"...it's a gem...what a collection of songs...villans and victims of earlier times in Black America stagger and swagger through this album, with their stories enriched by careful...and very informative album notes...buy a copy for your children's school..." Emily Friedman Come For To Sing/Chicago "Rucker has a warm, rough hewn voice, plays fine finger-picking and slide guitar; John Davis' harmonica is just beautiful. A must album for folk-blues." Chris Lunn Victory Music Folk and Jazz Review "A musical as well as an instructional success." Mary Armstrong WXPN Express "Many of the ballads are familiar, but the vocal and instrumental stylings and especially the raw emotion which Rucker brings to them makes it seem we are hearing them for the first time." Jon Wilcox Folk Scene Best for all ages ... Rucker is a surefooted, commanding singer whose voice and treatment...has the true ring of authenticity...among the best traditional records for a long time." Eamonn O Cathain Revue "...songs of real history, songs that built the railroads and guided escaped slaves to safety...I urge you to seek this one out." Dan Buckley Sounds Around FULL REVIEW # 1 BY EMILY FRIEDMAN: “OF YELLOW ROSES AND BLACK BALLADEERS” There seems to be a prevailing sense that most of the important black cultural traditions have been catalogued - blues, gospel music, folklore, tales, even black oral history (through the work of the remarkable Bernice Reagon and others). Well that's not exactly so. In the first place, we have catalogued more black culture than we have preserved. We know about blues greats Furry Lewis, Big Walter Horton and Sleepy John Estes - to mention a few who have passed away in recent years - but they died insufficiently recorded, interviewed, filmed - or financed. Furthermore, much black creativity has been carried on in watered-down, distorted form - Marvin Gaye and Arthur Crudup's works are best known through the inaccurate, self-serving versions of their songs performed (and sometimes pirated) by the Rolling Stones and others. Most important, huge sections of black American culture old and new have largely escaped our attention. Some of this is due to the vagaries of written and oral tradition; some of it is due to political forces of one kind or another (remember that Booker T. Washington was "acceptable" long before Sojourner Truth was); and some of it is due to the fact that certain purely oral black traditions became inextricably linked with white and other traditions quite early on, and extracting the black elements at this late date can be a terribly difficult and ambiguos task. However, there are those who are willing to try, and one of the foremost members of this small clan of believer/researchers is a young black musician named Sparky Rucker, of Knoxville, TN. (when he's not on the road, which he is most of the time). Rucker is a ‘60's-generation child who became interested in a part of black heritage that few others were pursuing - the legacy of black American ballads. These are the story songs - the long, often complex musical tales that we tend to associate more with the Anglo-Celtic tradition than with Black America. Rucker believed that there was a black ballad tradition in this country, and while filling an impressive concert, festival and recording schedule, set out to try to document what he could find. DOUBLE MEANINGS. His first major findings were published in Sing Out! magazine (Vol.24,No.6, 1976), in a splendid article in which he traced the legendary "Railroad Bill" back from current folklore to the person of one Morris Slater, a black hobo and fugitive from the law who was shot to death in 1897. The article included what was certainly the most extensive collection of verses to the "Railroad Bill" song family ever published. But we had to wait until quite recently to hear much of Sparky's newer research. Finally, in Heroes and Hard Times (Green Linnet), he has collected some of these ballads and their stories in album form. Richly accompanied by his friend and colleague John Davis, and embellishing his own mellow-but-edgy singing with a wide range of instrumental and percussive effects, Rucker has produced a most important musical document. Here you will find the black railroad workers, criminals, victims and heroes who have contributed so much to American folk song. The double-meaning language developed by slaves to guide those who fled for freedom, the viciousness of the stevedore we have come to know as Stagger Lee, the unfortunate gambling lady Delia ("Delia's Gone") Holmes, and the wicked John Hardy - last man to be publicly hanged in West Virginia - all come bursting out of this record. The notes tell us how, when and where, and sometimes why these songs developed, and who the real people were whose lives inspired them. I don't want to give away too much - this information is too important and was collected with too much effort - but I can give one example. We tend to think of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" as a Texas military marching tune. It will be a surprise - if not a shock - to many to learn that the "yellow rose" was a light- skinned slave named Emily Morgan West who took up with the Mexican general Santa Anna, learned his plans for the Battle of San Jacinto, and then ran the lines to get the information to Sam Houston. West was held in such high regard that the lyrics of the song, we learn, were originally a poem written in her honor. Sparky found all of this out by following a hunch; the original lyrics spoke of "the sweetest rose of color that Texas ever knew," and he suspected that these lyrics referred to a black woman. It was with a good deal of satisfaction, he told me later, that he learned that his research was absolutely correct, and that the original poem was archived in a Texas museum. All of us who are involved with folk culture love to hear - and to tell - stories like that; but in this time of retrenchment, the re-emergence of "fashionable" racism, and the potential disenfranchisement of black Americans, this wonderful record takes on a special significance. It is particularly poignant that the last cut on the album consists of a moving tribute to Harriet Tubman, including a verse of The Battle Hymn of the Republic that she is said to have written herself. What she began is a long way from being finished, and we can be grateful to Sparky Rucker for giving us a few more links on the cultural chain that ties us to her. Emily Friedman is editor of Come for to Sing, a quarterly folk music journal published in Chicago. FULL REVIEW # 2 BY JOHN WEINGART: 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. FULL REVIEW # 3: TODD STEED The Greatest Knoxville Records of All Time Metro Pulse; Knoxville, TN Sparky Rucker Heroes and Hard Times Sparky Rucker is the quintessential roving troubadour. He's played all over the world like a modern-day Woody Guthrie, Knoxville-style-or Lonas Road style, if you will. (Sparky grew up on Lonas Road.) He's a great storyteller and the stories are told both in and between his songs. Not only a great writer, Rucker also does valid reworkings of folk classics on his various recordings. This may be his best one, though I also favor Cold and Lonesome on a Train, which is one of the best blues-folk records of recent memory. His Laurel Theater shows are always a much-anticipated treat as well. (T.S.) Todd Steed