The actor who is famous for his roles in TV series 'Davy Crockett' and 'Daniel Boone' has passed away

He became a Disney favorite later in the decade when he landed the role of frontiersman Crockett in the hit series, which also featured his music hit "The Ballad of Davy Crockett", and went on to star in family film favorite "Old Yeller".

In the 1960s Parker found TV success as a frontiersman again when he landed the lead in the TV series "Daniel Boone" - a role he played for six years.
He also produced several episodes of the show.

In 1970, he retired from acting and launched a successful career in real estate.
He returned to TV briefly in 1974 with his own sitcom, "The Fess Parker Show" but rarely appeared on Fess Parker, 85, who launched a nationwide craze of coonskin caps and toy rifles in the mid-1950s with his TV portrayal of rugged frontiersman Davy Crockett, and later starred as Daniel Boone in another TV buckskin drama, died March 18 at his home near Santa Barbara, Calif., where he had been a successful winemaker and real estate developer. The cause of death was not reported.

Mr. Parker had acted in a few westerns and TV shows when Walt Disney put the 6-foot-6 Texan in the title role of Davy Crockett for a series of three one-hour episodes that appeared in late 1954 and early 1955 on ABC's "Disneyland" program. Mr. Parker and his sidekick, played by Buddy Ebsen, rafted down rivers, foraged in the woods, battled Indians and ended up in a fateful encounter at the Alamo.
The programs were an instant hit, prompting millions of children to buy coonskin caps, buckskin outfits, moccasins, guitars, lunch pails and "Old Betsy" rifles. At the peak of the craze, the price of raccoon fur shot from 25 cents a pound to $8. On tour, Mr. Parker was besieged by thousands of fans clamoring to get a glimpse of the rangy, rough-hewn star.
"I will immodestly tell you," Mr. Parker told the Los Angeles Times in 2002, "it was bigger than anything, ever, including the Beatles and Elvis."
The show's theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," spent three months as the country's No. 1 pop hit. Seemingly every child in America knew its opening verse: