“These Old Blues” was written by Larry Sparks. Born in 1947 and raised in Lebanon, Ohio, Sparks joined the Stanley Brothers in 1964, played guitar for Ralph Stanley after Carter Stanley’s death in December 1966, and formed the Lonesome Ramblers in late 1969.
Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers put it out on Old Homestead in 1974, as the B-side of the single “This Lonesome Old Feeling” (45 5034). The Bluegrass Discography gives that single a 1971 recording date at Bill Carpenter’s studio in Brighton, Michigan, with Sparks singing lead, Wendy Miller on mandolin and tenor, and Mike Lilly on banjo and baritone, Barney Carter on second guitar and Neal Brackett on bass. The same title opens side one of the LP The Lonesome Sounds of Larry Sparks & the Lonesome Ramblers, recorded in 1973 at Lemco Studio in Lexington, Kentucky, as the second track, with Dave Evans on banjo, Wendy Miller on mandolin, Ralph Meadows on fiddle and Art Wydner on bass. Sparks sang it again on his 1985 Old Homestead LP Live in Concert.
The words are a plain lament. A man whose girl has left him cannot shake the blues: he is as blue as he can be, gets up in the morning after a sleepless night of thinking about her, and wonders why she said goodbye. By the last verse he admits it is too late to start over, because a true love is hard to find.
Other bands took it up in the years that followed. The Shady Grove Band cut it for Flying Fish on On the Line (1987), the Hazel River Band on In the Main Stream (Hay Holler, 1994), and the New Coon Creek Girls on Our Point of View (Pinecastle, 1998). Don Rigsby recorded it for Empty Old Mailbox (Sugar Hill, 2000) with Carl Jackson on harmony vocal, J. D. Crowe on banjo and Jerry Douglas on dobro; NewFound Road included it on Somewhere Between (Mountain Home, 2004); and Russell Moore sang it on the Smithsonian Folkways collection Industrial Strength Bluegrass (2021).
