Larry Sparks

Larry Sparks was born in Ohio and was still a teenager when Ralph Stanley hired him for the Clinch Mountain Boys in the mid-1960s, first on lead guitar and then singing lead in the wake of Carter Stanley's death. He left at the end of the decade to start the Lonesome Ramblers and has kept that name on the marquee ever since.

His guitar breaks bend and lag in a way that comes straight out of blues playing, and his reading of John Deere Tractor became the version other singers answer to. He works gospel material heavily, usually taking it slower than the audience expects.