hurts down here on Earth;
It hurts down here ’cause we’re runnin’ out of beer;
But we’re all gonna die someday.

“We’re All Gonna Die” appears on her outstanding 1999 album, The Captain.

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4 Non Blondes Perform “What’s Up” at 2025 BottleRock Napa (Live Song of the Day)

4 Non Blondes had its first full Bay area performance in 30 years at the BottleRock Napa Festival, performing their hit, “What’s Up.”

The BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 24, 2025 featured a number of superstars, including Justin Timberlake and Benson Boone. But many in the audience were waiting for one of the great songs from the 1990s performed by 4 Non Blondes, “What’s Up.”

4 Non Blondes reportedly gave one of the best shows of the weekend. The band played both old and new songs, including “Monomorphic,” while referencing recent political events. The crowd, of course, was especially fired up for the band’s classic 1990s anthem “What’s Up.” Check out the video below. 

With the exception of a short reunion charity performance in 2014, the BottleRock Napa show was the first full performance by the San Francisco area band in the Bay area in more than 30 years. Lead singer Linda Perry, who has been writing for and producing other artists, explained that she wanted the band to reunite to reclaim its past. The show featured lead singer Linda Perry along with bassist Christa Hillhouse, guitarist Roger Rocha, and drummer Dawn Richardson. Perry also pointed out 4 Non Blondes’ original guitarist Shaunna Hall who was watching the show.

BottleRock Napa Valley every year features a number of musicians to start off the summer along with wine and food in the Napa Valley in California.

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There’s a Farm in Arkansas, Got Some Secrets On Its Floor: Tom Murton, Bobby Darin, and Robert Redford

Bobby Darin sang about him and Robert Redford portrayed him: Tom Murton worked to reform prisons and was eventually fired after discovering dead prisoners inside the Arkansas prison system.

Tom Murton, who was born in Los Angeles on March 15, 1928, went on to become one of the most famous reformist prison wardens in popular culture. And that is despite the fact that few may remember his name and the fact that he served as a warden for less than a year. But Robert Redford portrayed a character based upon Murton, and Bobby Darin sang a song about him.

After helping establish the correctional system in the new state of Alaska in the 1960s, Murton was hired to reform the Arkansas prison system in 1968. Arkansas’s new governor Winthrop Rockefeller wanted Murton to be the first professional penologist to head the system, which included the Tucker State Prison Farm and Cummins State Prison Farm.

Arkansas Prison Farms & Dead Bodies

The prisoners at the large prison farms endured harsh conditions, sexual assault, torture, beatings, and more. The prisons used a “trusty” system, where prisoners were assigned to act as guards but instead were perpetrating abuses.

Later, an Arkansas Times article described the prison: “Under the blazing Delta sun, long-line riders armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns patrolled the grounds on horseback while rank men worked fields full of cotton, rice, soybeans and cucumbers. Men who didn’t work hard were punished like slaves. Should a rider shoot a man trying to escape, he was given a free pass out of the prison. A long leather strap was another instrument of terror. Because men were housed in barracks, rather than cells, they had little protection at night against roaming thieves and sexual predators.”

As the new head of Tucker State Prison Farm, the 39-year-old Murton began instituting reforms. He eliminated corporal punishment, improved the prisoners’ diets, and reformed the parole system.

But Murton did too good of a job. After an informant told Murton of bodies buried on the prison grounds, Murton began digging up dead prisoners. Records indicated more than 200 men had “escaped” since 1915, but when he started discovering dead bodies in unmarked graves, Murton suspected foul play.

Although Governor Rockefeller’s administration was not implicated in the discovery, the state was embarrassed by the developing news. Murton was fired in spring 1968 two months after the first discovery of the bodies. The governor stopped the exhumation, claiming the bodies were from a pauper’s field.

According to Wikipedia, Murton was told to leave the state or face arrest for digging up the bodies. He left town for Alaska and never worked at a prison again.

Murton was likely blackballed from further penal work in Arkansas, but he continued to advocate for reform, testifying before a U.S. Senate Committee on juvenile delinquency in 1969 and appearing on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970 to talk about Arkansas prison conditions.

Personally, though, times were rough for Murton. Without work, he suffered in poverty and his family life fell apart, losing his wife to divorce. Eventually, his life rebounded after writing a book about his experience and taking a teaching job at the University of Minnesota. After his time as warden, he co-authored books related to his time as warden, taught courses, founded the Murton Foundation for Criminal Justice, and worked as a duck farmer in Oklahoma.

Bobby Darin’s “Long Line Rider” About the Arkansas Prison

Others outside the legal system also took note of Murton’s courage. Bobby Darin, who had hits with “Splish Splash” and “Mac the Knife” had been inspired to turn deeper to folk and political music after the death of Robert Kennedy. And one of his greatest political songs was about Tom Murton’s discoveries in Arkansas.

The pop singer’s turn to write a song about the Arkansas prison was likely also inspired by his work as an actor, having spent several days in a prison in 1967 filming his role in The Cage. The TV drama appeared as an episode in The Danny Thomas Show. According to Shane Brown’s excellent book Bobby Darin: The Ultimate Listener’s Guide around the time of taping that episode, Darin told a newspaper interviewer, “I was affected far more by that experience than I ever want to get into . . . I saw 18-year-old faces and older, hardened faces. We are criminals by not insisting that psychiatrists run prisons rather than just being consulted once in awhile.”

The title to Darin’s song about the Arkansas prison scandal — “Long Line Rider” –refers to the a segment of the brutal trusty inmates who served as guards. The riders rode horses and carried guards, enforcing their own laws on the prison grounds. Darin’s song specifically referenced the dead bodies that Murton had discovered and that the state tried to cover up.

There’s a funny taste in the air
Big bulldozers everywhere
Diggin’ clay
Turnin’ clay.
And the ground coughs up some roots
Wearin’ denim shirts and boots
Haul ’em away
Haul ’em away.
Hey, long line rider, turn away.

The song unfortunately did not become a best seller for Darin. His older fans likely wanted him to maintain his old style of singing, and younger listeners may have been reluctant to buy albums by a balding older man that there parents had followed. But Darin did some great work in this era of his career, and his turn to rock and folk was authentic. And one of the reasons we are still talking about what happened in Arkansas today is because of Bobby Darin’s song.

Darin backed up his beliefs and his music with his actions. In January 1969 he was scheduled to sing “Long Line Rider” on The Jackie Gleason Show. The show’s producers, however, were not happy. Depending on the source, they either asked him to sing another song or to cut the line from “Long Line Rider” that made a clear reference to Governor Rockefeller,”This kind of thing can’t happen here /Especially not in election year.”

Darin refused to comply with the censorship, and he walked off the set. Darin explained, “I don’t care if I never do another TV show in my life. They are not going to interfere with my right to express myself.”

Fortunately, we do have on YouTube a powerful performance he gave on TV earlier in November 1968. “Long Line Rider” is not only great commentary on a forgotten injustice, it rocks.

Brubaker & Robert Redford’s Portrayal

People did not forget about Murton’s work after Darin’s song.

In 1980, director Stuart Rosenberg released the movie Brubaker. The film is a somewhat fictionalized version of Murton’s experience in Arkansas (filmed in Ohio). Robert Redford starred as the young prison warden trying to reform a brutal prison and literally uncovering dead bodies.

Tom Murton helped with the fim. He retired from his teaching position and served as a technical advisor for the movie. He was reportedly satisfied with the film despite it taking some liberties with his life story.

The movie opens with a fictionalized version of the new warden going into the prison undercover as a prisoner. Later, Redford’s warden uncovers the brutality inside of the prison as well as dead bodies buried on prison grounds.

The movie was a commercial and critical success, nominated for the Academy Award for best original screenplay in 1981.

Afterward

We cannot measure the impact of the horrendous prison conditions in Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s. One judge in 1970 called it a “dark and evil world.” There was never a full reckoning that revealed the information about the men buried on the prison grounds. Regarding the three bodies found in 1968 before the digging stopped, some claimed they had been buried there for many years and had not been murdered. But we still do not know for sure who they were or how they ended up there.

And we can of course only guess about the impact that the prison conditions had on the living prisoners there and even the guards. Surely, many of the men subjected to the horrendous conditions were changed by what they experienced, and many of them probably carried those effects through the rest of their lives.

We do not know about most of the prisoners and the effects of the trauma. We do know that one of the prisoners at the Tucker Unit in 1970 was a 16-year-old boy named Don Harding, sent to the adult maximum security prison after escaping from the Arkansas Boys Industrial School serving a burglary charge. While at the Tucker Unit, adults repeatedly violently brutalized the skinny kid. That experience, along with the boy’s organic brain damage and other childhood abuse, likely contributed to him destroying the lives of others. Having failed to kill himself several times in his life, he later was convicted of murdering several men and was executed in Arizona’s gas chamber in 1992.

How many other prisoners from that time in Arkansas carried the effects out into the world?

Regarding the prisons themselves, while Murton was pushed to the sidelines of government, others took note of the prison conditions in Arkansas that he highlighted. In Holt v. Sarver, a federal judge in 1970 held that the conditions at the Arkansas prison constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution. A series of reforms brought some improvements to the Arkansas system in the 1970s and 1980s.

Finally, after the film Brubaker, Tom Murton published two more books, The Dilemma of Prison Reform (1982) and Crime and Punishment in Arkansas: Adventures in Wonderland (1985). He died of cancer at age 62 on October 10, 1990, in Oklahoma City.

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The Ending of “Judgment at Nuremberg” And the Film’s Lesson for Today

The film “Judgment at Nuremberg” ends with a stunning indictment from Spencer Tracy’s character that should offer a chilling lesson for today.

The 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer and written by Abby Mann, presents a fictionalized trial based on real events following World War II. There were twelve trials in military courts in Nuremberg, Germany regarding Nazi crimes committed during the war. The movie centers on a trial similar to the actual trial of jurists and lawyers (sometimes called “The Judges’ Trial“). [Warning: This post contains some spoilers for the movie.]

Judgment at Nuremberg features many great actors of the time, including Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, Maximilian Schell (who won the Best Actor Oscar) and a young William Shatner. Much of the fim, though, centers on the characters played by Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster.

Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster

Spencer Tracy, who was 61 at the time and looked older, plays Chief Judge Dan Haywood, one of the judges overseeing the trial. Tracy’s Maine judge is in many ways the heart of the film, as we see through his eyes the war-torn streets of Germany and the moral questions surrounding the war and the atrocities.

Lancaster, plays Dr. Ernst Janning, one of the German defendants. Initially appearing defiant, Janning is troubled by what the Nazi’s did. Eventually, Janning takes the stand as a witness for the prosecution. During his testimony indicting the works of the Nazis, he confesses his own role in sentencing a Jewish man to death for having sex with a 16-year-old Gentile girl when he knew the charges were not true.

Lancaster was a great handsome movie star, and he brings his gravitas to the role, evoking sympathy from us for the guilt he feels and for his willingness among the defendants to admit the sins of the Germans. Tracy and Lancaster were long-time movie stars by this point, and we were familiar with Tracy as a trustworthy character and Lancaster as a strong man with a vulnerable heart and intense eyes.

The Final Confrontation

Janning: “Those people . . . Those millions of people. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it.”

Haywood: “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”

At the end of the film, we do finally get a one-on-one scene between the two heavyweight actors. After Janning and the other three defendants are found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, Janning asks Judge Haywood to visit him in his cell. And Judge Haywood agrees. Throughout the film, Tracy has played Haywood as a man conflicted about how blame may be assessed among the living for the crimes of the Nazis, and we have seen him moved by Janning’s acceptance of guilt. So, the viewer may expect that this final scene of the two men (and great actors) meeting alone, will provide some common understanding between the two judges. But that is not what happens.

The two men complement each other. Lancaster’s Janning tells Spencer’s Haywood that his decision of the court was a just one. Haywood responds that Lancaster’s testimony was what needed to be said.

Then, Burt Lancaster’s Janning turns to the reason he wanted to talk to the judge in private. He does ask for some type of understanding, if not forgiveness from Spencer Tracy’s judge, explaining he did not know the extent of the horrors and the killings of the Jewish people. He pleads, “Those people . . . Those millions of people. I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it.”

But Spencer Tracy’s judge does not give forgiveness or understanding, only an indictment. He replies, “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.” The camera captures Lancaster’s pained and haunted face as the movie ends with his prison door closing.

America’s Dilemma

That scene from Judgment at Nuremberg has always stayed with me, and I have been thinking about it a lot lately. In the news, we have read and seen about the Trump administration rounding up immigrants and sending them to an inhumane prison in El Salvador. A few years ago, it might have been hard to imagine the United States sending convicted criminals to such a place, but because these men are not citizens of the U.S. and the administration asserts they are members of the MS-13 gang, so far we have mostly accepted sending people who have been convicted of no crimes.

As we find out more about some of the men sent, we should be more troubled. There is Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist who sought asylum in the United States last year. He was sent to the prison based on a signature from a disgraced former police officer, now a private prison contractor, with a record of lying.

Merwil Gutiérrez also was sent to the El Salvador prison. The 19-year-old with no criminal record and reportedly no gang affiliation was taken from the Bronx and sent to the prison. Reportedly, he was seized after an ICE agent realized he was not who they were looking for. But another agent responded “take him anyway,” so they did. Gutiérrez’s father is still trying to get information on his son.

Ábrego García also sits in the El Salvador prison, though his case has already gone to the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawyer for the foreign-born Maryland father says he has no ties to criminal gangs. The U.S. has admitted it was a mistake to send García to El Salvador, and the Supreme Court has ordered the government to “facilitate” his return to the U.S. But the Trump administration continues to do nothing and claim both that they cannot do anything to get García back — and anyway García is still a bad guy who is not a citizen.

García’s case in particular might remind one of Spencer Tracy’s rebuke to Burt Lancaster’s character in Judgment at Nuremberg. After observing Lancaster’s sympathetic performance, like his character, we are reminded that one bore the blame for the atrocities that followed once one was complicit in the first injustice.

I don’t know if we are there yet, and of course we are not Nazi Germany. But there are lessons to be learned from history (and movies).

And many of us are surprised that more of our fellow citizens are not outraged at the thought of innocent people being sent to this inhumane foreign prison. And to have our government concede it committed a mistake that results in suffering and do nothing to correct it (even assuming anyone should be in this prison) is something out of a horror movie if you imagine what these people are going through each day.

The U.S. has never been perfect. And maybe in recent years the fact that people did not stand up to the horrors we perpetrated in the wake of 9/11 like torturing suspects and accepting the mistreatment, torture, and rapes at Abu Ghraib prison have made us immune to these atrocities committed by our country against non-citizens.

Twenty-five years ago, I would have thought that my fellow citizens would not have allowed these things to happen. Yes, some have stood up and many are fighting the administration’s cruelty and bullying today. For example, constituents showed up in Iowa at a Republican senator’s town hall to ask what was being done about getting García out of the prison where he does not belong.

Yet, how many of us will allow our government to send people to an inhumane prison without any type of due process?

Maybe like Burt Lancaster’s Janning character we will be thinking that later we will be able to claim that we never knew it would come to whatever comes next.

Find your representatives in Congress to call them athttps://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member. Leave your two cents in the comments.