On This Date (January 17, 1982) Tommy Tucker

Tommy Tucker (Born Robert Higginbotham)
March 5, 1933 – January 17, 1982

Tommy Tucker was an American blues singer-songwriter and pianist. He was born in Springfield, Ohio. He is best known for the 1964 song, “Hi-Heel Sneakers”, that went to number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Tucker’s follow-up release, “Long Tall Shorty”, was less successful. Nevertheless, famous musicians that have played on his albums include Louisiana Red, Willie Dixon and Donny Hathaway.  Tucker co-wrote a song with Atlantic Records founder executive Ahmet Ertegün, called “My Girl (I Really Love Her So)”. Tucker left music in the late 1960s, taking a position as a real estate agent in New Jersey, he also did freelance writing for a local newspaper in East Orange, N.J. writing of the plight and ignorance of black males in America and the gullibility and exploitation of African Americans in general by the white dominated media.   Tucker died in 1982 at the age of 48 at College Hospital in Newark, New Jersey from inhaling carbon tetrachloride while refinishing the hardwood floors of his home; his death has been alternately attributed to food poisoning. – From wikipedia