Sparky Rucker, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, has made seven CTM appearances between 1976 and 2002. He was strongly influenced by both the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and by a number of storytelling performers. These included his two preacher uncles and sociopolitical activists Guy Carawan and Pete Seeger. Adding to this his experience as a school teacher, Rucker, often accompanied on harmonica and vocals by his wife Rhonda, presents musical programs in American history, especially its chapters of minority experiences that are not often opened.

Although Rucker favored the delta blues initially, it is a rare genre in North American traditional music that has not found its way into his extensive repertoire. The historian and educator in him revels in opportunities such as the Celebration of Traditional Music where a seated, attentive college audience affords him the apposite atmosphere to challenge popular notions regarding racial issues appertaining to the music that he plays. Rucker, a consummate and witty storyteller, however, always has a firm handle on the requisite balance between edification and entertainment — the two stated goals of the CTM.

The Mighty Gospel Harmonizers of Lexington, Kentucky sang at the 1997 CTM. They take their cue from the classic gospel quartet singing of such 1940s acts as the Golden Gate Quartet and the Swan Silvertones from Coalwood, West Virginia. The Harmonizers’ version of the popular traditional “Shine on Me,” for instance, takes after the Silvertones’ arrangement. (Shine on Me is likely a folk spiritual as it was recorded by a number of artists not particularly influenced by twentieth-century gospel including by the Rev. Gary Davis, Leadbelly, the Greenbriar Boys, and in a shape-note style by Ernest Phipps and the Phipps Family.) Their versions of “Gospel Train,” “Meeting At the Old Campground,” and “This Train (is Bound for Glory)” feature driving rhythms provided by electric bass, chopping electric rhythm guitar, and hand claps in the hard gospel style of the Golden Gates.

Bill Livers, born in Monterey, Owen County, Kentucky, was sixty when he performed at the 1975 CTM backed by the white revivalist Red Hot String Band. As have been the majority of African American performers at the CTM, he was a songster who played tunes from a wide variety of traditional and popular music genres he heard growing up. At Berea he played thirteen numbers, most with vocals, eight of which were captured on video in addition to audio tape. His music was also extensively documented by John Harrod and more than sixty additional unique recordings of Liver’s music are part of Berea’s John Harrod collection.

Perhaps more than standard old time fiddle tunes, Livers seemed to enjoy playing Tin Pan Alley and early jazz standards such as James Bland’s “In the Evening by the Moonlight,” Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen’s “Stormy Weather,” Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn’s “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” and Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose”; country standards such as the Skillet Lickers’ favorite “Sweet Bunch of Daisies,” Jimmie Davis’s “Nobody’s Darling But Mine,” Pee Wee King’s “Tennessee Waltz” and Leon McAuliffe’s “Steel Guitar Rag.” He also did pieces that reflected variously on black-white relationships through different periods of history including “Run, Nigger, Run (The Pateroller Song)”, minstrel songs including James Bland’s “Oh Dem Golden Slippers,” and even outright derogatory songs from the late nineteenth century coon song genre such as “Big Fat Coon.”