Hi Heel Sneakers - Tommy Tucker

"Hi-Heel Sneakers is a blues song recorded by Tommy Tucker in 1963. The song, an uptempo twelve-bar blues, "has a spare, lilting musical framework" with a strong vocal. Tommy Tucker's original recording hit number one on the Cash Box R&B Locations chart and number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100. Tommy Tucker was the stage name of Robert Higginbotham

Picture of Hi-Heel Sneakers

Over 1000 artists have recorded Hi-Heel Sneakers including Elvis in September 1967, Nashville. The song, which Tucker penned, has appeared in several soundtracks, for example The Who's Quadrophenia (1979); the HBO special The Promiseland; motion pictures, e.g. Lion of Africa, Lackawanna Blues, Frankie's House; commercial jingles and television shows such as Late Night with David Letterman, sitcoms Rags to Riches, Redd Foxx Show; plus at sporting events such as the women's 1997 NCAA Basketball Championship." Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Heel_Sneakers

It was recorded in 1963 and released in 1964.

"Robert Higginbotham better known by his stage name, Tommy Tucker (March 5, 1933 – January 22, 1982) was an American blues singer-songwriter and pianist. He is best known for the 1964 hit song, "Hi-Heel Sneakers", that went to #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and peaked at #23 in the UK Singles Chart.


He was born Robert Higginbotham, to Leroy and Mary Higginbotham, the fifth of eleven chidren, in Springfield, Ohio. Tucker's follow-up release, "Long Tall Shorty", was less successful. Nevertheless, musicians that played on his albums included 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 the music industry 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, New Jersey, 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.[citation needed] Tucker currently has four albums selling in Europe and over the internet, through the Red Lightnin' record label.

Tucker was the father of up-and-coming blues artist Teeny Tucker (real name Regina Westbrook),[citation needed] and was the cousin of Joan Higginbotham, the U.S. female astronaut who launched in November 2006 on the Space Shuttle Discovery. 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; though his death has been alternatively attributed to food poisoning." Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tucker_(singer)

Robert Mathew-Walker says of Elvis's version of Hi-Heel Sneakers in Presley - A Story in Music
"Hi-Heel Sneakers (a hit for Tommy Tucker three years before), Presley's performance, to use the then current jargon 'more rocker than mod'. The song does not stand up to this treatment, and although the treatment is subtle and erotic, its cleverness means Presley has little chance to get going."