Truefire.com is proud to present Fingerstyle Guitar Wizard Tim Sparks performing and explaining his amazing renditions of American Roots Music in "Roots, Rags, and Blues."
Roots, Rags and Blues is an interactive instructional and performance CD-ROM that includes 7 different Roots guitar tunes taught in video and tab lessons plus 6 bonus video performances of Blues, Ragtime, Gospel, Early Jazz and Klezmer, played on a Collings Custom Cutaway and a vintage 1917 Gibson L-4.
Featured selections include, the Mississippi Blues, Amazing Grace (in two different versions), Jelly Roll Blues, Oriental Blues, Maple Leaf Rag, Victory Rag, Carolina Shout and a fingerstyle lesson on the 1918 Klezmer classic, Tanst, Tanst Yiddlekh.
This package captures American Roots Music from the early part of the 20th Century, as reflected through fingerstyle guitar. The lessons and performances come with matching tablature, notation and extensive liner notes with internet hyperlinks.
Roots, Rags, and Blues is a terrific value with 7 hours of instruction plus 6 bonus performance videos and a bonus audio CD, all for the price of one lesson.
Order Roots, Rags and Blues online at TrueFire.com
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Order Tim Sparks CDs and music transcriptions online at:MaraHaley Music
Check out Tim Sparks playing the Mississippi Blues Live on YouTube
Check out Tim Sparks playing the Original Jelly Roll Blues Live on YouTube
Check out Tim Sparks playing Fats Waller's Alligator Crawl Live on YouTube
Tim Sparks CDs
Jazz Times Magazine review
November 2002-
The Jewish music agenda of John Zorn's Tzadik label takes a gentle left turn with the albums of acoustic fingerstyle guitarist Tim Sparks. As heard on his pleasing new collection, At The Rebbe's Table (Tzadik), the familiar twang of the steel-string instrument gives an unexpected musical spin to material from the klezmer songbook (including the title song), tunes by guitarist Flory Jagoda and other corners of the Jewish musical universe. On a tune like "Todos Si Hueron," Cyro Baptista's undulant percussion and Greg Cohen's coolly seductive bass put us in mind mainly of Brazil.
As noted in Sparks notes about the project, one historical link is to the Judeo-Arabic culture in Spain, the guitar's ancestral homeland. When Sparks and Marc Ribot (on both steel-string and classical guitar) delicately interweave and swap licks, the Spanish interpretation rings true. On Zorn's own tender tune "Mahshav," from the Radical's soft side, Sparks' sensitive solo reading begs a more universal appreciation. Whatever the heritage or cultural pedigree, it's simply touching music. - Josef Woodard
Downbeat Magazine December 2000-
For his second Tzadik album, Sparks intelligently and lovingly arranges some of his favorite songs from the Oriental, Sephardic and Yiddish canons of Jewish music for his guitar and, often, Greg Cohen's string bass and Cyro Baptista's percussion. With impeccable control, he imparts quiet depth to his close study of the melodies, harmonies and unusual rhythms belonging to, say, the Caucasus Mountains region wedding song "Aji Tu Yorma?" and four Depression-era compositions credited to the storied klezmer clarinetist Naftule Brandwein. No small achievement, Sparks conveys the pathos of the Diaspora in his music. 5 stars
Frank-John Hadley
Amazon.com's Editor's Pick Best of 1999-
You'd never guess that in presenting a slice of "radical Jewish culture," John Zorn would produce an album as exquisitely beautiful as guitarist Tim Sparks's Neshamah. Collecting traditional Jewish melodies from throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East, this collection mixes the architecture of the melodies with Sparks's fast fingerwork, corralling the latter into discreet enough bits to create a constant sense of movement and drama. Given the prevalence of full bands in much Balkan and Klezmer music, Sparks's solo renditions have an awe-inducing power. He cherishes not only each note, even when they're coming with flashing speed, but he equally indulges each bent-string twist and turn.
--Andrew Bartlett
"This is totally beautiful and inspiring music, warm and soulful, rich with melody, harmony and rhythm. Every guitarist on the planet has got to hear this. Tim Sparks is incredible, a complete original." —Bill Frisell
Guitar Player Magazine December 1999-
A fingerstyle wizard, Tim Sparks draws from many musical traditions on One String Leads to Another. Strains of Celtic, country blues, ragtime, Appalachian, Turkish, Indian, and Italian melodies all find their way into Sparks' solo originals. It takes a skilled muscian - as opposed to guitarist- to weave such diverse rhythmic and harmonic threads into whole cloth, yet Sparks makes it happen.
Whether thumbing a bass-note drone against bluesy double-stops and sitar like bends, plucking sheets of rippling arpeggios, or playing counterpoint lines at breakneck speed, Sparks is remarkably adventurous-and that's what separates him from the pack. There are many skilled solo-acoustic guitarists making CDs today, but few can match Sparks' verve and intensity. On this live and natural-sounding record, we hear a restless, probing mind, rather than a series of refined techniques.
Andy Ellis, Senior Editor GP
"I'm Tim Sparks' biggest fan. His stuff is very difficult to play but it doesn't sound difficult. I think that's real musicianship. He's really one of the best musicians I know. When he started playing the oud, I envisioned Tim wearing one of those little leather hats that makes you look like a barstool, and drinking some kind of Turkish coffee. I thought we were losing him; I thought he was getting Balkanized, and we'd never hear from him again. But we have, and he came back and brought it all with him."
"Balkan Dreams sounded as if he had grown up in Sofia in his dad's string band because he understood it so well, but he managed to bring some Tim Sparks to it after a while, so it no longer sounded like Bulgaria or Minnesota. It sounded like something else. It's very hard to do that. He can do that."
-- Leo Kottke
"Sparks won the 1993 National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship playing his solo guitar arrangement of Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker Suite' - a fine voicing with wondrous lines..."
-- Chris Lunn, Victory Review
"An exhilarating, odd-meter minefield inspired by Near Eastern music. An important recording from a gifted composer, arranger and performer."
-- Guitar Player Magazine
"Masada Guitars"
Acoustic Guitar Magazine
July 2003
By Teja Gerken
Featuring Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, and Tim Sparks (playing individually, not together), Masada Guitars presents solo guitar arrangements of Jewish music written by an avant-garde jazz saxophonist - not something you come across every day. It consists of music from John Zorn's Masada repertoire and is a testament to the stunning capabilities of three of the finest players on the jazz guitar scene.
Except for a few tracks by Frisell (such as "Katzatz" which recalls the best of his "out" electric days), Masada Guitars is all about stretching the limits of the acoustic guitar. Between Ribot's wobbling-yet-brilliant arrangement of "Kedem" and Sparks' multitiered rendition of "Ravayah", the album explores a huge range of the instrument's possibilities. Quirky virtuosity is a large part of its appeal, but Masada Guitars is also full of some incredibly beautiful music.
Influences
Years ago I was playing with Brother Jack McDuff, the great Jazz Organist. We were rehearsing Tobacco Road and I was taking a solo in double-time bop style. Captain Jack stopped everything, gave me the look, and said, "Son, do you know the difference between chicken salad and chicken sh-t? Don't be puttin' ketchup on my ice cream!"
He wanted me to play the blues on Tobacco Road. I learned a valuable lesson that day which would influence many artistic decisions in the years to come.
Other Influences
Doc Watson, Sun Ra, William Burroughs, Maybelle Carter, Cartoons, Ry Cooder, Monk, Greg Cohen, Fletcher Henderson, John Zorn, Earl Hines, James Joyce, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry, The Flying Burrito Brothers, John dos Passos, Grady Martin, Dan Hicks, David Lyndley, Carol Reed, Rembetika, Grenada, Cordoba, Sevilla, Lisboa, Dominguinos, Nilton Rangel, Mary Ann O'Dougherty, Gershom Scholem, The Boswell Sisters, Charlie Christian, Maury Bernstein, Jesus Silva, Yanaris Asemakis, Blind Blake, Blind Willie Mctell, Blind Boys of Alabama, Absinthe, Nicky Stavrou, Charlie Parker, Philip K. Dick, Marc Stillman, Robert Anton Wilson, Billie Holiday, Pat Donohue, Raphael Requeni, Robert Johnson, Dan McCorrison, Faulkner, Harpo, Jellyroll Morton, Raphael Rabello, Miguel Angel Asturias, Picasso, Giotto, Tiziano, Duck Baker, Peter Finger, Moby Dick, Chet Baker, Franco Morone, Dean Magraw, Borges, Pasolini, Rumi, Yeats, The Black Madonna, the Baal Shem Tov, Lenny Breau, Ed Bickert, Roger Hernandez, Cervantes, Gary Berg, Bach, Bartok, Kodaly, Tony Hauser, Tchaikovsky, Junior Brown, Luther Allison, Babe Stovall, Eddie Berger, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dollar Brand, Randy Weston, Fats Waller, Duke, Dexter, Oscar De Leon, MC5, Spade Cooley, Laurindo Almeida, Fado, Pedro Cabral, Eddie Goltz, Doc Cook's Dreamland Orchestra, Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, Blind Willie Dunn and Lonnie Johnson, Paris, Venice, Padova, Bud Powell, Louis Armstrong, Cyro Baptista, Hermeto Pasqual, Chico Buarque, Fellini, Werner Herzog, Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Nate Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, Gospel Music, Mexican Baroque, Fuentes, Piazolla, Sandor Szabo, Agustin Barrios, Johnny Winter, Jimi, Segovia, Slide Hampton, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Willie Murphy.
Currently dividing my time between gigs and teaching a guitar program at the University of Minnesota in Morris, a small school of about 1,800 out on the western prairie ( rated in the Top 5 public Liberal Arts Schools in the US.) We're learning Bach, Barrios, Bluegrass, Be-Bop, Bossa Nova, Giant Steps, Michael Hedges, DADGAD, Django, Merle, Chet, Doc, Wes, Metallica, Shred....my students are all amazing!
TIM SPARKS BIO:Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Tim Sparks started picking out tunes by ear on an old Stella flat top during a bout of encephalitis that kept him out of school for a year. He taught himself to play the music he heard around him: traditional country blues and the gospel his grandmother played on piano in a small church in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
At age 14, Tim was nominated by a musically astute uncle for a scholarship at the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts. There he studied the classics with Segovia protege Jesus Silva while continuing to play all kinds of music, increasingly turning to classic jazz for inspiration. He adapted compositions by Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, and Fats Waller to the guitar, frequently reducing piano arrangements to their essence. Early influences were Doc Watson, Arthur Smith, and most importantly Duck Baker, who opened up a horizon of possibilities for fingerstyle guitar.
After a stint on the road with a Chicago-based rhythm and blues band, Sparks arrived in Minnesota where he soon established himself as a journeyman guitarist and session player. While recording three albums with the seminal vocal jazz ensemble Rio Nido, Sparks also became proficient in jazz styles from Brazilian to Be Bop. It was at this time he arranged Carla Bley's composition "Jesus Maria" for Leo Kottke. ( Rio Nido's first two vinyl recordings have recently been re-issued on CD on the Japanese Vivid Sound Label. Check out
Rio Nido
Sparks also found time to revive his interest in classical music, adapting Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite to the guitar, a work that has been cited as a significant contribution to solo guitar literature. For Sparks it was a labor of love that earned him the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas in 1993.
A sojourn abroad inspired his interest in European and Mediterranean styles, particularly the music of the Balkans. Upon his return to Minnesota, Sparks immersed himself in the ethnic music scene, performing on Oud and Saz in Middle Eastern ensembles and playing guitar in Greek, Klezmer, and Sephardic groups. This work culminated in the recording of Sparks' Balkan Dreams Suite, a remarkable collection of odd-meter guitar arrangements. Many of the Balkan Dreams compositions were recorded on Tim's debut solo CD, The Nutcracker Suite, in 1993. This recording was hailed by Guitar Player Magazine as "an exhilarating, odd-meter minefield inspired by Near Eastern music" and "an important recording from a gifted composer, arranger, and performer." Two more releases followed on the Acoustic Music label, Guitar Bazaar (1997) and One String Leads To Another (1999).
Sparks' work came to the attention of John Zorn, the saxophonist, composer, and curator of Tzadik Records in New York and thereby led to a new cycle of compositions inspired by traditional Jewish melodies. Neshamah (1999) is a solo effort. Tanz, which garnered Downbeat Magazine's highest praise, five stars, in 2000 and At the Rebbe's Table (2002) include ensemble work. All three releases have been acclaimed by a broad spectrum of critics and listeners alike. Spring of 2003 saw the release of Masada Guitars, featuring interpretations of John Zorn's music by Tim, Bill Frisell, and Marc Ribot. In recent years, Sparks' musical focus has come full circle, returning to the country blues and classic jazz that served as a springboard for his worldwide guitar explorations. He toured with Dolly Parton in 2005 and recorded Roots, Rags and Blues for Truefire/AGW.
I can't wait to receive my Roots Rags and Blues copy from Truefire!! I saw your playing and I got hooked!! Keep the flame! All the best from Lima,Peru Roberto
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