Talk:Pinetop Sparks

Reliability of other sources

I don't usually do this, but before adding material to this article (for example, on the brothers' birth names, and other details) I thought I would check what people think about this source and this. My personal view is that they should be treated as reliable. The Big Road Blues blog draws on the reliable published sources listed at the end of the article, as does User:StefanWirz's online discography. But I'm aware that others might argue that they do not strictly accord with WP:RS. Thoughts? Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:54, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Now that I have Eagle and LeBlanc's Blues: A Regional Experience, I've corrected the birth information based on that source. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:03, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I consider Jeff Harris' Big Road Blues articles and the Wirz discographies to be two of the most factual sources to be found on old-time blues musicians and recordings. It's Blues: A Regional Experience that I have my doubts about, as it appears to be the source of information that I know is incorrect regarding the 1963 date of Milton Sparks' death. I was Henry Townsend's backing guitar player from 1978 to 1983 when he still used to perform regularly in small blues bars in St. Louis. Henry told me the same story about Pinetop Sparks' death that he later told Bill Greensmith in A Blues Life and said that Milton Sparks was alive, though he had given up performing after Pinetop died, that he'd been in somewhat regular contact with "Lindberg" over the years, that Sparks was now a preacher and that he occasionally came over to Henry's house. Sometime after that, I was riding with Henry in his van down a street in north St. Louis when a beat-up old pickup truck was suddenly behind us honking its horn. Henry pulled over into an empty lot, as did the pickup truck, and a man got out and came over to the van whom Henry introduced to me as Milton Sparks. He and Henry exchanged pleasantries and enquired after each other's families and I told him I had a few of his and his brother's recordings on reissue albums. Sparks said that he was running late for an appointment he had with a lady regarding work he was doing for a church school, but that he'd seen Henry driving down the street and didn't want to let him get away without saying hello. Henry told him to come by the house sometime and Sparks said he would and then left. I can't say exactly when this brief encounter happened, I only know it was sometime between 1978 and 1983. I know a person's memory can be faulty after nearly forty years, but this was as big of a deal to me as it would be to you and I don't think it's likely my memory of Henry telling me that Sparks was alive and then my separate later memory of meeting him could both be wrong - and certainly if anyone knew who Milton Sparks was, it would be Henry Townsend, as they'd performed and made records together. I suppose Wikipedia would consider this "original research" and I can understand why they have a policy against that sort of thing, but it wasn't so much research as it was real life. Unfortunately, the published sources are not always correct, for whatever reason, and then the misinformation gets reprinted as fact. I don't know when Milton Sparks died, but I recently moved back to Missouri and perhaps I can get up to St. Louis (I live 70 miles south) and find a published source that would have that information. Frank Prchal (talk) 02:52, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

I owe the authors of Blues: A Regional Experience an apology for my last comment. The source of the incorrect information regarding Milton Sparks' death was a Blues Unlimited magazine article published in 1983, which has been reprinted in a book, also called Blues Unlimited, published in 2015. The authors interviewed someone who, I guess, may or may not have been the Sparks Brothers' Uncle Aaron. To the article's credit, it mentions that Uncle Aaron's wife and relatives wouldn't vouch for his story. They also talked to Milton Sparks' wife, Mary, by telephone, as she wouldn't agree to an in-person interview, and she evidently went along with Sparks having died in 1963. Interestingly, she told them that Sparks' sister, Jimmie Lee, was living in Alaska at that time - which is something I heard Sparks tell Henry Townsend when Henry inquired about her. I wrote a letter to the book's editor, Bill Greensmith, with a more detailed description of meeting Sparks and several other times I remember Henry mentioning Sparks as among the living and Greensmith was kind enough to phone me back. He said that while he doesn't disbelieve me, there exists a 1963 death certificate for a Milton Sparks, signed by his wife, Mary. Admittedly, I have no corroborating evidence, but I honestly can't see how I could be confused or mistaken about this. Oh well, we have his music and that's what's important. Frank Prchal (talk) 02:03, 1 April 2020 (UTC)