In 1992, when Bill Duggan was looking for musicians to play his new club, Madam’s Organ, he got a call. The person on the phone said, “My name is Bobby Parker and I am the blues.” Duggan hired him. “We opened on Halloween 1992 with Bobby Parker,” the owner says, “and he died 21 years to the day later.”
As reported by Washington City Paper and other outlets this week, Parker died at age 76 last Thursday, on Halloween. The cause of death was a heart attack. Parker was best known for his influential 1961 single “Watch Your Step,” a song that was covered by The Spencer Davis Group and Santana, and whose opening guitar riff cropped up in songs by The Beatles, Link Wray, Led Zeppelin, and The Allman Brothers.
Born in Lafayette, La., in 1937 and raised in Los Angeles, Bobby Parker ended up in D.C. in 1961 after stints in New York City and elsewhere. Before coming here, a young Parker toured as the guitarist for the doo-wop group Otis Williams and the Charms. He played with Bo Diddley on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1955, and subsequently became part of the Apollo Theatre house band led by saxophonist Paul “Hucklebuck” Williams. He also toured with Sam Cooke.
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