Last September, the 88-year-old bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley fell and cracked his pelvis. The injury forced him to cancel shows, a bad omen where octogenarian performers are concerned.

Stanley defied such concerns for nine months, even celebrating his 89th birthday on Feb. 25. When finally in June he gave up the ghost, he did so not because of his 2015 injury but because of skin cancer.

Stanley didn’t much like the term “bluegrass.” (He preferred “old-timey.”) “Giving up the ghost,” on the other hand, was a phrase he no doubt loved. King James Bible Christianity permeated his nearly threescore-and-10 years’ worth of recordings.

The recordings he made with his older brother Carter were credited to “The Stanley Brothers.” They featured Carter’s guitar, Ralph’s banjo, and an ensemble known as The Clinch Mountain Boys (whose members for a time during the 1970s included the future country music superstars Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley).

But it was Carter’s lead singing with Ralph’s high harmonies that truly set the act apart: a keening, tightly woven Appalachian sound that dignified even their most lachrymose lyrics. Along with the similarly fraternal vocals of The Louvin Brothers, the Stanleys’ style would influence rock ’n’ roll by way of The Everly Brothers as surely as The Four Freshmen influenced rock ’n’ roll by way of The Beach Boys.

When Carter, who had composed many of the duo’s strongest originals, died of alcoholism at the age of 41 in 1966 (coincidentally, 1½ years after the similarly dissolute Ira Louvin had died at the same age), Ralph understandably considered throwing in the musical towel.

He didn’t. Instead, he spent the ensuing years wringing that towel dry, only to find that, until the end, there was always more to squeeze out. By the time he gave chilling voice to the Free Will Baptist classic “O Death” on the multiplatinum O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack in 2000 (a performance for which he won a Grammy), he’d released over 30 post-Carter albums, logged countless miles on the road, and received an honorary doctorate of music.

Stanley went on to record nine more albums. If none of them can be said to extend his legacy, each of them can certainly be said to deepen it—and to confirm the impression that nothing was more important to him than using his talent in the service of the gospel.

Songs Hank knew

Film critics have expressed doubts about whether Sony Pictures Classics’ recently released biopic I Saw the Light extends or deepens the legacy of its subject, the country music star Hank Williams. A film’s weaknesses, however, don’t necessarily apply to its soundtrack, especially when the two are at cross purposes.

The purpose of Music from the Motion Picture I Saw the Light (Legacy) is, apparently, to overcome moviegoers’ skepticism about the London-born Tom Hiddleston’s ability to play the Alabama-born Williams. The soundtrack includes six Hiddleston-sung performances, and not one of them’s a dud.

The other seven comprise a grab bag of popular recordings contemporaneous with Williams’ brief life, ranging from the genteel (Jo Stafford, Eddy Arnold) to the rather less so (Jimmy Liggins, Eartha Kitt). Of these, one in particular stands out: Emmett Miller’s 1928 recording of “Lovesick Blues.”

Miller performed in blackface, a fact that stigmatizes him nowadays as someone with whom no decent person, Hank Williams included, should’ve ever had anything to do. One hears only innocence and joy, though, not racist malice, in Miller’s 88-year-old performance.