MON., NOVEMBER 26, 2007
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The Eeephing Good Music of Harmonica Frank
by John Morthland
“You say a white boy can’t know the blues,” Harmonica Frank Floyd declared in the '70s. “During the Depression I’d sleep in ditches and know if I died that night no one would know who I was or where I come from.” The facts bear him out: Harmonica Frank was born in Mississippi in 1908 to itinerant parents who didn’t stick around long enough to name him. Known only by his nickname Shank, he was raised in Arkansas by grandparents until 1922, when his grandfather followed his grandmother in death. At age 14, Shank joined the carnival, naming himself Frank Floyd sometime later in his teens.
As a carny, Frank practiced fire-eating, hypnotism, comedy and music. His first instrument was harmonica, but he took up guitar after hearing Jimmie Rodgers. At that point he began playing harmonica with the instrument sticking out one side of his mouth like a cigar; that way he could sing out the other side and pick guitar at the same time. (Later, he taught himself to blow harp with his nose, so he could play two simultaneously.) Only some of his music was blues in form; all of it was the combination of blues, country and minstrelsy that occupied the world of tent, minstrel and medicine shows then familiar to rural blacks and whites alike. It had the fatalism-and-resolve cry of blues, the stranger-in-my-own-home-town lonesome of mountain music and the thumbing-its-nose defiance of rock & roll; and yet while being all of them, it was none of them. The only postwar music I know of that occupies a similar world, albeit a more contemporary imagining of it, is the "Basement Tapes" of Bob Dylan with the Band. But Frank’s music was not that unusual in its day; what makes him notable is that he managed to put it on record in the postwar era, when it was completely anachronistic.
After leaving the carnival, Frank became a street singer and rambling man who landed occasional radio gigs; during the 1979 concerts and sessions that later became The Missing Link (2002), he boasted to co-producer Jim Dickinson that for 35 years he never spent two nights in the same place. In 1951, while working on WMC in Memphis, he recorded for Sam Phillips, a man with an ear for the unusual yet accessible, who would soon launch Sun Records. Having recently provided Chess with the hard-rocking r&b hit “Rocket 88,” sung by Jackie Brenston backed by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm, Sam convinced the Chicago label to release a single of Frank’s sly medicine-show spiel “Swamp Root” b/w the chilling “Goin’ Away Walkin’.” The b-side was soon replaced by Frank’s cover of “Step It Up and Go,” a recent regional hit by Big Jeff and the Radio Playboys that black and white Southerners had both been recording for as long as there’d been a record industry. In 1952, Chess came back with “Howlin’ Tomcat” b/w “She’s Done Moved.” But Phillips himself released Frank’s best single, “The Great Medical Menagerist” b/w “Rockin’ Chair Daddy,” on Sun in 1954, just 18 days before Elvis’ debut. On the former, Frank delightfully reproduces some of his old routine from the Happy Phillipson Medicine Show, mocking the marks who bought miracle hair tonics and soaps. The latter is a slithering black-white synthesis with the immortal couplet, “I told her my name was on the tail of my shirt/ I’m a rockin’ chair daddy don’t have to work.”
But the Elvis explosion redefined Sun; Sam quit recording blues and country and any permutations thereof that lacked teen appeal. Frank recorded one side of a 1958 single featuring Larry Kennon on the flip, for a label the two performers shared, then retired to Dallas to sell ice cream. Rediscovered after returning to Memphis in the early '70s, he cut Blues That Made the Roosters Dance (1975) for Barrelhouse and Harmonica Frank Floyd (1976) for Adelphi. Neither is available on eMusic, though The Great Medical Menagerist, apparently outtakes from the latter, is; it’s disappointingly uneven, with cacophonous wonders like “Mosquito Bar Britches” and “Movement Like an Elgin” brought down by shaky renditions of “Blue Yodel #6” and the title song.
But Frank is finally done justice by The Missing Link, recorded mostly in front of Memphis schoolkids who — in the era of disco, urban cowboy and punk — must have felt like they’d slipped through a crack in time and space into a parallel universe. Frank’s in rich and strong voice as he reincarnates favorites like “Rocking Chair Daddy,” “Swamp Root” (this version is particularly playful), “Howlin’ Tomcat” and “The Great Medical Menagerist,” and shoop-a-boop-a-doodles his way through “Shoop-a-Boop-a-Doodler.” He even showcases the 19th century Southern art of eeephing (rhythmically imitating the sound of domestic animals, sort of an early hillbilly equivalent to hip-hop’s human beat-box) on “Without My Teeth.” His dexterous guitar work is limber yet forceful, while the conversation between voice and harmonica on “Married Man Blues” is priceless. Topping it all off is a deeply blue and battered version of neglected country great Jimmie Skinner’s “You Don’t Know My Mind.” Harmonica Frank Floyd died in Ohio in 1984; to the end, he continued to wear his name on the tail of his shirt.
As a carny, Frank practiced fire-eating, hypnotism, comedy and music. His first instrument was harmonica, but he took up guitar after hearing Jimmie Rodgers. At that point he began playing harmonica with the instrument sticking out one side of his mouth like a cigar; that way he could sing out the other side and pick guitar at the same time. (Later, he taught himself to blow harp with his nose, so he could play two simultaneously.) Only some of his music was blues in form; all of it was the combination of blues, country and minstrelsy that occupied the world of tent, minstrel and medicine shows then familiar to rural blacks and whites alike. It had the fatalism-and-resolve cry of blues, the stranger-in-my-own-home-town lonesome of mountain music and the thumbing-its-nose defiance of rock & roll; and yet while being all of them, it was none of them. The only postwar music I know of that occupies a similar world, albeit a more contemporary imagining of it, is the "Basement Tapes" of Bob Dylan with the Band. But Frank’s music was not that unusual in its day; what makes him notable is that he managed to put it on record in the postwar era, when it was completely anachronistic.
After leaving the carnival, Frank became a street singer and rambling man who landed occasional radio gigs; during the 1979 concerts and sessions that later became The Missing Link (2002), he boasted to co-producer Jim Dickinson that for 35 years he never spent two nights in the same place. In 1951, while working on WMC in Memphis, he recorded for Sam Phillips, a man with an ear for the unusual yet accessible, who would soon launch Sun Records. Having recently provided Chess with the hard-rocking r&b hit “Rocket 88,” sung by Jackie Brenston backed by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm, Sam convinced the Chicago label to release a single of Frank’s sly medicine-show spiel “Swamp Root” b/w the chilling “Goin’ Away Walkin’.” The b-side was soon replaced by Frank’s cover of “Step It Up and Go,” a recent regional hit by Big Jeff and the Radio Playboys that black and white Southerners had both been recording for as long as there’d been a record industry. In 1952, Chess came back with “Howlin’ Tomcat” b/w “She’s Done Moved.” But Phillips himself released Frank’s best single, “The Great Medical Menagerist” b/w “Rockin’ Chair Daddy,” on Sun in 1954, just 18 days before Elvis’ debut. On the former, Frank delightfully reproduces some of his old routine from the Happy Phillipson Medicine Show, mocking the marks who bought miracle hair tonics and soaps. The latter is a slithering black-white synthesis with the immortal couplet, “I told her my name was on the tail of my shirt/ I’m a rockin’ chair daddy don’t have to work.”
But the Elvis explosion redefined Sun; Sam quit recording blues and country and any permutations thereof that lacked teen appeal. Frank recorded one side of a 1958 single featuring Larry Kennon on the flip, for a label the two performers shared, then retired to Dallas to sell ice cream. Rediscovered after returning to Memphis in the early '70s, he cut Blues That Made the Roosters Dance (1975) for Barrelhouse and Harmonica Frank Floyd (1976) for Adelphi. Neither is available on eMusic, though The Great Medical Menagerist, apparently outtakes from the latter, is; it’s disappointingly uneven, with cacophonous wonders like “Mosquito Bar Britches” and “Movement Like an Elgin” brought down by shaky renditions of “Blue Yodel #6” and the title song.
But Frank is finally done justice by The Missing Link, recorded mostly in front of Memphis schoolkids who — in the era of disco, urban cowboy and punk — must have felt like they’d slipped through a crack in time and space into a parallel universe. Frank’s in rich and strong voice as he reincarnates favorites like “Rocking Chair Daddy,” “Swamp Root” (this version is particularly playful), “Howlin’ Tomcat” and “The Great Medical Menagerist,” and shoop-a-boop-a-doodles his way through “Shoop-a-Boop-a-Doodler.” He even showcases the 19th century Southern art of eeephing (rhythmically imitating the sound of domestic animals, sort of an early hillbilly equivalent to hip-hop’s human beat-box) on “Without My Teeth.” His dexterous guitar work is limber yet forceful, while the conversation between voice and harmonica on “Married Man Blues” is priceless. Topping it all off is a deeply blue and battered version of neglected country great Jimmie Skinner’s “You Don’t Know My Mind.” Harmonica Frank Floyd died in Ohio in 1984; to the end, he continued to wear his name on the tail of his shirt.
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