“Natural Thing to Do” appears on Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers’ 1987 Rebel album Silver Reflections. Sparks, a former Stanley Brothers lead singer (he succeeded Carter Stanley in 1966), built the Lonesome Ramblers around his hard, lonesome lead vocal and a deeply traditional repertoire centered on the Stanley lineage.
The song was written by Leroy Drumm and Pete Goble, who contributed a number of original pieces to the traditional-bluegrass circuit through the 1980s and 1990s. The song’s authorship is not consistently documented in the publicly available discographic sources for this particular track. The Sparks catalogue mixes self-written pieces, Stanleys-derived material, and outside contributions from songwriters in the harder traditional camp; the Rebel CD liner notes are the firmest reference for the writer attribution.
The lyric is a decision-and-surrender piece: the narrator’s heart drawn back to a former lover even though his judgement knows better, the pull described as the most natural thing in the world. Sparks’s lead vocal — one of the most distinctive in traditional bluegrass — carries the lyric without overplaying it. The song works as a moderate-tempo vocal piece in G with a clear chorus harmony slot.
