Charles Parker

I was born March 26, 1944 when my dad, Clifton H. Parker, was in the Army, I was born in Starke, Florida because my dad was stationed there. My parents and older brother, Marion, lived in Columbus County, NC before my dad was drafted.

When Dad got out of the Army we moved back to the old family farm where my mother was born and raised.

When I was ten we lost the farm and Dad got a good paying job helping build the dam on the Roanoke River in Roanoke Rapids, NC. That was when Dad got his ministry license, became Rev. Clifton H. Parker and started pastoring small churches. He had to keep a job in order to support his children, six boys and one girl.

Early in 1959, Dad took a church in Dunn, NC and one month before my fifteenth birthday we moved there.

Shortly after that move I saw a poster about a gospel concert coming to the high school auditorium where I went to school. I went and paid $1 to see three quartets: the Blackwood Brothers (with J. D. Sumner on bass), The Statesmen and the Harvesters. My life was changed that night. I had taken some piano lessons and loved the sounds of musical chords but when I heard those chords come from the voices of four men I was spellbound.

I began following, listening to and buying records of quartets and trios. I guess became addicted. I just couldn't get enough. Singing harmony came natural for me and I sang with several trios and a mixed quartet until I was about nineteen. At nineteen I took two of my younger brothers, Kenny and Danny (yes Danny Parker of the Harvesters Quartet), and with me playing the piano we started the first Parker Brothers Trio in 1963. I don't know why but harmony came natural for them too. Danny was only thirteen or fourteen years old. Kenny was seventeen.

That original Parker Brothers traveled and sang until Kenny was drafted and sent to Vietnam.

I didn't sing again until Ivan (yes that Ivan Parker) came to me in 1972 at the age of fourteen and said, "Charlie let's start the Parker Brothers back." So I took Marcus and Ivan on the road. With Ivan on the drums, Marcus on the bass and me on the piano, we sang and had our own band.

That Parker Brothers traveled and sang until 1976 when Ivan left to sing with the Vikings Quartet, his first professional group.

I didn't sing again with a regular group until 1984 when I joined the Sojourners, a male quartet, as piano player. I was with the Sojourners for ten years as tenor, bass guitar player, harmonica player and about the last five years, baritone. About the last five years with the Sojourners, my brother, Marcus, sang lead.

In 2001 my youngest of three sons, Brendan, came to me and said, "Dad I want to start a group". I was on cloud nine that he wanted to carry on the tradition. He named the group "Arise" and we started out as a trio even though he wanted a quartet. Eventually after much begging he talked his brother, my middle son, Chris, into singing bass.

Here I am almost 66 years old and having the time of my life traveling on a bus almost every weekend with two of my sons and a friend, doing about 80 concerts a year.

I'm blessed! I've been blessed all my life.
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