Known to her Depression-era fans as "the little sunbonnet girl," country music singer Linda Parker (1912-1935) was an early star on the WLS radio program National Barn Dance in Chicago. A country music sweetheart who sang familiar folk songs like Single Girl and I'll Be All Smiles Tonight, her nickname originated from her resemblance to film star Mary Pickford. Parker's fame in the new medium of radio was sudden, but her life would be short and tragic. "I would like to have sung like Linda Parker," fellow singer Lulu Belle Wiseman stated, "but I couldn't sing like her. She sang 'straight.' Actually, Linda was a nightclub singer. But they built a whole new image for her. They called her 'the sunbonnet girl.' She wore a sunbonnet with the strings hanging down and a little gingham dress."

Parker was born Genevieve Elizabeth Meunich in Covington, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati, but would come of age in Hammond, IN. As a teen, Parker sang for popular radio, and by the age of 20, she was eking out a living as a chanteuse on the nightclub circuit. She was discovered in the early '30s by John Lair, the program director of WLS. (WLS' call letters stood for "world's largest store," a reference to the building from which the station broadcast, Chicago's Sears Tower.) He groomed Parker for her new role with the Cumberland Ridge Runners, changing her name, teaching her a new repertoire, and helping to shape her into "the little sunbonnet girl."Parker made her first appearance on National Barn Dance at the beginning of 1932. Her song selection represented an innocent, down-home persona, and included Single Girl and Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot along with her signature songs, I'll Be All Smiles Tonight and Take Me Back to Renfro Valley. From time to time, however, she shed her girl-next-door character and cut loose on fun songs like Wait for the Wagon and Gonna Raise a Ruckus.

WLS worked hard to promote Parker's image, dressing her in gingham and emphasizing her Kentucky background. In -Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music, Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann suggest that the station downplayed her 1932 marriage to singer Arthur Janes in order, perhaps, to maintain "her virginal sweetheart image." (In the early to mid-'30s, married women seldom retained their maiden names and rarely worked full-time.) Parker adhered to a full schedule, traveling with the National Barn Dance troupe when not making appearances on the radio program. However, Parker's fairy tale story of success as America's singing sweetheart came to an unpredictable and sad end. Only three years after her discovery by Lair, she would be dead at the age of 23. While performing in Elkhart, IN, on August 3, 1935, Parker suffered from excruciating pain throughout the show. Although she finished, it would be her last. Parker died nine days later in Mishawaka, IN, from a perforated appendix. After WLS stated that Bury Me Beneath the Willow had been the last song she had performed, it became one of the most frequently requested songs on the station during 1935. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr., Rovi