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Junior Parker, Blues Singer born

Junior Parker

Junior Parker was born on this date in 1932. He was a Black blues singer and musician.

Herman Parker, Jr., or Little Junior Parker, was from Clarksdale, MS. His velvet-smooth vocal delivery, to the contrary, Junior Parker was a product of the fertile postwar Memphis Blues circuit whose wonderfully understated harp style was personally mentored by Sonny Boy Williamson.  Parker only traveled in the best Blues circles.  He learned his initial licks from Williamson and worked with Howlin' Wolf while still in his teens.

Like so many young Blues artists, Little Junior (as he was known then) got his first recording opportunity from (then) talent scout Ike Turner, who brought him to Modern Records for his debut session as a leader in 1952. It produced the lone single "You're My Angel," with Turner pounding the 88s and Matt Murphy deftly handling guitar duties. Parker and his band, the Blue Flames (including Floyd Murphy, Matt's brother, on guitar), landed at Sun Records in 1953 and promptly scored a hit with "Feelin' Good" (something of a Memphis response to John Lee Hooker's primitive boogies). Later that year, Little Junior cut a fiery "Love My Baby" and "Mystery Train" for Sun, thus contributing a pair of future rockabilly standards to the Sun publishing coffers (Hayden Thompson revived the former, Elvis Presley, the latter).

Later that year, Parker had moved on to Don Robey's Duke imprint in Houston.  It took a while for the harpist to regain his hit-making momentum, but he scored big in 1957 with "Next Time You See Me," an accessible enough number that even garnered some pop spins.  Traveling the country as a headliner with the Blues Consolidated package (his support act was labelmate Bobby Bland), Parker developed a brass-powered sound that pushed his voice and harp solos with exceptional power. His updated remake of Roosevelt Sykes's "Driving Wheel" was a huge R&B hit in 1961, as was the surging "In the Dark" (the R&B dance workout "Annie Get Your Yo-Yo" followed suit the next year).

Parker was exceptionally versatile, whether delivering "Mother-In-Law Blues" and "Sweet Home Chicago" in down-home fashion, courting the teenage market with "Barefoot Rock," or tastefully howling Harold Burrage's "Crying for My Baby" (another hit for him in 1965) in front of a punchy horn section, Parker was the consummate modern Blues artist, with one foot planted in Southern Blues and the other in uptown R&B. Once Parker left Robey's employ in 1966, though, his hit-making fortunes declined.

His 1966-68 output for Mercury Records and its Blue Rock subsidiary deserved a better reception than it got. Still, toward the end, he was covering the Beatles ("Taxman" and "Lady Madonna," for God's sake!) for Capitol. A brain tumor tragically silenced Junior Parker's magic carpet voice on Nov 18, 1971, in Chicago, IL, before he reached his 40th birthday. In 2001, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

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