Hi-Heel Sneakers

"Hi-Heel Sneakers"
Single by Tommy Tucker
B-side "I Dont Want Cha"
Released 1964
Label Checker 1067
Writer(s) Robert Higginbotham
Tommy Tucker singles chronology
"Hi-Heel Sneakers"
(1964)
"Long Tall Shorty"
(1964)

"Hi-Heel Sneakers" is a 1964 twelve-bar blues song and single by Tommy Tucker. Tommy Tucker's original recording hit number one on the Cash Box R&B Locations chart and number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100.[1]

Over 200 artists have recorded "Hi-Heel Sneakers". These include Led Zeppelin, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, The Searchers (It's The Searchers album), Sammy Davis Jr., Janis Joplin, Jose Feliciano, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, Ralph Williams, Tom Jones, John Lee Hooker, Cleo Laine, Pharoah Sanders, Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead, Ramsey Lewis and George Thorogood.

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 NCAA Basketball Championship. In England there is a racehorse named High Heel Sneakers, plus in the Netherlands a musical group also has taken the name, High Heel Sneakers.

The opening line "Put on your red dress, mama....'cause you're going out tonight" was used in a TV commercial for Fresh Start laundry detergent in the mid-1980s. The commercial's message was that a woman could be told in the afternoon that she's going out that night and by using the detergent, her dress would be clean well in time for her night out.

The Oasis song "(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady", from the album Dig Out Your Soul uses the vocal melody and layout of this song.

References

  1. ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 592.