Album:
James 'Sparky' Rucker
Size: 113,2 MB
Time: 48:01
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 1984
Styles: Acoustic Blues
Art: Front
01. Babylon Blues (4:46)
02. Lay My Burdon Down (3:50)
03. M & O Blues (3:51)
04. Blues In A Bordertown Jail (2:48)
05. Drive Back The Night (5:39)
06. A Song For Babe (4:45)
07. Satisfied And Tickled Too (4:04)
08. Kind-Hearted Woman (4:10)
09. Break Of Day Blues (2:38)
10. A Beautiful Life (3:24)
11. Rock Me Baby (3:59)
12. Crossroads (4:01)
JAMES “SPARKY” RUCKER has been singing songs and telling stories for over fifty years. Sparky accompanies himself on guitar, banjo, and spoons, and has released fifteen recordings.
Sparky grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee and began playing guitar at age eleven. He is descended from a long line of preachers and law enforcement officers, and his sense of justice stems from both of these traditions. Sparky's raucous guitar and singing styles are a direct result of his having performed in many doo-wop, soul, and rock bands.
Sparky has been involved with the civil rights movement since the 1950s. He participated in workshops at the Highlander Center with many prominent people, including Rosa Parks, Myles Horton, and Bernice Reagon. As an activist, he worked with the Poor People's Campaign and several civil rights organizations, including SNCC, SCLC, and SSOC. He marched shoulder-to-shoulder with SNCC Freedom Singers Matthew and Marshall Jones and sang at rallies, marches, and sit-ins alongside other folksingers such as Guy Carawan and Pete Seeger. He worked to win recognition and benefits for white Southern Appalachian coal miners as a staff member of the Council of the Southern Mountains in the 1970s.
After graduating from University of Tennessee, Sparky taught school in Chattanooga before becoming a full-time folksinger. Although he no longer works as a formal schoolteacher, he and Rhonda now reach thousands of children each year as they travel across the country and give educational performances in schools and colleges.
During Sparky's career as a folksinger and social activist, he has been on the boards of Sing Out! magazine, the John Henry Memorial Foundation, and the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project (SFCRP). He also toured throughout the South with the SFCRP for several years with such luminaries as John D. Loudermilk, Johnny Shines, Ola Belle Reed, Dewey Balfa, Dock Boggs, Anne Romaine, Alice Gerrard, Hazel Dickens, Nimrod Workman, Hedy West, Mike Seeger, and Bessie Jones & the Georgia Sea Island Singers.
Sparky's early blues mentors include Rev. Pearly Brown (who taught Duane Allman how to play bottleneck-style guitar), Buddy Moss (who taught Blind Boy Fuller), and Johnny Shines (who traveled with blues legend Robert Johnson). He also picked up pointers from Babe Stovall, Big Joe Williams, John Jackson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, and many others. The legendary "Blues Queen" Victoria Spivey pushed his career in the 1970s. Sparky’s blues and bottleneck style of guitar playing makes him a popular teacher at folk music camps.
As an author, JAMES “SPARKY” RUCKER contributed stories to anthologies such as Breathing the Same Air, More Ready-To-Tell Tales and The August House Book of Scary Stories. He was a contributing author for the Encyclopedia of Appalachia and also co-wrote a chapter for the storytelling book, Team Up! Tell In Tandem!
James 'Sparky' Rucker
Album:
Heroes & Hard Times Black American Ballads And Story
Size: 133,1 MB
Time: 56:24
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2002
Styles: Folk Blues
Art: Front
01. John Henry/Po' Boy (8:09)
02. Take This Hammer (1:47)
03. I've Been Working On The Railroad (1:08)
04. 900 Miles (3:39)
05. Stagger Lee (4:41)
06. Follow The Drinking Gourd (3:16)
07. John Hardy (6:15)
08. Delia Holmes (7:58)
09. Poor Lazarus (5:29)
10. Yellow Rose Of Texas (3:26)
11. Tribute To Harriet Tubman/Battle Hymn Of The Republic (2:06)
12. Go Down, Moses (4:11)
13. Jesse James (4:13)
Feat. John Davis & Rhonda H. Rucker.
Rucker is a folklorist who uses his research to add new life to songs that have become old and tired. From his new album, we learn of John Henry as a real man helping to build the C&O Railroad in 1875, of John Hardy as a real man hung in 1894 in West Virginia, and of a real woman slave named Emily Morgan West who was the "Yellow Rose of Texas." Rucker has a wonderfully gentle voice. but he can also belt out work songs. His guitar and banjo playing combined with fine harmonica playing by John Davis provide perfect setttings for Rucker’s singing of these songs. This is foIk music at its best. Rucker is such a good singer and storyteller that you listen. to every word even though you think you know the story, and then you discover it's a much richer story than you had thought. Sparky Rucker has released several albums to my knowledge [including “Cold & Lonesome on a Train (C TR001) which] is still available. It also is very good, though not this good.
Heroes & Hard Times Black American Ballads And Story
