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Post by Admin on Mar 26, 2014 10:52:02 GMT -5
Junior Parker (Herman Parker, Jr) Junior Parker was an American Memphis blues singer and musician. He is best remembered for his unique voice, which has been described as "honeyed," and "velvet-smooth". He was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. Wikipedia Born: May 27, 1932, Clarksdale, MS Died: November 18, 1971, Blue Island, IL I learned this morning on the Real Blues Forum (Facebook) that Junior Parker opened for SBWII.
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Post by earleg on Mar 26, 2014 11:05:11 GMT -5
This is a good reminder for me to pull out a compilation CD of Juniors. I like his music. Also Junior is Al Green's uncle(?).
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Post by AlanB on Mar 26, 2014 12:06:19 GMT -5
Here's an EP I bought in South of France in 1962 whilst on 6th form school trip. They don't design covers like that anymore. Attachments:
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Post by AlanB on Mar 26, 2014 12:24:36 GMT -5
Here's a more conventional Parker EP cover 1980s style Attachments:
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Post by Admin on May 27, 2014 2:52:58 GMT -5
On this anniversary of his Birth:
Made popular by another singer: [laughing]
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Post by AlanB on May 27, 2014 5:02:17 GMT -5
JUNIOR'S LAST STAND BY CHARLIE GILLETT
(Cream, issue 9, January 1972, p. 7)
WHILE I was in New York for a short time last April, I noticed some billposters up near Columbia University on the upper West Side, advertising Jimmy McGriff and Junior Parker, who were playing a club called The Third Phase. Nobody I knew had heard of either Junior Parker or the Third Phase, so I went by myself and found a basement club, done up like a grotto in some sort of white polystyrene. Four or five student type girls seemed to be running the place; and along with the five musicians on stage, they outnumbered the audience two to one. In the two hours I was there, maybe as many as ten people came in to see the show.
That was sad, but more depressing still was the degeneration of Junior Parker, who had made some of my favourite blues records less than ten years before, into a sort of cocktail jazz singer. There's something about the tone of an organ that seems to suck all the fire out of a singer, and although Jimmy McGriff may have been a pleasure to jazz fans (for whom Junior Parker must have been an irritant), the whole thing was a disaster for me.
When Junior finished he went to sit at a table, and after five minutes of working up my courage I went over to say hello. I had nothing to ask him about his recent years, when he had made uninteresting records for Mercury, Minit, and Capitol, but wanted to know about his early days, when he recorded 'Mystery Train' for Sun in 1953, before Elvis and 'Next Time You See Me' for Duke in 1957. Don Robey, who owns the Duke label, is credited as composer of 'Next Time You See Me', but I'd heard that Robey probably never wrote a song in his life; Junior laughed. 'No, he used to buy them from kids on the street in Houston. Do you know how much that song cost? $12.50.' I'd also heard that a name often used in the composer credits on Duke records, 'Deadric Malone', was used for songs acquired in the same way. Junior laughed again and shook my hand.
Also at the table was Sonny Lester, who was producing records by Junior on some kind on independent basis, leasing the tapes off to Capitol; he said he'd send me Junior's two Capitol LPs (and he did). More immediately, he plied me with beers, under whose influence I lost the train of my interview. Never did get to ask Junior about his early days with Sun, but I stayed to watch him do his set again; ignoring Jimmy McGriff, I enjoyed 'That's All Right', 'Sweet Home Chicago', and 'Yonders Wall'. When Junior pulled out his harmonica, it was almost like his records.
Those records, the Duke recordings, were done between 1957 and 1964: the best of them are still available on three Duke LPs, Barefoot Rock/You Got Me (Duke 72), which has Junior on one side and Bobby Bland on the other; Driving Wheel (76), and the highly recommended Best of Junior Parker (83); if you can't get them, try writing to Duke Records, 2809 Erastus Street, Houston, Texas. Compared to either the rough Chicago blues of Muddy and Wolf, or the intense blues of B.B. King, Junior Parker's sound was light and smooth. But Sonny Boy Williamson II named Junior the man who would carry his own tradition, and on the recordings of 'Mother in Law Blues' and 'Yonders Wall' Junior showed he had Sonny Boy's technique of moving from vocal to mouth harp and back so fast you could never be sure it was all done by him. Behind, bands arranged and led by Bill Harvey, Joe Scott or Alvin Tyler jumped, swung, and drove, as if they'd never heard of rock 'n' roll, or Philadelphia pop, or the twist.
I was sure that if the world could take B.B. King to its heart, then Bobby Bland and Junior Parker need only hang on the their time would come too, for in spite of all its hustlers and hypesters, pop music has a curious innate sense of justice that eventually accords recognition to the people whose talent deserves it. Bobby still has an outside chance, but Junior Parker died in Chicago in November, mourned by his fellow bluesmen, but hardly missed by the rest of the music business. When people turn their attention away from guitars and start listening to how people sing, they'll realise how good Junior Parker was (a much better singer than B.B. King, as B.B. would tell you himself). But too late.
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Post by JamesP on Nov 18, 2015 8:30:25 GMT -5
On the anniversary of his death - Rest in Peace.
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