Now THIS is a celebrity endorsement.... bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley puts down his marker for Obama

This writer doesn't often go gaga over a celebrity endorsement -- but then the celeb in question is almost never a true bluegrass legend. In this case, not just a legend -- but a veritable patriarch in the banjo and fiddle world -- Ralph Stanley, who became famous almost 60 years ago with his late brother, Carter, as the Stanley Brothers. According to the Boston Globe:

Democrat Barack Obama has a famous, twangy voice speaking for him in Virginia’s mountains: bluegrass music legend Ralph Stanley.

The Grammy-winning pioneer of the high lonesome sound of Appalachian music is featured in a new radio ad for Obama’s presidential campaign playing across southwestern Virginia, Stanley’s home.

Obama is fiercely contesting the region covered mostly by the mountainous, coal-mining, rural and largely white 9th Congressional District. Though Obama crushed rival Hillary Clinton in Virginia’s February Democratic primary, Clinton won 65 percent of the vote [in the district].

Stanley may be most familiar to mainstream music fans for his his performance of "O Death" in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

With banjos picking in the background, Stanley opens the folksy 60-second ad with, "Howdy, friends ..." He claims Obama will cut taxes for "everyday folks" and invest in rural areas to keep children from leaving home to find jobs. [...]

Stanley’s mountain music won Grammies in 2002 and in 2003. His first Grammy, for a haunting a capella rendition of "O Death," helped popularize mountain music nationally as part of the soundtrack to the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"