Ray Erskine Parker, Jr. (born May 1, 1954) is an American guitarist, songwriter, producer and recording artist. Parker is known for writing and performing the theme song to the movie Ghostbusters, for his solo music, and for performing with his band, Raydio, and with Barry White.

Early life

Parker was born in Detroit to Venolia and Ray Parker, Sr. He has two siblings, his brother Opelton and his sister Barbara.

Parker attended Angel Elementary School where music teacher, Afred T Kirby inspired him to be a musician at age 6 playing the clarinet. Parker attended Cass Tech High School in the 10th grade. Parker is a 1971 graduate of Detroit's Northwestern High School. He was raised in the Dexter-Grand Boulevard neighborhood on its West Side. Parker attended college at Lawrence Institute of Technology.

Career

Early work

Parker gained recognition during the late 1960s as a member of Bohannon's house band at the legendary 20 Grand nightclub. This Detroit hotspot often featured Tamla/Motown acts, one of which, the (Detroit) Spinners, was so impressed with the young guitarist's skills that they added him to their touring group. Through the Bohannon relationship at 16 he recorded and cowrote his first songs with Marvin Gaye. Parker was also employed as a studio musician as a teenager for the emergent Holland-Dozier-Holland's Invictus/Hot Wax stable, and his choppy style was particularly prevalent on "Want Ads", a number one single for Honey Cone. Parker was later enlisted by Lamont Dozier to appear on his first two albums for ABC Records.

Raymond Parker or Ray Parker may refer to:

Raymond Parker was born in 1922 and he died in 1990. He was known as an Abstract expressionist painter who also is associated with Color Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction. Ray Parker was an influential art teacher and an important Color Field painter and an instrumental figure in the movement coined by Clement Greenberg called Post-Painterly Abstraction.

Biography

Originally from South Dakota, Ray Parker entered the University of Iowa in Iowa City in 1940; he earned his MFA in 1948. From 1948 to 1951 he taught painting at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. During the 1940s his paintings were heavily influenced by cubism. In the early 1950s, however, Parker became associated with the leading abstract expressionists of the day, including Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Parker soon began to simplify and refine his works realizing that through abstraction, and color his paintings could convey and express emotion.

Like Piet Mondrian, Stuart Davis and Jackson Pollock, Parker was a fan of jazz music; and his interest in Jazz, combined with his interest in abstract expressionism, led to his improvised painting style. Parker was also a great admirer of the painter Henri Matisse and he looked to this artist’s work for inspiration in terms of color and form, especially in his paintings of the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1950s, he taught at Hunter College in New York City and he developed a singular style of painting that focused on intense color and simple geometric shapes. He was represented by the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, one of the leading contemporary galleries in New York City during the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. At that time the Kootz Gallery represented important living artists such as Pablo Picasso, Pierre Soulages, Hans Hofmann, Zao Wou Ki as well as Ray Parker.

Is It Real? is an American television series that originally aired from April 25, 2005 to August 14, 2007 on the National Geographic Channel. The program examines popular or persistent mysteries to determine whether the featured cryptozoological creature (cryptid) or supernatural phenomenon is real or not. The show typically includes interviews with believers or proponents of the featured paranormal claims, and then with scientists and skeptics who attempt to find rational explanations for such phenomena using a scientific approach.

Reception

On June 23, 2008, the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) recognised Is It Real? as one of those rare shows in the media that encourage science and critical thinking.

Episodes

Season 1 (2005)

Season 2 (2005–2007)

See also

References

External links