Robert Parker, Jr., a Rhythm & Blues musician, was born on October 14, 1930, in Mobile, Alabama, to Robert Parker, Sr. and Leana Parker. He was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Melpomene (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard). He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1948 after playing in the band. Parker collaborated with Professor Longhair on his 1949 hit “Mardi Gras In New Orleans” and Al Johnson’s “Carnival Time.”
Parker was a regular performer at New Orleans’ Tijuana Club in the 1940s and 1950s when he was encouraged by agent Percy Stovall to form the session recording band Robert Parker and the Royals.
Parker debuted as a solo artist in 1958 with the instrumental “All Nite Long,” which peaked at number 113 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. Parker wrote “Barefootin” while working as a Charity Hospital orderly in 1965. He signed with Nola Records after scoring a hit with “Barefootin.” The song became so inspirational on the campus of Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, that girls took their shoes off and piled them in front of the bandstand before dancing to the song’s syncopated sound.
The same thing happened when the song was performed at a University of Alabama fraternity party in Tuscaloosa. “Barefootin” eventually sold over a million copies and peaked at number two on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where it remained for 17 weeks. In 1966, it peaked at number 24 in the United Kingdom. Parker’s only major hit as a solo artist was “Barefootin’.”
Parker appeared at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York, and toured the United States and the United Kingdom with Stevie Wonder, Joe Tex, and the Temptations. Parker released the single “The Scratch” the same year, which peaked at number 128 in the United States. Parker’s single “Tip Toe” peaked at number 48 in the R&B charts in 1967.
Parker was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007. Parker was named OffBeat’s “Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music” in 2012. Parker was a featured performer at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Music Festival the following year, in 2013.
Parker released ten compositions between 1968 and 1973, including the singles “Give Me the Country Side of Life” and “A Little Bit of Something (Is Better Than a Whole Lot of Nothing”), but none of them charted. “Barefootin'” was re-released in 1987 and reached number 90 in the UK.
Robert Parker, Jr., a staple of the New Orleans music scene, died on January 19, 2020, in Roseland, Louisiana. He was 89.