Bobby Parker - The Link From Dizzy To The Beatles

It has been a couple days since my friend Bobby Parker passed on which has led to numerous expressions of sorrow of a loss of a terrific musician, but also a person. I will be blogging about Bobby's contributions to the blues and the DC music scene in subsequent posts, but for this post I want to focus on perhaps his most famous recording, Watch Your Step. As an introduction we have the late John Lennon discussing this recording and the impact it had on himself and The Beatles.

One thing Bobby does not say in this clip, but which he told me on several occasions, is that the guitar riff was itself inspired by a riff in Dizzy Gillepsie's Manteca. Bobby loved jazz and his long-term fans will remember him opening his shows with Thelonious Monk's Straight No Chaser, using the Miles Davis arrangement. here is a clip of Dizzy playing Manteca.

 Now let us listen to the full original V-Tone recording of Watch Your Step.

I will let you fine folk go to youtube on your own to listen to The Beatles. Incidentally, John Lennon is also said to have noted that not only I Feel Fine, but also Day Tripper were inspired by Watch Your Step.