Larry Sparks

He was born in Lebanon on 25 September 1947. His older sister Bernice showed him his first chords on the guitar when he was about five, his father played clawhammer banjo, and singing in church led to radio appearances as a child, singing religious songs. The radio also shaped what he listened to. Wayne Raney’s programs on WCKY in Cincinnati featured the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe and Reno and Smiley, while WLAC in Nashville introduced him to blues artists, an influence that can be heard in his guitar playing. Around 1960, at thirteen, he was already playing locally with regional groups.

At the end of November 1964 he joined the Stanley Brothers as lead guitarist, singing an occasional baritone part in the trios; a tape of the band at the University of Chicago Folk Festival in January 1965 has him playing lead on “When You and I Were Young, Maggie.” Carter Stanley died on 1 December 1966. By Sparks’s own account, Ralph Stanley hired him at Tom’s Tavern, a club in Dayton, Ohio, around 7 February 1967, and until he had gear of his own he wore Carter’s shoes and played Carter’s 1954 Martin D-28. For about two years he was the lead singer and lead guitarist of the Clinch Mountain Boys, and in that time the band made five albums, two for the Dayton label Jalyn and three for King: Brand New Country Songs, Over the Sunset Hill and The Hills of Home. He left around the end of 1969.

Ramblin’ Guitar, on the Pine Tree label, launched his career as a leader, and New Gospel Songs and Pickin’ and Singin’ followed there, with Ramblin’ Bluegrass on Starday. These records carried songs of his own, among them “These Old Blues,” “How I’ve Tried,” “King Jesus,” “Memories and Dreams” and “Too Much Mountain Dew,” and some of them were made up entirely of gospel material, which has stayed in his repertoire ever since. The early Lonesome Ramblers included the mandolinist Wendy Miller and the banjo player Mike Lilly. Through the 1970s came Bluegrass Old and New (Old Homestead, 1972), Footsteps of Tradition (King Bluegrass, 1974), Sparklin’ Bluegrass (1975), and You Could Have Called and Christmas in the Hills (both 1976). You Could Have Called brought in Tom Boyd on Dobro, with Mike Lilly on banjo, and the young Ricky Skaggs on mandolin, fiddle and harmony vocals.

A tribute to Hank Williams for County, with the veteran fiddler Chubby Wise, preceded his first album for Rebel, John Deere Tractor, made with fiddler Kirk Brandenberger and Boyd. Its title song was later recorded by the Judds, and the album also includes “Great High Mountain,” “Girl at the Crossroads Bar,” “Love of the Mountains” and the guitar solo “Carter’s Blues.” Since the early 1980s most of his recordings have come out on Rebel, among them The Testing Times, Silver Reflections and Lonesome and Then Some: A Classic 50th Celebration. 40, produced by Don Rigsby, won the IBMA’s Album of the Year and Recorded Event of the Year in 2005, the second of his two years as Male Vocalist of the Year. He also made Almost Home for Rounder and The Last Suit You Wear for McCoury Music.

Over the decades the Lonesome Ramblers have included the banjo players Joe Isaacs, Dave Evans, Scott Vestal, Barry Crabtree and Josh McMurray; the mandolinists David Harvey and Scott Napier; the fiddlers Joe Meadows, Kirk Brandenberger and Stuart Duncan; and his son Larry D. “Dee” Sparks on bass. Sparks has performed on the Grand Ole Opry, Austin City Limits and other PBS programs and has toured Canada and Japan. In 2025 the band was booked for concerts that included one at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky.