Larry Sparks – The Last Suit You Wear

Unlike his former employer Ralph Stanley, Larry Sparks has never found fame beyond the bluegrass faithful, and he doesn’t have the limited name recognition of a Del McCoury, or even of a J.D. Crowe. He should. The Last Suit You Wear features both McCoury and Crowe on the working-man’s blues of “The Old Coal Mine”, but the entire album reminds that Sparks goes on the short list of bluegrass music’s finest singers.

Nothing here is as indelible as signature Sparks tunes such as “John Deere Tractor” and “Tennessee, 1949”, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any keepers: Check out the just-the-facts grief of “Casualty Of War”, Sparks’ own “Goodbye Little Darlin'”, and, especially, the title track. “The Last Suit You Wear” speaks ill of the dearly departed, and judgmentally to boot: “I can hear him saying now, ‘Money is what it’s all about,'” Sparks recalls of the friend whose funeral he’s attending. “Now I can safely say that he’s dead wrong”.

Still, the song’s revealing central image, the surprising accompaniment of Pig Robbins on piano, and, most of all, Sparks’ fine vocal turn — blues-inflected and with a characteristically light touch that’s far more generous than his words — discover grief where lesser singers would find only moralizing.