"It's an absolute must to see Sparky in concert!"
U. UTAH PHILLIPS"Sparky has a rare musical talent combined with a scholarly interest in his material."
SAM HINTON
"Rhonda is a talented performer, accompanying her husband on harmonica and harmony vocals. It's on the harmonica that she really shines, reflecting her study of Sonny Terry's techniques and her study with harmonica wizard Phil Wiggins."
GIL BLISS,
New Bedford Standard Times
JAMES "SPARKY" RUCKER has been singing songs and telling stories from the American tradition for over forty years. Sparky accompanies himself on guitar, banjo, and spoons, and has released twelve recordings.
RHONDA HICKS RUCKER practiced medicine for five years before becoming a full-time folk musician. She is a versatile performer, playing blues harmonica, piano, banjo, and adding vocal harmonies. Rhonda appears on six recordings with her husband. Their 1991 release, Treasures and Tears, was nominated for the W.C. Handy Award for Best Traditional Recording.
SPARKY grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee and began playing guitar at age eleven. He also played trumpet in the Junior High marching band and sang in church, school, and community choirs throughout his childhood. After graduating from University of Tennessee, Sparky taught school in Chattanooga. He was active in the Civil Rights Movement, playing freedom songs at rallies, marches, and sit-ins, alongside other folksingers such as Guy Carawan and Pete Seeger.
Sparky is descended from a long line of Church of God, Sanctified preachers and law enforcement officers, and his sense of justice stems from both of these traditions. Sparky's mother and father, who were church officers, instilled a love of singing in him as a child, and his mother also gave him a love of art and culinary skills. Sparky's raucous guitar and singing styles are a direct result of his having performed in many doo-wop, soul, and rock bands.
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 Johnny Shines, Olabelle Reed, 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 when Sparky joined the Spivey recording family. Sparky’s expert blues and bottleneck style of guitar playing makes him a popular teacher at folk music camps and schools such as Common Ground on the Hill in Maryland and the Augusta Heritage Center in West Virginia.RHONDA RUCKER, from Louisville, Kentucky, has played piano since the age of four. She took piano lessons for many years from Fannie Woods Mansfield, an elderly woman who was both a ragtime composer and an organist at the local Baptist Church. As a teenager, Rhonda also took organ lessons, voice lessons, and taught herself to play guitar. She grew up in the Methodist Church, learning many of the old hymns and gospel songs, and she substituted for the organist when he couldn't make it to church. Rhonda also acted in community plays and sang in her high school chorus.Rhonda's father worked as a full-time research chemist for thirty-five years, earning 66 U.S. patents during his career. Rhonda and her two brothers studied medicine, so there were three doctors in the family until Rhonda decided to become a full-time musician. Rhonda completed her medical degree and her internal medicine residency at University of Kentucky in Lexington. She practiced medicine for five years in Maryville, Tennessee.In 1989 Rhonda began teaching herself how to play blues harmonica, and she began playing on stage with Sparky during that same year. She began by studying the techniques of Sonny Terry, the renowned blues harp player, but she quickly branched out to other styles of playing. Her expressive style of playing harmonica perfectly complements Sparky's guitar or banjo. Rhonda has also added clawhammer banjo and rhythmic bones to her instrumental repertoire, adding variety to their stage performances.In recent years, Rhonda discovered that her childhood piano teacher, Fannie Bell Woods Mansfield, was not receiving credit for writing "Sweetness Rag," one of her own compositions that she used to teach her students. Mrs. Mansfield was born in 1892, and she had written "Sweetness Rag" when she was 19 years old and dedicated it to her husband-to-be, William J. Mansfield. Mrs. Mansfield had received $75.00 for it, and it was a nationwide hit. When Rhonda discovered that someone else was receiving credit for writing "Sweetness Rag," she made some phone calls to Mrs. Mansfield's family members and contacted the ragtime community members who had listed the wrong composer, and Mrs. Mansfield is finally receiving credit for her writing. Mrs. Mansfield's influence is evident in Rhonda's powerful, barrelhouse piano playing as well as her rocking gospel melodies.As an author, JAMES "SPARKY" RUCKER contributed to Breathing the Same Air, an East Tennessee anthology of writings released in 2000. Also in 2000, he contributed to More Ready-To-Tell Tales, an anthology of stories from many of the nation’s best professional storytellers. SPARKY AND RHONDA have each written articles for the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, which was published by the University of Tennessee Press.RHONDA RUCKER'S performing credits include the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.k the Kerrville Folk Festival, the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, the Clearwater Folk Festival, the Vancouver Folk Festival, and the Robert Johnson Memorial Blues Festival.As a keynote speaker and a performer, SPARKY RUCKER has performed at such venues as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and the Chicago Cultural Center. He has also performed at major folk festivals, including Philadelphia, Smithsonian, Piccolo Spoletto (South Carolina), Vancouver, Winnepeg, Clearwater, Walnut Valley, Gürten-Bern (Switzerland), and the International Children's Festival at Wolf-Trap Farm Park.