The second offering from Ron Williams and the Pine Breeze team is a 1977 album titled Simple Things. This vinyl record includes several artists not included on the well-known Jubilee CD of the Pine Breeze recordings. Artists like Pam Long, Sparky Rucker, and Ramona Millsaps recorded songs like Cocaine Blues, Copper Kettle, and Molly Darling which did not make the CD cut. Those songs can be found in our archive. Ramona learned Molly Darling from her mother many years before its recording in the late 70’s.
Sparky Rucker is a musician from Knoxville who taught school in Chattanooga before going on the road full-time down the road. Rucker was on the board of directors for the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, and sings two tracks on this album. Come On Into My Kitchen features Sparky’s vocals alongside bottleneck guitar. The closing record, Cocaine Blues, originates to the late 1800’s when drug addiction affected over 5% of the country population because of patent medicines. Listen to the record below, uploaded natively & on YouTube. View the Pine Breeze Collection in our archive for further music and materials.