Chesapeake Bay's Independent Newspaper ~ Since 1993 Volume xviii, Issue 22 ~ June 3 to June 9, 2010 Home \\ Correspondence \\ from the Editor \\ Submit a Letter \\ Classifieds \\ Contact Us Loading
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Dorothy Gale was caught up in a tornado and wound up in Oz. Ed Sparks was caught up in the winds of a changing pop scene and wound up in the Land of Music. While Dorothy went home, Sparks is still there, following his own yellow brick road, playing, singing, songwriting, constructing instruments and making friends all over Chesapeake Country and beyond. Born to Rock and RollA tall man with soft white hair falling beneath his ears, a white mustache and a honeyed voice, Sparks was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1955, the year Bill Haley and the Comets urged teenagers to “Rock Around the Clock.” Rock and roll changed the culture, Sparks explains, and set the course for his life. “Up until then, mainstream music was made by squeaky-clean young white groups processed by record companies. Blacks had their own music that was primitive, raunchy, loud and wonderful, and the white kids really liked it. Producers were looking for someone white who could be that raunchy and who could jump around, and that was Elvis Presley, whose music was incredible.” As a fourth grader watching Ed Sullivan introduce the Beatles to America, Sparks was hooked. After that “really big shew,” Sparks and his friends got together after school, put a 45 on the turntable and sang “She Loves You” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” while pretending to play the drums and guitars. Sparks’ parents bought him his first guitar, a plastic instrument made by the Emenmee Toy Company, and he started strumming and trying to pick out tunes. Music lessons bored him, but he had a good ear. Following the chords marked on sheet music, he taught himself to play. As a teenager in Glen Burnie, Sparks was also into art and graphics, and when his mother bought him a Polaroid Swinger, photography became part of the mix. Sparks enrolled at Anne Arundel Community College in a career program that combined all his interests in an emerging field called multi-media. Sparks graduated in 1975, but he never left the school. Thirty-five years later, he is a media production designer, creating instructional, archival and promotional videos for the college. He has also produced music for commercials and film soundtracks. With a Little Help from His FriendsWhile in college, Sparks and a couple of friends formed a band, called Fresh Produce, which evolved into Free Flight. Their first gig was in 1978 at the now defunct Ox Bow Inn in Arnold. The minister at Asbury United Methodist Church in Arnold, Bruce Hathorne, approached Sparks and band-mate Patrick Raymond about starting a coffee house. Hathorne passed away before it could open, but Sparks and Raymond went ahead with plans to open the Red Door Coffee House in 1993 and kept it going in his honor for 10 years. Free Flight ended its run in 2003 when two members left, and the group reorganized as Sparks, Raymond and McCoy. “What makes us different,” Sparks says, “is there’s not one singer. There’s three of us, and each of us sings lead while the others harmonize. Sometimes we do solos, sometimes duos and sometimes all three of us sing.” “We call our music acoustic rock,” Sparks explains. “They used to call it folk rock, but when you say ‘folk,’ people think of Peter, Paul and Mary, really traditional folk. When you say rock, they think of Jimi Hendrix. We don’t do anything like that. We like Crosby, Stills and Nash’s acoustic stuff and the Beatles’ acoustic stuff. We do a lot of James Taylor, Cat Stevens, The Eagles and America. We do some old blues.”
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