It was equal parts time capsule and infomercial. Saturday night at the Southgate House, Ralph Stanley brought back the golden age of bluegrass and sold it piece by piece to his sellout crowd of 600.

        A genuine living legend, Mr. Stanley helped start bluegrass in the late '40s. At 73, he's the last of that first generation still on the road. But he knows you can't stay on the road without gas money, and he keeps his tour bus running with record sales.

        So throughout the night, he mixed bluegrass classics with sales pitches for CDs and tapes. He also took time out to plug his bluegrass festival, a biographical video and even a line of Stanleytone banjos.

        But that salesmanship has been part of bluegrass from the start. In fact, “CD” and “video” seemed anachronisms in a show that could have taken place 40 years ago.

        Mr. Stanley has kept the oldest songs and roughest edges of bluegrass in his music. His trademark, “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” featured in the new Coen Brothers film, O Brother Where Art Thou?, pretty much sums up his dark-themed repertoire. “Pretty Polly” is an ancient murder ballad; “Rank Strangers” tells of returning home and finding no family or friends; “O Death,” also in the new film, is a conversation with the Grim Reaper, “O Death, spare me over till another year.”

        Even newer songs sounded old-time. “One Drop of Water” tells of a rich man in hell, pleading for relief.

        They were harsh songs about harsh lives, delivered by Mr. Stanley's severe mountain tenor and preacher's conviction.

        He started the night letting his current Clinch Mountain Boys take the spotlight. His son, Ralph Stanley II, sang “Pretty Girls, City Lights.” James Price fiddled “Cacklin' Hen.” Assistant banjo picker Steve Sparkman played Mr. Stanley's “Hard Times.” Mandolinist John Rigsby played Bill Monroe's “Rawhide.” Guitarist James Shelton picked the Carter Family's “Cannonball Blues.” Bassist Jack Cooke sang “Sittin on Top of the World.”

        But the SRO crowd, a mix of older bluegrass fans and young hipsters, really came alive 35 minutes into the show, when Mr. Stanley stepped forward and took over with his classics.

        Some of the best were the a cappella gospel quartets, “I'll Wear a White Robe” and “Gloryland.”

        His second set reached even further back, in a medley of pre-bluegrass clawhammer banjo tunes, including the first one Mr. Stanley learned as a boy from his mother, “Shout Little Lula.”

        Too much of the second show was filler, requests from the crowd that had little to do with Mr. Stanley's music.

        But he encored with another great quartet, leading “Amazing Grace” in the old church style. He promised the real thing and he delivered. And sold one heck of a lot of CDs, too.

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