Bobby Parker Part 2

Here is part 2 of our interview with Bobby Parker and, as you will see when you read it, he is pretty much a living reflection of the history modern popular music. Parker, who will headline the College Park Blues Festival this Saturday, has rubbed elbows with musicians ranging from Jimmy Page to Carlos Santana to Jimmy Reed to Chuck Brown. His 1961 hit "Watch Your Step" is believed to have been borrowed from, remade or downright copied by John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, Santana and others. We start this section with him talking about what it was like to be a black musician touring the south in the 1950’s:
Parker: We had nowhere to play back in the 50’s, man. It was dangerous traveling at night.
BBP: Did you ever feel like your life was in danger at some point?
Parker: Absolutely. We were down in Mobile, Alabama and there were signs all over the place, “Welcome to the Home of the Ku Klux Klan” and all that. So the bus broke down and the cops came, and they heard something was going on, there was a busload of black folks there. But we had an Italian white guy driving our bus. I mean, he kind of did our bidding in getting our food and all of that stuff, I mean this is stuff that needs to be put in the movies. You’re talking about Cadillac Records? The movie I would tell would have everybody in it. It would have Fats Domino, it would have Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke and T-Bone Walker and blues cats, real cats, you know what I mean? I would tell it straight, just like it is, and it’s not all good. People getting locked up for nothing, and all that stuff, you know. It would be great stories about everything.
BBP: Right. So what happened after the bus broke down?
Parker: The sheriff and his guys were tapping on that door.(Imitating the sheriff's strong southern accent) “Hey, what’s this bus out here, steamin’ and smokin’ like it is here?” And he stepped up in there with dogs. And most everybody in there was asleep: Fats Domino band, Paul Hucklebuck Band, and many other, you know, black soul/blues people. Fats was in there and Chuck Berry was in there and so the bus driver, he was a good friend of all of us, so he said, “Well sir we’re on our way to do a show, we’re trying to get to Mobile to do a show and we broke down here.” He (the sheriff) said “Whatchu got in here?” He said, “Well, we got a busload of Negroes here." (laughs)
BBP: That’s what the bus driver said?
Parker: Yeah. It was dark in the bus, he told the bus driver “boy, turn that light on!” I heard him say it, you know. So he jumped up in the bus, and the dogs come runnin’ up through there and he said “Who are these people in here?” He (the driver) said “Well sir, you have Fats Domino, you got Chuck Berry, you got…” He (the sheriff) said “Ah quit lying,” (Someone else said) “He’s not lying. Chuck Berry’s in the bus back there.” He (the sheriff) said, ”well you come back here and wake him up I want to see if he’s telling a lie.” So Chuck Berry was waking up and that sheriff came back and said “I’ll be doggone, this is Chuck Berry!” (The sheriff) said “Get us a guitar and let me hear him play a song or two!” (laughs). So they gave Chuck an acoustic guitar and he started playing and singing a little bit. He (the sheriff) said “Whoa, this bus here is full of great people in here! I love this kind of music.” He said “What we’re going to do is fix this here bus and get you boys on your way.” I said, “Wow. We escaped that bullet!” (laughs) Yeah. So daybreak, seven or eight or nine o’clock in the morning and the bus was fixed and we were down the road, man.
BBP: So if you hadn’t been who you were it may have had a different outcome, is what you’re saying, right?
Parker: And then some. All that stuff is real, man. It’s scary, not just talk, you know.
BBP: I was curious, you were a young guy, did any of those musicians ever take you aside and show you things on the guitar, or talk to you about show business? Was there one you got really friendly with?
Parker: I learned how to read music by sitting there next to the piano player. In those days, everybody didn’t have a little band. They had music charts, sheets, ‘cause in the band we sit back there behind them and played all of the music. Like Jackie Wilson, he was a great singer. You know about him, right?
BBP: Yeah. (Sings) Your Love Is Lifting Me Higher….
Parker: Yeah. All those great guys could really sing good. And we had the music charts and we played a lot of, what was her name, that gal who (sings) "Jim Dandy to the Rescue?" But she sings great. So there were about eight or ten cats we’d play the music behind. The white artists, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello and the Fabian, you remember him?
BBP: Yeah, he was in a lot of movies, I remember.
Parker: (laughs) yeah. And then there was the Buddy Holly story. That was terrible. All of those shows were put on by Mr. Irving Feld, whose whole family, even now, fifty years later runs Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. They’re the people that own it. Irving Feld put these first rock and roll shows on, man. Nobody else would try it, because they were scared to put all people together.
BBP: You mean different races together.
Parker: Yeah, as you can see, it worked out great.
BBP: What was Buddy Holly like?
Parker: I didn’t really know him that well. We were sort of…our accommodations were different.
BBP: Right. Yeah, I forgot. (both laugh)
Parker: When we got up there to play and sing, we sort of were together, you know, but offstage, not so much.
BBP: Yeah, everybody ran in different circles, based on race.
Parker: Yeah, kind of.
BBP: Jimmy Reed, a lot of people consider him the guitar player’s guitar player. What was it like to work with him?
Parker: He was amazing. He was a real hip little cat. Women liked him, he looked good as a young dude. He just drank himself to death, man. You know when you heard him (simulates someone singing in a drunken manner), you know the way he used to sound on the records. That kind of singing man is a guy who's addicted to whiskey. You know (again simulates someone singing in a drunken manner)he was addicted, man. He was an alcoholic. Everybody loved him, man. He would strap his harmonica around his neck and get out there and tear the show apart. People never heard nothing like that before. And his records were hot! So, he was a great artist, man. He just could not stop that drinking that alcohol.
BBP: Was there a lot of drug abuse during that period? I mean in the fifties, with musicians? Or was that something that came later?
Parker: Well you mean, uh…
BBP: Well in the fifties, I mean, everyone knew about what happened in the 1960’s.
Parker: I had to a lot to do with all of that, man. I started what you call the British Revolution, where everybody began to imitate little Bobby Parker’s song “Watch Your Step (released in 1961).”
BBP: I heard about that, yeah.
Parker: (Sings a little from it) I mean we was the house band at the Regal in Chicago, the Apollo in New York and Paul Hucklebuck in Baltimore. Then when we got here to D.C. at the Howard Theatre, there was a big show here, man. We came here and it was so tremendous. People loved it so well I decided to stay in D.C.
BBP: But you’d had a big hit before that, right? There was a song you did called “Blues Get Off My Shoulder(released in 1958)?”
Parker: Yeah, and “You Got What It Takes”
BBP: Right
Parker: I recorded that in Chicago when I was about 18, 19 years old.
BBP: I’ve heard a lot about “Watch Your Step.” John Lennon apparently used the riff for “Day Tripper.”
Parker: “I Feel Fine.” “Day Tripper” too.
BBP: Yeah. And Led Zepplin took it later and did the song “Moby Dick,” I think it was?
Parker: Jimmy Page, and..
BBP: Did anyone ever pay you for taking that song?
Parker: No, man. I always had a funny saying—it’s not funny, but it’s called “The Goldfish In the Ocean.” Can you imagine one little goldfish in the ocean, how big the ocean is and one little fish: me.
BBP: Yeah.
Parker: You have to have a lot of money to start litigation. And, I don’t know. I just got the bad end of the deal.
BBP: Right.

Parker: A lot of us did. Black artists, we didn’t never get paid no money, man. You see all of those stories with Little Walter. I mean, you saw Cadillac Records right?
BBP: Yeah.
Parker: I mean, those people didn’t have no money.
BBP: Was that guy really giving away Cadillacs like that? I mean was that true?
Parker: He just did that to appease the artists. To make them look good, and make them feel like they got something valuable, you know, a car. And they owed everybody money. But they didn’t really get a lot of money paid, you know.
BBP: Well I got the impression from the movie that he was giving them cars and I remember there was one scene where Muddy Waters asked for some money and Leonard Chess said Cadillacs cost money.
Parker: Yeah…
BBP: That part of the movie was accurate, right (laughs)?
Parker: Yeah, Well, Muddy Waters at Chess Records was the..before he got really big he knew a lot about electricity in the building. Setting up things and getting a good sound and music, you know? I know when I recorded with Bo Diddley there was a elevator shaft with a—you know how you see an elevator with pads up on the inside?
BBP: Uh-huh.
Parker: They used to set the drum set in there, and at night, turn the elevator off. And set the drum set up in there man, in the padded elevator. And that’s how they got a real good drum sound.
BBP: They used to pad the inside of the elevator car?
Parker: Yeah. Turn it off so nobody would use it and mike it up, and the drums would sound good, man.
BBP: That was Muddy’s idea?
Parker: There was someone there when I got there who was doing it. Put the amplifiers around the front of the elevator.
BBP: Oh, I see, and the rest of the band would form around the elevator and play.
Parker: Uh-huh. So it was really something man, how they did stuff in those days because they only had small Ampex recorders, you know.
BBP: Right.
Parker: Two track. But they were great, great recorders in those days. I mean with those two-track Ampex you could imagine recording Frank Sinatra and all of those people, you know? All of those songs they did were brilliant!
BBP: Wow. Did you ever meet Willie Dixon?
Parker: Yeah. Upright bass player Willie.
BBP: What was he like? I wanted to ask you about Little Walter too because the movie kind of portrayed him as a hothead.
Parker: All of them were sort of like watching their own back. Angry all of the time and in and out of problems. Not much money and accommodations. I mean when you live like that, man, you’re walking on thin ice all of the time. And all of those cats only got big when Clapton and Page and all of those kind of people made them superstars. Because they were not big superstars. Eric Clapton and all of those people start imitating those songs and that’s when they got a break.
BBP: Wow. I understand that you went to England in, I think it was ‘69. Fleetwood Mac brought you over there?
Parker: Yeah.
BBP: Tell me how that happened.
Parker: Well Mick Fleetwood started a nightclub right over here in Alexandria, Virginia. And it was a great big nice place, man.
BBP: What was it called?
Parker: Uh, Mick Fleetwood’s.
BBP: (laughs) What else!
Parker: Yeah. Over in Alexandria. So, uh—I mean I influenced a lot of people, man. Mick Fleetwood, and I influenced Clapton and Jimmy Page and Santana and, just a lot of people. You know the thing about it that’s so bad is, I’m still not up there with those kind of cats. I mean I’m famous, but—they won’t let me on some of those shows that they do. You know? I mean when you got John Mayer, who comes out in the last ten years and makes millions, you know. I’m not saying that he can’t play, but it’s not fair to the cats that have been around, like myself. Joe Bonamassa, he took one of my songs and made a big hit on his last album.
BBP: Which one?
Parker: Last year, it was “Steal My Heart Away.” It was cut on the flip side of “Watch Your Step” in the sixties. Good blues song, even Robert Plant recorded it. Sang it way back in the day, you know.
BBP: You ever speak to Joe Bonamassa about that?

Parker: Yeah, I played a gig with him a few months back down at Lisner Auditorium in D.C. It was a good show. He invited me to come down there and play with him and I went down there.
BBP: I mean, if you wanted to call Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page or any of these guys could you pick up the phone and call them?
Parker: No I cannot. I know how to get in touch with Carlos. But I don’t call him just for the..it’s got to be something important you know.
BBP: Yeah. Because I had heard that when you were over there you were actually jamming with these guys. You were on stage with Clapton and Page.
Parker: Yeah. I did a lot of that. I played Albert Hall in London. Played all over the United Kingdom, Amsterdam, back in the late sixties. The thing I wouldn’t do, I only had a couple of nice little guitars, and they wanted me to break ‘em up and throw them all over the place and all that. I said “I ain’t doing that.” (laughs) You know. Break up my guitars, I don’t know, Hendrix and all them was doing that. So I wouldn’t do that. So they got mad with me and I came back here.
BBP: That was the main thing they got mad at you about, that you didn’t want to break up your guitars?
Parker: Yeah, right. I mean, I would have done it if—I mean they had guitars stacked there, Fenders, just to bust down on the stage. New ones. But I’d rather play my own guitar, because you like your own guitar. They were setting the stage on fire and kicking the speakers in and busting up guitars all over the floor and stuff. I said “come on, man. This ain’t real blues, man. I’m going back there to the states.”
BBP: I was curious, did you ever meet Hendrix?
Parker: Well, he was with singing groups too, you know. Playing behind people before he got his thing going.
BBP: So you kind of met him here in the states when he was with the Isley brothers and those groups?…
Parker: He was a guitar player for a lot of groups, you know. Getting it together, though.
BBP: Did you ever talk to him or play with him?
Parker: No, I never did talk close to him. You know he was cool.
BBP: Actually Jimmy Page heard you play here in D.C. once, right.
Parker: Sure did.
(Parker then excused himself for a seconds)
Parker: I used to play on the military circuit, all around D.C., Fort Myer (Virginia), Fort Meade (Maryland), Fort Belvoir (Virginia), Walter Reed (D.C.), Bolling (D.C.), Andrews (Maryland) and all down through the south. And when we came to Fort Meade over hear, Jimmy Page called me on the phone. He said “Bobby, it’s Jimmy.” I said “Jimmy who?” He said “It’s Page, man.” I didn’t believe him because he wasn’t really pushing the word hard, you know. I said “Hey Jimmy.” He said “When you came over here I wanted to talk to you but you left and I didn’t get a chance to. They said you did some great things over here, man.” I said “Well, man, that’s great. I’m glad you heard it.” He said “What I want you to do is go out to Washington Music Center—I just bought you a recorder. Is that cool with you?” I said “Sure.” He said “Well go out and pick it up and it’s a Teac four-track machine,” and uh, I still got it. The heads are all worn down but of course I have a studio full of stuff anyway. I went out to Chuck Levin’s (Washington area music store) and picked it up and there it was. He said “you ready to write a song?” I said “Yeah, I’m always ready.” He said “Put some stuff on tape, Bobby and send ‘em to me, will ya?” I said “Yeah, I’ll do that.” And that kind of started our relationship, you know, him and I calling each other from the United Kingdom back to the states.
BBP: Right. So what happened? Did you put it on tape?
Parker: Yeah. I put a lot of stuff on tape.
BBP: Did you send it to him?
Parker: I put a lot of stuff there and sent it over there to him. And they heard it, and I went back to England and we did some recording with, um, what’s the name of that label?
BBP: Yeah, uh, I think I remember the label, it was a labeI that Led Zeppelin had.
Parker: What was the name of that label? I was on it.
BBP: Swan Song Records?
Parker: Yeah, Swan Song. That’s what it was.
BBP: You did a couple of songs for them?
Parker: Yeah. “Hard but it’s fair” and about four or five other blues tunes.
BBP: Did they try to release that record? What happened to that record?
Parker: Something happened to our communication. And I ended up coming back. And some other cats heard some of those songs and started recording them. But anyway, I just came back because there was so much going on and they weren’t really talking prices. Giving me numbers, you know. So, uh—
BBP: You didn’t see the money you were hoping to see.
Parker: Yeah. Had to get paid for doing stuff, you know.
BBP: Tell me a little about the D.C. scene. What was it like then?
Parker: Well, I’m going to tell you something, man. I don’t know how people make it sound, but I brought blues to the D.C. area. And it’s still like that. I’m the one that really laid it down. You know there are a bunch of cats here now. I mean, come on, this is 2010. But it took forty or fifty years to get quite a little handful of people around here. And they all learn from copying me. Even Jimmy Thackery told me the other day. You know him.
BBP: Yeah.
Parker: (He said)”Bobby I learned everything I know from watching you.” He put it on Facebook the other day. It’s on there. Just what I just said. And uh, Chuck Brown. Just scores of others, man, copied my lick.
BBP: Wow. But at the time in the early seventies or during that period were there a lot of clubs to play in?
Parker: There were a lot of places to play but there weren’t no real guitar blues cats. It was more Motown music.
BBP: Okay.
Parker: And I’m going to be honest with you, I integrated D.C. When I came here in the sixties, folks wouldn’t come uptown to the black section to hear jazz and blues, and there were just hundreds of clubs. And that song “Watch Your Step.” We went downtown on F St. and a place called Rands and the Hayloft, and man I just got hundreds of thousands of fans. Young people from downtown and Rands and the Hayloft began to come uptown looking for me, and I’d get booked all over the area and a phenomenon happened that had never happened in the D.C. area. Because white people just wouldn’t come up town. It was dangerous, you know. And vice versa.
BBP: You seem to have this relationship with a lot of musicians who are still out, like Carlos Santana. I was just listening to a tape you guys did together at Mystic Theatre in 1995? Where did you first meet Carlos?
Parker: I knew Carlos, I was with the Paul Hucklebuck band. I went through Mexico, okay? Traveling and doing shows and those same shows I was talking about went through Mexico. That’s how he got his spark to play guitar.

BBP: So he actually saw you perform in Mexico?
Parker: Yeah, that’s what he says. He was inspired by that, you know.
BBP: When did you first actually talk to him, or interact with him?
Parker: I didn’t really talk to him in those days. He just saw us play.
BBP: When was the first time you ever played with him?
Parker: In ’95. We did a little tour and ended up out there in California at that theatre. And we did about eight, nine days of just running all over California and places like that. He had left his band behind and he just jumped in and played blues with Bobby Parker because he did it with John Lee Hooker, he’s done it with a lot of people. Blues artists. You know? So stuff can rub off on him.
BBP: And then you played together again in 2004? At Montreux?
Parker: Yeah. Montreux, Switzerland.
BBP: How did that come together? Because I heard Gatemouth Brown was on that. Buddy Guy was there too.
Parker: Yeah, that was a good show. And we did a lot of-three or four shows that weekend and they compiled it all into one DVD.
BBP: I have that DVD. What was it like to play with Gatemouth Brown?
Parker: I’d known him a lot of years too. He’s always been a great artist.
BBP: Who’s influenced you most as a guitar player?
Parker: Influenced me?
BBP: Yes.
Parker: T-Bone Walker. And Lowell Fulsom. Well that’s more when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, and I was telling you about that.
BBP: Yeah.
Parker: In California. He was great. And then I was on a show with T-Bone with the Paul Hucklebuck Blues Band. We used to do a little “Me and My Shadow” blues routine. I did that with him. He was a real classy guy, man. T-Bone. Kind of small like myself and a real classy dresser, man. He was really hip. And his big ol’ Gibson guitar, spread it sideways across his chest. You know. Great guitar player. And you know, he did a lot of tricks. He was a young man. He could get around. He knew stuff.
BBP: Did he actually take you aside and show you stuff?
Parker: Um, not really. I just watched him. And I was sitting in the band behind all of these artists and they’d say “Bobby Parker, come out front! Come on out!” I’d step over the band with my guitar around my neck and jam with them. Play. Another cat was Peewee Crayton. He was dynamite too. I got pictures of all of those cats with me. At the Apollo and Howard Theatre, doing a little show spot on the stage, four or five of us together.
BBP: Tell me about Chuck Brown. You do shows in June with him at that festival in Virginia?
Parker: Yeah, over at the State Theatre.
BBP: How long have you known him?
Parker: Whew! Since…the 70’s.
BBP: Did you guys play together back then?
Parker: Sort of. I mean I was on the scene ten or 15 years before he showed up.
BBP: How did you decide to do this show every year with him?
Parker: We’ve been doing it for quite a few years now. We’ve been playing “Summer in the Parks.” We originated in D.C. what’s known as “Summer in the Parks.” Blues, rock, go-go shows. All through the system around here. And um, I’m going to be straight up with you, as time went along, they just took it from us and gave it to somebody else.
BBP: Actually, I’ve heard you’ve done the Chicago Blues Festival a few years. I used to go to that. How does the Chicago scene seem to you?
Parker: I just played there two months ago, three months ago. And I was next to the headliner on it. And uh, it was a great show, man. And we played Kalamazoo, Michigan the night before that. Then we came up to Chicago to do that, and after the Chicago Blues Festival we went to a place in downtown Chicago called Reggies. And that joint was on fire, man, until daybreak. I mean we set the place on fire, everybody who was on that show. Not everybody, but a lot of people came down and played.
BBP: Do you like playing Chicago?
Parker: Yeah, I do.
BBP: Have you been to some of the other clubs there?
Parker: I play Buddy Guy’s joint all the time. Not recently, but. Buddy Guy has a big picture of me. About three years ago I went to Saudi Arabia and man, you’re talking about something dangerous, because of the war, with all of the Islamic folks. And the show was booked by somebody in London and I had no idea I was getting on a show that was dangerous. Cause there’s wars going on over in Saudi Arabia. Yemen is right there like, D.C. and Virginia. Right there, the borderline. We did a show over there and people were blowing up cars and concert stages and setting fires to anything because they heard that an American show was coming there. Now I had no idea, I was just trying to get on the show and get paid. Trying to survive out here. So we went over there and did the show and they’re blowing up all of these places and cities and stuff, and blew up the concert hall where we were going to play. Just a terrible thing. We were not in such a safe place to be.
BBP: Did you finally do the show?
Parker: Oh yeah we did the show, we did about 10 or 12 days and we got out of there. Because they were scarcely closing in on us. And they rushed us out of Saudi Arabia over there on the American Marine side. If you go to Buddy Guy’s place over there he’s got a great big picture of me being guarded by Marines. So we got out of it just by the skin of our teeth, man, and we left under guard. Getting to the airport, we left out of there on a great big green jet. Wasn’t a passenger plane?
BBP: There were actually threats against the show?
Parker: Americans. Period. They hate Americans, man.
BBP: Who are some of your favorite people to play with over the years?
Parker: Bands?
BBP: I mean to actually be on stage with and be in a band with. Who are some of your favorite people?
Parker: That’s kind of hard to say. Albert King. Albert Collins.

Bobby Parker Part 1

What follows is part one of an interview we did with blues guitarist Bobby Parker, who will be headlining the College Park Blues Festival, scheduled for 7 p.m. on November 6 at Ritchie Coliseum at Route 1 and Rossborough Drive in College Park. The festival is being held by the D.C. Blues Society to raise money for Anthony “Swamp Dog” Clark and his Blues Allstars to travel to Memphis to compete in this year’s International Blues Challenge. Clark’s band will also perform at the festival.
Parker has lived in the Washington D.C area since the early 1960’s, when he stayed after playing a gig there one night with the Paul “Hucklebuck” Williams band.
He gave us so much good stuff that we decided to divide the interview into two parts. In part one he talks about how he got into music, about becoming Bo Diddley’s guitar player and about playing The Ed Sullivan Show, a television program as popular with 1960’s audiences as American Idol is with today’s.
BBP: Tell me how you started out in music. What I heard was that your father had a vending machine business. You were working with him and it kind of gave you a chance to visit various night clubs where they were playing blues.
Parker: You’re right on target. I don’t know where you read that but it’s true. I was 12 or 13 years old and my dad, he had an arcade on the beach down from L.A., Long Beach. And he had photo machines and pinballs, a bunch of machines, photographs and a bunch of other stuff. But anyway he used to tell me, he said “on Saturday when school is out I want you to hang with me to help service my machines.” So I agreed. I didn’t want to do it but you know kids have a lot of things they want to do. I said “okay I’ll be ready.” He said “we’re leaving about nine in the morning.” And I said “Okay.” So we traveled all over L.A. County and post offices and places of business, you know where they had all of these machines. And so around noon or one o’clock I started seeing a lot of musicians rehearsing in there. Professional blues and jazz artists, you know? And I said, “Wow man, this is cool.” So all day long until maybe rush hour in the evening we were hitting a lot of night clubs, putting in machines and all of that stuff. Of course he had other people helping him. Really, he wanted me to learn the business. So I became very interested when I started seeing all of these great musicians rehearsing, doing their stuff in the afternoon. So I never had a problem going with him again because it was on, man.
BBP: Before this happened did you have an interest in music. I mean, were you listening to records? I understand your father had a record collection.
Parker: Well my father was—I’ll tell you when all of this music stuff was just given to me honestly because he was a blues player. We’re all from Louisiana. I came up from Lafayette, Louisiana to California when I was about seven years old, something like that maybe. And my mother was a gospel singer and she was in church situations. She really could sing. She sang in the choir and those little small groups, you know. Then my dad, he was a honky-tonk piano player and he had a little accordion and we kind of laughed in those days because all that good music turned into what they call zydeco.
BBP: Ah! Okay.
Parker: So it was all kind of given to me by genetics.
BBP: So your father was actually playing zydeco before it was called zydeco?
Parker: Yeah. They didn’t know what to call that, man. It’s just that we were from Louisiana, Lafayette Louisiana. We just did what we did. And I was interested in guitars and stuff like that but—piano too. I play piano and funky organ and stuff like that.
BBP: Right.
Parker: He was a master of that. But he only did it on Sunday afternoon or when there was a holiday where we could sit around to jam and laugh it up and maybe whatever else. His brother loved blues and jazz too. And his name was Charlie, and my uncle Charlie used to come over there and join us and shake a tambourine and he’d hit on the piano and my dad would get on the accordion and all that stuff, you know. And then I’d see my mom Sunday morning at these church radio shows. That really got to me: she was great, you know.
BBP: Did any of these musicians you saw at the clubs you were servicing, did they take you aside and talk to you and show you things?
Parker: Not really. Not really. I didn’t have time to really meet those people. Those people were really into their set-up if they had to play that night, you know. And you know just like today they were bringing in their gear, setting up and checking everything, making sure it was going to work for the night. And then sometimes they wouldn’t rehearse, they would just set up their gear and leave. But I did see them tuning up and playing a few licks and might play a song or something like that, you know.
BBP: Do you remember who they were, do you remember their names?
Parker: Lowell Fulson, Johnny Guitar Watson sometimes. To me he was a kid. They called him young John Watson.
BBP: Johnny Guitar Watson of “Real Motha For Ya” fame?
Parker: Yeah, um-hum. And Etta James and all of those cool people around….and playing and stuff like that. But we all went to school together. Etta and Johnny, they went to manual arts. And I went to manual arts too sometimes and then I changed and went to Dorsey High School. And that’s kind of where I kind of got my start because we were doing a school play. First of all I was in a talent show at the Johnny Otis show which is….I don’t know if you’re familiar with Johnny Otis from way back in the history. I used to have a little paper route when I was a kid 12 or 13 or 14 years old. It was an elderly guy on the street that just gave me a guitar. I used to stop and listen to him play and I jumped off and would hand him his newspaper in the evening. So he said “kid I like you, I know your daddy. You want to take this guitar down there and see if you can play some?” I said “wow would you do that?” He said “yeah, you go ahead on and take it down there and see what you can do with it.” So I took the guitar down there in a great big old acoustic box and I learned how to play a couple of blues songs. I went to the Johnny Otis show, they had a talent show Thursday night. And there was a song, a real hard basic tune by Lowell Fulson, “Reconsider Me,” and I learned that. And I went down there and got on the talent show and the next thing you know I won it for six weeks straight.
BBP: How old were you?
Parker: I was about 13 or 14, something like that. Going on 15. It was a real inspiration for me because I didn’t know but one or two songs.
BBP: And you played one of those songs and you won…
Parker: Oh yeah, uh huh.
BBP: I understand that your first guitar was a Sears Roebuck Harmony? Was it the guitar the man gave you or ..
Parker: No, that was an acoustic box. I had got an electric guitar from Sears Roebuck and stringed it up and I really learned fast on that. And then when I was 16, my dad took me to the first Fender guitar factory. Which wasn’t a factory, it was just a greasy old car garage where they fix cars.
BBP: Really?
Parker: Grease spots on the floor and spare engines on the sides of the walls and all that kind of stuff. But they were fixing guitars in there. And I had heard from the kids in school, “say man, this is a place where a new guitar company is coming up.” So my father took me over there one day and I watched them make me a Fender Strat right in front of me. And that was one of the first Fender Strats ever made, man. And a lot of people I tell that story to, they laugh at me, say “you crazy.” I say “It’s true, really true.”
BBP: They made it right in front of your eyes?
Parker: Yeah, they put it together. If that thing were around today it would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I got to be a Fender champion. I mean, after a year or two, I had maybe eight or ten Fender guitars. And I got really good at it. So the Charms, Otis Williams and the Charms saw me in a school play and that’s how I got discovered into the music business. They came back stage and said ‘Man you were great out there with that kid show, you know.” Of course I was nothing but a kid either. Otis Williams and the Charms were something like the Jackson 5. Just a bunch of kids. They could play and sing their ass off. So they asked me, would I like to join it. I said “Whoa, man, you’re right on time.” Because the school kids were kind of getting harassed, kind of jumped on by kid gangs, you know going to school, so I wanted to get away from there.
BBP: How old were you about this time, still about 16 years old?
Parker: Yeah, something like that. Sixteen, going on 17.
BBP: And did you go touring with the Charms?
Parker: I sure did. I left L.A.—my parents thought I was going to school one day. I carried the guitar to school with me anyway and all of those books and stuff and I met the bus. I got on the bus—I felt kind of lonely—but I got on with those guys and within two or three days it was like a family. A musical family. And my parents were worried. They thought I’d been kidnapped or something, you know. And the manager, he called back within four or five or six days, and he said “Robert Junior is alright. He’s on this show here with us and that’s what he wants to do.” And my parents were going to get the guy in trouble and all of that stuff. And then I told them that’s what I want to do. And it was on, we were playing all over the country.
BBP: I do remember hearing that your parents were very upset with you because at the time you had just finished the eleventh grade and they wanted you to finish school.
Parker: Absolutely. You know they wanted me to finish up, go to college all that stuff, you know. Normal stuff, you know. But man, I got struck by lightning: blues, you know. And it didn’t take me long to get into it, and after about a year-and-a-half of Otis Williams and the Charms I met Bo Diddley. And man, he was with Chess and Checker records and everybody who was anybody in blues was there. Howlin Wolf, Muddy, Jimmy Reed, just a bunch of people, Little Walter, everybody was talking and going in and out of Chess and Checker Records every day. I must have been about 17, going on 18 years old. And man it was amazing.
BBP: What were some of these people like? I mean I saw the movie “Cadillac Records.” Was that accurate?

Parker: No. It was contrived. Believe me. Um, Beyonce Knowles did a great job. It really enhanced her career, you know. She’s a nice, good-looking gal and all that, but –even Etta James herself didn’t quite like her portrayal of her. Because Etta James…Beyonce’s portrayal of Etta James was too clean, man. ‘Cause Etta was, you know, she had hot records then, you know, that song “At Last?”
BBP: Yeah
Parker: That was a big hit, man. But she was kind of into a lot of chemicals. And Beyonce was a little too clean an artist. I mean the way it looked on screen. But the one thing it did, it opened the eyes of millions of kids a year-and-a-half ago. They say “man we saw that movie. Beyonce was in it man! And we started liking blues.” I said you dumb motherf—I said, “well you know it’s cool”-Anyway, but it gave them an insight into what blues and those original guys, what they were about. So I’ve been trying to get a movie made on my life. Because I was there when all of these people, I mean I was in Fats Domino band. That was when I was a teen-ager too. I was bass for the Fats Domino group. And all of these shows that went out every year. Then I joined the (saxophonist) Paul Hucklebuck (Williams) orchestra, which was about 18 cats in one band playing blues, man. It was real amazing.

BBP: How did you meet Hucklebuck?
Parker: Well, just being on a lot of shows. He wanted me to be on the show with him and I could play and sing really well. And join his big orchestra, man. And then we started going out every year with what they called the Top Ten and Fifteen Revue. And that’s where I met Buddy Holly, Big Bopper and what’s his name, in that plane that went down, man. That was a sad thing.
BBP: Richie Valens?
Parker: Richie Valens. Fats Domino was on this show and Chuck Berry and all of those people and….
BBP: What were those guys like? What was Chuck Berry like?
Parker: He was wild, man. Good player, and kids loved him, man. He was sort of like—black cowboy, you know. And he did a funny little walk like he was riding a horse with a guitar.
BBP: You mean that “duckwalk” where he sticks his leg out in front and he kind of hops along?
Parker: Back in those days, it was like he was going to ride a horse. Scooting across the stage, kids were just crazy about him. But that thing would go out every year and we would run a lot of shows, man. Ed Sullivan show. All that. In those days he was the big time, Ed Sullivan.
BBP: What was Bo Diddley like? I understand that you were on the Ed Sullivan show with him.
Parker: A funny thing happened. Bo got superbig all over the country and the show comes on Sunday afternoon and the biggest song in the nation wasn’t Bo Diddley, it was “Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get?” So Ed Sullivan says “Bo Diddley” I want you to sing “Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get.” Bo looked at me and said “the man thinks I’m crazy.” He thinks he’s crazy because he asked him to do “Sixteen Tons,” which is a country song. He wanted to sing his song, “Bo Diddley.” So he got mad. He got angry and next thing you know we were on. The show started, and they had big signs up because Bo Diddley couldn’t see that well, he had kind of horn-rimmed glasses. He’s looking past the cameras, and trying to look at those lyrics, “Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get?” He got, maybe, thirty seconds into it, and he says, “Oh shoot, forget about it.” He went on and did “Bo Diddley” anyway. And it was a huge success. Smash for him, you know. He said a few lines of “Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get” but afterwards, Ed Sullivan and his crew were so mad with him, he said “You’ll never be on television, you’ll never”—that was just a hoax. He got bigger than ever.
BBP: Wow. What a story. And what was it like being on national television like that? At the time being a young man, and all?
Parker: Yeah. It was really nice because, the thing about show business man, I’m just going to tell you straight up man, nowadays it’s just too much going on, man. It’s just too many dogs in the fight.
BBP: What do you mean?
Parker: Everybody and their mama and family wants to do this, whether they know how to do it, or not. But in those days there weren’t that many R and B and blues people. But basically man, way back in the fifties and I’ll be straight up with you, man, racism was rampant. It was just crazy. Black artists, we had nowhere to dress, we had nowhere to eat. It was just terrible, man, you know. But we did this thing anyway, you know. Running all over the country and doing the show. When we hooked up with the Paul Hucklebuck band and they were on with all of those white artists, we got a better break, you know.
BBP: What do you mean a better break?
Parker: Well, we were on stages, big time stages and stuff. The only place black artists—Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, and all of us, thousands of us could play—were tobacco warehouses.
BBP: You mean to actually play, have concerts?
Parker: We played gigs, we played gigs all over North Carolina, South Carolina, you know, the cigarette belt. And they’d move stuff aside and they’d have hundreds of thousands of people in there watching our shows.
BBP: Wow.
Parker: Tobacco warehouses. You know, where they auction tobacco. You know (Simulates an auctioneer trilling his tongue) and all of that junk. We heard a lot of that, just before dark we’d come in there and bring in our gear and be up until two o’clock in the morning. We just…great shows, man. But people had no idea. And you know, the young white kids outside wanted to get in there so bad, they would turn over cars and start fires to let them in there.