Search - Bobby Blue Band, Little Junior Parker :: Earls of Duke

Bobby "Blue" Bland had started as a valet and PA to Parker and other Memphis Bluesmen in the late 1940?s, but rapidly became a star performer, scoring hit after hit well into the 1980?s, many of his records being much covered blues classics. Little Junior Parker is another blues and oddly, Rockabilly legend, whose "Mystery Train" did much to make Elvis what he became...working with such figures as Sam Phillips and Ike Turner, Little Junior Parker had a string of increasingly larger hits right through until 1969, when his new label Capitol started cutting him on ill-advised Beatles covers and the like. But the tough 'Drownin' On Dry Land' deservedly gave him his last R&B chart success in early 1971. By the end of that year he was dead from a brain tumor, passing away in Illinois on 18th November 1971 before he had reached the age of 40. It would be thirty years later that he would be honored by finally being inducted into The Blues Hall Of Fame.