The Blue and Gray in Black and White

Rhonda and Sparky Rucker | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 1, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Flying Fish Records
• ASIN: B000000MTU
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #473,740 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available.
Genre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 1-SEP-1999

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, and not just as a novelty recording, October 20, 1999

By 

Edjucaided Redneck (Appalachian Kentucky) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Blue and Gray in Black and White (Audio CD)

Ol' Sparky's been around for a long time as a sort of second string folksinger, playing second string concerts and festivals and I used to see him around Lafayette IN with some regularity. His versions of the old songs are well done, even educational: the tape features, for instance, four different songs which share a tune with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," commencing with "Say Brother Will You Meet Us," the old camp meeting tune that was still being sung at revivals when I was a boy. The accompaniment is period banjo and guitar, snare drums and fifes, that sort of thing, and his wife Rhonda provides a fine subtle background harmony.

Oh yeah, about the novelty stuff.

Sparky Rucker's black.

Rhonda's a quite white descendant of Lt. Col. William R. Thedford, CSA.

Children, I _know_ some of us ain't the most liberal of souls, occasionally find old lessons echoing internally, whether we still approve of them or not. And do take note of that there pronoun; my dog's in this fight as much as anyone's.

But the descendant of slaves singing unCivil War songs with his wife, whose ancestors wore gray seems to me to whisper there may yet be a very slight hope for us all.

Give it a listen. It ain't too shabby a'tall.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overlooked aspect of Civil War on fine display here, April 25, 2004

By 

chefdevergue (Spokane, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Blue and Gray in Black and White (Audio CD)

For those of you who don't know Sparky Rucker --- and that would be most of you --- he has been something of a wandering minstrel for close to 3 decades now. He is, for my money, the best blues musician you have never heard of. His older albums are still available through his website, and they are worth listening to.

Sparky is not just a musician, however. He is an educator and historian as well. For all of the time he devotes to giving concerts, he is surprisingly well-read, and he knows his stuff quite well. Someone such as myself, with a professional background in history, can usually spot gaps in a non-academic historian's education, and when talking with Sparky about the Civil War & the antebellum south, it becomes clear that Sparky can hold his own with most historians. On the other hand, I cannot attest to the skill on the guitar of William C. Davis, Stephen Sears, or James McPherson, for example.

He married Rhonda in the late 1980's, and they have released three albums together. This album is something of a companion piece to a Civil War program that Sparky & Rhonda frequently give in shcools or other venues. Sparky didn't plan originally to do a Civil War program --- he and Rhonda knew a few Civil War songs here and there, but the costume program he usually gave had to do with the West and the Buffalo Soldiers. Someone who had seen one of these programs asked Sparky if he might be able to put together a similar program dealing with the Civil War. That was maybe 14 years ago, and it remains a very popular program in the schools.

For a subject as carefully scrutinized as the Civil War, it is surprising how little time has been devoted to the music of that conflict. Sparky & Rhonda deal with the overriding preoccupations among the soldiers on both sides --- devotion to country, devotion to family & loved ones, and religious faith. They also deal with unreconstructed Confederates, which as Sparky will tell you, are a very real element in Southern culture even today.

This is a fine album, from both a historical and musical standpoint. If you have a chance to see Sparky & Rhonda in concert (they finally visited Spokane again after a 12-year absence), by all means do it. The concert setting is the best way to experience their music, but this album also is very much worth acquiring.