Lonesome Larry

Larry Sparks

I saw Larry Sparks perform with his Lonesome Ramblers a few times during the 1990s, and they're still going strong. By the looks of it, the guitar he's holding could easily have been with him all the while -- even when the Lonesome Ramblers recorded one of their first albums, Rambling Bluegrass, in Nashville.

"Nashville," he says, is "an exciting place. When [I] think of Nashville, I think of the Grand Ole Opry and the people that's been there for years."

Larry is one of those peeps who's been there a tol'ably long time, and, before that, he was there -- like so many others -- in spirit, as a young boy sprawled in front of the "big stand-up floor radio."

"We used to listen to WSM every weekend," he recalls.

Earlier this year, he was inducted into the George D. Hay Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.

September

Who is this "lonesome rambler"?

He has been picking professionally now for nearly half a century, with 50 recorded projects to his name and numerous awards under his belt, including Best Male Vocalist and Album of the Year.

He began the year of my birth -- 1964 -- with the Stanley Brothers, playing lead guitar. He stayed on with Ralph following Carter's death until 1969 when he formed his own band, the Lonesome Ramblers. He has toured extensively, including in Canada and Japan, and appeared on TV programs such as Austin City Limits as well as at the Grand Ole Opry.

He first came to Nashville in 1969 with Ralph Stanley to record the now-legendary album Hills of Home. And like many of today's bluegrass heavyweights, he appears regularly at the Station Inn (where he is pictured above just prior to a performance).

Significant September dates in bluegrass history

• 3rd: The first bluegrass festival took place in Fincastle, Va. (1965)
• 9th: The father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, died (1996)
• 13th: Bill Monroe was born (1911)
• 16th: Bill Monroe records "Blue Moon of Kentucky" for Columbia Records (1946)
• 21st: Shawn Lane, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist for Blue Highway, was born (1971)
• 24th: Flatt & Scruggs record "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" (1962)
• 27th: Charlie Monroe, Bill's older brother, died (1975)
• 30th: The Stanley Brothers record "How Mountain Girls Can Love" (1958)

JD

J.D. Crowe

As in J.D. Crowe, not the kind of degree lawyers have. If degrees were handed out for bluegrass banjo (and in some places perhaps they are), this man would be at the head of the line.

Back in the 1960s, he three-finger-picked the banjo alongside Jimmy Martin, still considered one of the best rhythm guitarists in the business.

"I got to work the Opry with Jimmy and I met so many of the artists back then [who have] since passed away," he recalls. "That's some of my greatest memories of Nashville."

One of those who has passed is Martin, who died in 2005.

In the 1970s, Crowe relocated to Lexington, Kentucky, where his band, the Kentucky Mountain Boys (later the New South), had a steady, six-nights-a-week gig at the Holiday Inn. There he had the pleasure of picking with another premiere guitarist, Tony Rice, perhaps the best rhythm and lead player of that (or any) era of bluegrass.

In a recently published biography of Rice, Still Inside (Word of Mouth, 2010), Tony speaks highly of his former boss: "One thing's beyond dispute -- playing with Crowe shaped my guitar playing permanently," he says. "He is the guy who made me aware of the fact I have the capability of taking this guitar and having a rhythm section in my hand."

August

Who is this banjo-pickin' legend?

This silver-haired banjo picker, pictured here at the Station Inn, is a veteran -- and I do mean veteran -- of the Nashville scene. His first gig in Music City was as one of Jimmy Martin's Sunny Mountain Boys -- 57 years ago. (You do the math.)

"We came up and recorded some sessions over at Bradley's place," he says of those early days. "That was real exciting because I had never been in a recording studio like that. Being where it was in Nashville ... that was big time."

In the 1970s, he formed his own back-up band, the New South, whose list of members through the years reads like a Who's Who of bluegrass all-stars: Larry Rice, Tony Rice, Doyle Lawson, Keith Whitley, Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas, and Don Rigsby, to name but a few. The self-titled first album, released in 1975 and featuring the classic song "The Old Home Place," was one of the most widely influential bluegrass albums of the 20th century.

Significant August dates in bluegrass history

• 2nd: Lorraine Jordan, featured elsewhere in this calendar, was born (1961)
• 3rd: Paul Mullins, of the Traditional Grass (and a former Blue Grass Boy), died (2008)
• 8th: Osborne Brothers joined the Grand Ole Opry (1964)
• 10th: Jimmy Martin was born (1927)
• 13th: The same recorded "Sunny Side of the Mountain" (1964)
• 15th: County Sales began full-time operation (1965)
• 16th: Fiddler extraordinaire Vassar Clements died (2005)
• 18th: Charlie Waller died (2004)
• 20th: Ralph Stanley II was born (1978)
• 27th: Ralph II's uncle, Carter, was born (1925)

84 Years Young

Jesse McReynolds

Jesse McReynolds turned 84 last week, but he's still a-pickin' and a-grinnin', as evidenced by the mandolin workshop he gave at Bean Blossom last month -- attended by yours truly.

His older brother, Jim, with whom he performed for half a century, died in 2002 at age 75. After their brief foray into country music, they recorded such bluegrass standards as "Sweet Little Miss Blue Eyes," "I Wish You Knew," "Hard Hearted," and "Pardon Me."

In the mid-1990s, the duo was a regular at Terry Lease's midwestern festivals, where I saw them perform many times (the first being at Quincy, Illinois, in 1996).

These days, Jesse doesn't travel near as much and tends to stay pretty close to his home base in Nashville. He is pictured above at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop on Music Valley Drive in the Music City.

July

Who is this inventive mandolinist who turns 84 this month?

Along with his older brother, this mandolin picker came to Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry in 1964 to play bluegrass music.

But, he recalls nearly 50 years later, there "wasn't that many bluegrass groups then really around Nashville ... and there really wasn't that much work for bluegrass musicians getting on the package shows that was going out of Nashville."

So, to put food on the table, they went country -- for a time. They recorded several country songs, including"Diesel on My Tail" (1967), which peaked at no. 18 on the Billboard charts.

"That got us ... a lot more work so we could stay in the business," he says.

They eventually came back to bluegrass, their first love, and became regular performers at Bill Monroe's Bean Blossom festivals. This younger of the two brothers also developed a unique and influential style of playing the mandolin, called crosspicking, in which he applies certain bluegrass banjo techniques to the mandolin.

Significant July dates in bluegrass history

• 1st: Keith Whitley (Clinch Mountain Boys) and Dempsey Young (Lost & Found) were born (1954)
• 4th: Charlie Monroe (1903) and Peter Rowan (1942) were born; the Country Gentlemen formed (1957)
• 8th: Kenny Baker, longtime fiddler for the Blue Grass Boys, died (2011)
• 9th: Jesse McReynolds (1929) and Ronnie Bowman (1961) were born
• 10th: Bela Fleck was born (1958)
• 13th: Rhonda Vincent was born (1962)
• 18th: Ricky Skaggs was born (1954)
• 23rd: Alison Krauss was born (1971)

The Adcocks

Martha and Eddie

On June 14, 1987, the state of Virginia held Eddie Adcock Day to coincide with his induction into the Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame.

Be that as it may, since 1958, Eddie has called Nashville home.

"Used to be that the capital of bluegrass was Washington, DC, but that changed," he says. "Everybody moved down here ... and it's where things are happening."

Martha "moved down" in the early 1970s, fulfilling a lifelong dream.

"When I started writing songs, and then when I was a teenager, I started thinking about Nashville," she recalls. "It had become a hotbed, an amalgamation of the kinds of music that I was really enjoying -- everything from folk to bluegrass to old timey and country."

It still is a hotbed, and it still is where things (musically, at least) are happening.