Randy Sparks Dies: Grammy-Winning Founder Of The New Christy Minstrels And TV Star Was 90

Bruce Haring
·2 min read

Randy Sparks, whose group the New Christy Minstrels was a huge part of the folk revival of the early 1960s, died February 11 at an assisted-living facility in San Diego. He was 90.

His son, Kevin, confirmed the death to The New York Times. Sparks was living on his 168-acre ranch in Jenny Lind, CA, until a few days before his death.

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The New Christy Minstrels were constantly on TV in the 1960s and sold an estimated 2 million albums in their first three years. The group’s first album, Presenting the New Christy Minstrels, won the Grammy Award for best performance by a chorus and stayed on the Billboard albums chart for two years.

The group’s 1963 LP Ramblin’ made the Top 15 and was its only gold disc. The holiday set Merry Christmas! also was a hit that year, Today hit No. 9 in 1964, becoming the Christys’ lone Top 10 album. It featured music from the movie Advance to the Rear.

The group had three hits that made the Top 40: “Today,” “Saturday Night” and “Green, Green,” which Sparks wrote with future “Eve of Destruction” singer Barry McGuire.

Between 1962 and 1963, the New Christy Minstrels appeared on 26 episodes of The Andy Williams Show on NBC and eight episodes of the ABC show Hootenanny. In the summer of 1964, the group had its own NBC show, Ford Presents the New Christy Minstrels. The group performed on the steps of the White House later that year.

Randy Sparks dead
Jackie Mason introduces the group at the New York World’s Fair for ‘Ford Presents The New Christy Minstrels’ in 1964

Sparks also maintained what he termed a “farm group” called the Back Porch Majority, which he stocked with promising performers. Among those were McGuire, Steve Martin, John Denver, Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes and Gene Clark of the Byrds. Sparks also opened his own nightclub in Los Angeles, Ledbetter’s.

Sparks sold his interest in the New Christy Minstrels in the mid-1960s for $2.5 million and moved to rural Northern California. There he began a 30-year collaboration with Burl Ives, with whom he wrote songs and often served as his opening act.

Survivors include his sons, Kevin and Cameron; daughters Melinda and Amanda; a sister, Naomi Allen; and four grandchildren.

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