EGN NEWS DESK
Randy Sparks, a artistic impresario whose musical ensemble, the New Christy Minstrels, helped to jump-start the folks revival of the early Sixties and launched the careers of performers like John Denver, Steve Martin and Kenny Rogers, died on Sunday at an assisted-living facility in San Diego. He was 90.
His son Kevin confirmed the demise. Mr. Sparks had been residing on his 168-acre ranch in Jenny Lind, Calif., northeast of San Francisco, till a number of days earlier than his demise.
Before Beatlemania and the British invasion revolutionized American in style music, folks music dominated the airwaves — and maybe no group was extra ubiquitous than the New Christy Minstrels. They had been an almost fixed presence on tv and offered an estimated two million albums of their first three years.
Mr. Sparks was already effectively often known as a singer, songwriter and actor in Southern California when he drew collectively 9 different musicians in 1961 to type the group, which took its title from a preferred stage present within the 1840s led by Edwin P. Christy. Mr. Sparks was fast to notice that his group in any other case shared nothing with its namesake, a white group that had promoted the music of Stephen Foster in blackface.
His group was a success from the beginning; its debut album, “Presenting the New Christy Minstrels” (1962), received the Grammy Award for greatest efficiency by a refrain and stayed on the Billboard chart for 2 years.
Under Mr. Sparks’s course, the New Christy Minstrels rapidly received the general public’s consideration for his or her mix of tight harmonies and informal, upbeat materials. They performed each traditional folks songs, usually with trendy upgrades, and their very own unique works, a lot of which had been written by Mr. Sparks, together with three that made the Top 40: “Today,” “Saturday Night” and “Green, Green,” which he wrote with Barry McGuire.
“The Minstrels keep the kind of effervescent good spirits that should be bottled and offered at each grocery store within the land,” The New York Times wrote in 1964. “They counsel a Norman Rockwell portrait of 9 youths who’re smiling their approach by means of track and life.”
The folks scene performed out primarily in coffeehouses and on faculty campuses; Mr. Sparks’s innovation was to convey his group to nationwide consideration by getting it on community tv.
Between 1962 and 1963, the New Christy Minstrels appeared on 26 episodes of “The Andy Williams Show,” a preferred selection collection on NBC, and eight episodes of the folk-oriented ABC present “Hootenanny.”
In 1964, they even had their very own 30-minute summer-season present on NBC, “Ford Presents the New Christy Minstrels,” full with comedy interludes by Tony Hendra and Jackie Mason. That identical 12 months, they carried out on the steps of the White House, on the invitation of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Mr. Sparks demonstrated a eager eye for expertise. In addition to the rotating roster of the New Christy Minstrels, he maintained what he known as a “farm” group, the Back Porch Majority, which he stocked with promising performers.
After watching a younger Steve Martin win second place in a banjo competitors on the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park close to Los Angeles, Mr. Sparks invited him to hitch the Back Porch Majority and even let him stay in a spare room concerning the Sparks household’s storage.
Mr. Sparks additionally employed a budding singer-songwriter named Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. as a gap act for the Back Porch Majority, however insisted that Mr. Deutschendorf decide a shorter stage title. He selected John Denver.
Among the opposite stars who started their careers underneath Mr. Sparks’s tutelage had been Kenny Rogers, who went on to promote greater than 100 million information as a rustic star; Kim Carnes, greatest identified for her 1981 hit “Bette Davis Eyes”; Mr. McGuire, whose 1965 document “Eve of Destruction,” like “Bette Davis Eyes,” reached No. 1; Gene Clark, who grew to become a founding father of the Byrds; and Larry Ramos, who grew to become the primary Asian American to win a Grammy whereas a member of the New Christy Minstrels in 1963 and went on to hitch the Association.
As the group’s recognition and touring schedule expanded, Mr. Sparks stepped again from performing to concentrate on managing the ensemble. He additionally opened his personal membership in Los Angeles, Ledbetter’s, which he used as a testing floor for potential musicians.
Mr. Sparks offered his curiosity within the New Christy Minstrels within the mid-Sixties for $2.5 million, the equal of about $24 million at the moment, and moved his household to rural Northern California. There he started a 30-year working relationship along with his idol and mentor, Burl Ives. Mr. Sparks wrote songs for Mr. Ives and sometimes carried out as his opening act.
Lloyd Arrington Sparks was born on July 29, 1933, in Leavenworth, Kan., although his household quickly moved to Oakland, Calif., the place he grew up. His father, Lee Sparks, constructed furnishings and later labored in a shipyard. His mom, Pearl (Arrington) Sparks, ran the house.
He briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley, however left to jot down songs, which he had begun doing as a teen. However, not lengthy after relocating to San Diego and beginning to carry out underneath the stage title Randy Sparks, he was drafted into the U.S. Navy.
During his project aboard the plane service Princeton, he stored writing songs and enjoying music. He received a Navy expertise contest twice, an accomplishment that received him a spot on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and an element in a touring entourage of Navy musicians.
After leaving the service, Mr. Sparks signed a contract to look alongside the comic Bob Hope on tv and on tour. He additionally recorded two solo albums, “Randy Sparks” (1958) and “Walkin’ the Low Road” (1959), and made motion pictures: He had the lead function within the 1960 crime thriller “The Big Night” and a supporting half within the drama “College Confidential” that very same 12 months.
Clean-cut and square-jawed, Mr. Sparks had a face for tv, and he grew to become a daily on the numerous selection reveals that had been widespread fare on Nineteen Fifties TV. At first he performed calypso, however he quickly shifted to the folks music that was more and more in style within the bars and golf equipment round Los Angeles.
His marriage to Jackie Miller, who was briefly within the New Christy Minstrels, resulted in divorce. He married Diane Jergens, an actress, in 1962, and so they had been collectively till her demise in 2018. Along along with his son Kevin, he’s survived by one other son, Cameron; his daughters, Melinda and Amanda; his sister, Naomi Allen; and 4 grandchildren.
Mr. Sparks fashioned a folks trio along with his first spouse, Ms. Miller, however he aspired to a much bigger, richer sound. He persuaded two different folks teams to merge along with his, and, after he added a number of extra musicians, the New Christy Minstrels had been born.
After Mr. Ives, his mentor, died in 1995, Mr. Sparks reconnected with the New Christy Minstrels, who had been nonetheless performing with a brand new era of members. Mr. Sparks purchased again management of his creation, and for the subsequent 25 years he managed, wrote music for and carried out along with his outdated ensemble.
The venues had been a lot smaller, principally round Northern California, however Mr. Sparks didn’t thoughts.
“I don’t even care that there’s no marketplace for what I write,” he advised The Stockton Record in 2019. “I nonetheless write songs which are enjoyable to sing, and I’m nonetheless dedicated to instructing historical past with ditties.”
