Little Junior Parker, born on a plantation near Bobo on March 27, 1932, became one of the most outstanding blues singers of the 1950s and 1960s. After moving with his mother to West Memphis as a youngster, he recorded his first hit, “Feelin’ Good,” for Sun Records in Memphis in 1953, and later scored hits including “Driving Wheel,” “Next Time You See Me,” “In the Dark,” and “Sweet Home Chicago.” He ranked with B. B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Little Milton as a top blues star of the African American chitlin circuit, while also attracting white admirers such as Elvis Presley, who recorded Parker’s “Mystery Train” for Sun Records. Parker sang with warmth and elegance, played harmonica in a mellow style, began singing at Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Bobo, and spent much of his childhood at his grandfather’s twelve-room house there. Influenced on harmonica mainly by Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2, whose “King Biscuit Time” broadcasts from Helena, Arkansas, reached Bobo, Parker later worked in West Memphis with Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, and other young performers including Bobby Bland, Johnny Ace, Matt and Floyd Murphy, Pat Hare, and Earl Forest. He made his first records for the Modern and Sun labels but enjoyed his greatest success during his 1953-1966 stint with Duke Records and its associated Buffalo Booking Agency in Houston, Texas, touring the country with Bland, first as his valet and later as a co-star in a “Blues Consolidated” package show. Earnings from records and tours enabled him to buy homes in Houston and later Chicago. In his final years he continued producing hits, and his last charting song, “Drowning on Dry Land” on Capitol, appeared in 1971, the same year he died of a brain tumor at age 39 in Blue Island, Illinois, on November 18, 1971. He always used Herman Parker, Jr., as his legal name, though his Mississippi birth certificate recorded him as Herbert Parker, and he was elected to the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. Bobo also produced or was home to blues artists Joe Willie Wilkins, Joe Cole, and C. V. Veal, and many performers, especially Robert “Bilbo” Walker, played at country stores there. Wilkins, born in nearby Davenport in 1923 and raised in Bobo, became one of the most highly regarded early Delta electric guitarists, admired by B. B. King, Muddy Waters, and Little Milton, though he spent most of his career as a sideman and was best known for work with Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2. As a teenager in Bobo, Wilkins played with older bluesmen including his father Frank Wilkins, Bob Williams, Sam Harris, and Walter “Pat” Rhodes, an early Delta blues recording artist for Columbia in 1927. Alabama-born guitarist Joe Cole moved to Bobo in 1953, worked there as a tractor mechanic, and was renowned locally for “Feather Bed.” C. V. Veal, later a longtime drummer, emcee, and blues and gospel singer on the Clarksdale music scene, was born in Bobo on October 4, 1926, and recalled that Junior Parker entertained local people there as a boy.