“These Old Blues” was written by Larry Sparks, the bluegrass singer and guitarist. He recorded it in the early 1970s, and it appeared on a Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers album as the kind of slow, blues-shaded song that became his trademark.
The song is a study in loneliness. The singer is weighed down by these old blues — a sorrow that will not lift — and the lyric stays close to that low, weary feeling. Sparks built much of his style on exactly this mood: heartache sung slow and deep.
The song carried into the wider bluegrass repertoire. The version heard here is by Don Rigsby.
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