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Who Is Bob Frank?
The fact is, this old Vanguard album has sold for as much as $100.00 a copy. And has generated a cult following of people from all parts of the world. Norway, Mississippi, Japan, New Jersey, Australia, Oregon, Sweden, South Carolina, New Zealand, New York, Nevada -- you name it. Why there's even some guys down in Sicily that got hooked on this old album. We won't go into the details here, but trust me. You don't want to write a bad review of this baby! Here's an e-mail that Bob got from another musician named Bob Frank: Someone just sent me info about your web site. Glad to see you're still around. I get about two or three emails per year asking if I'm you. I had your Vanguard record for years but sold it for $100. to a collector who really wanted it. Maybe I should have held on to it. —<>—
Bob used to write songs for Tree Publishing Company in Nashville, back in the day, and that story deserves a website of its own. All the characters. Like Hoover. Hoover was the first of the Outlaws. He was a music outlaw, as far as Nashville was concerned. And he hung out with other outlaws like himself. Bob - ...A distant bell rang when I opened my mailbox last night. When I opened the package and looked at the CD photos, I thought, "This guy even LOOKS like the Bob Frank I recall," as if in a dream. Then, it dawned on me that it IS the Bob Frank. Lord god have mercy! ... OK, it's been more than 30 years, for help me fill in a few cracks: How'd we meet, where'd you live and when was the last time you saw Ransom (do you know the typically intriguing story of his demise - if not, I'll be glad to enlighten you)? Toss in any other details you think of. I recall one time yours humbly and I think it was you were fetching beer at some hole in the wall market on 16th Ave. South on a very hot summer's day and we opened one of those outside ice coolers and there sat Ransom laffing diabolically and swilling a PBR. What a character! Was that you with me? I think we just closed the door and went on inside the market. Anyhow, not long after you blew outta town, I moved into the woods in the Tennessee hills and became a hermit. I finally took off and kicked around the country, playing cards for a living, tending bar and in general getting drunk and engaging in debauchery. It was probably the most fun I ever had. I lived in the Caribbean for awhile, and had a bunch of adventures (was a crew member on one leg of an around the world sailing trip aboard an 18th century tall ship); eventually I did manage to enterain a certain aire of respectability and gainful employment. But I'm putting together a little care package to send you Priority Mail that will include an article that highlights all that stuff. Meanwhile, I'm studying your CDs, which are like a whaft of fresh air! How come you don't look any different than you used to? You still sing as great as ever, and you picking is fun to hear again! ...And to think, we owe this little reunion all to DRUGS! Thanks for the great package, the memories and the cool letter - which is being duly installed in the Bob Frank wing of the Hoover library. More later... Yours humbly... Hoover Hoover made a couple of albums on Monument, I think it was, produced by Chuck Glaser. They were classics. Nobody knew what to do with ‘em. Kinky Freidman rescued the masters of Hoover’s last session, from a dumpster — this is no lie — a few years ago and issued them on his Sphincter label, on a CD called “HOOVER The Lost Outlaw Album.” Bob: —<>— In 1972, Bob made that album on Vanguard. When it came out, the reviewers all rushed to their typewriters. Here’s what they said: “Incredible lyricist.” Record World That blurb from Record World, that took some doing. The reviewer there didn’t think too much of the album, on first listening to it. Cletus Haegert paid him a visit. He went in the guy’s office and shut the door. A few minutes later he walked out, and the guy sat down at his typewriter and wrote a nice little paragraph for his magazine about Bob Frank. What did Clete say — or do — to that guy to make him change his mind? We can’t quote him here. This is a family website. Some words are better left unprinted. Especially when you don’t know what they were. All we know for sure is, the guy had his secretary bring him a cup of coffee, a couple of aspirins, and a hot towel. "Southern Bob Dylan"
There's an interesting story about that song. Robert Gordon tells it in his book, It Came from Memphis. Actually, Gordon doesn't tell it. Jim Dickinson tells it. Gordon just writes it down. It's all about how this alcoholic gunslinger, guy named Jerry McGill, goes into Sam Phillips' Studio and records this old song that Bob Frank wrote back when he was in high school. At the end of the song, Jerry pulls out a pistol and shoots a hole in the ceiling. It's a true story. But the thing is, Dickinson never told Robert Gordon that the song was written by Bob Frank. Instead, Gordon seems to think it was actually an old Civil War song, from the 1860's, instead of the 1960's. So, once again, like we said at the start, Bob Frank remains obscure. If they know his name, they don't know his location. If they know his song, they don't know his name. And this is probably how Bob Frank wants it. Can't say for sure, cause Bob Frank ain't talking. Or, maybe he is, but I wouldn't know. I can't find him. By the way, that song, “With Sabers in Our Hands,” is on the CD Keep on Burning, on Bob's label, Bowstring Records. It was produced by Jim Dickinson himself, and his sons, Luther and Cody (of the North Mississippi Allstars) are playing on it, as well as some other authentic musicians from Memphis and north Mississippi. It’s available now, from this website. Check out the “Buy” page. Songs With a PunchFor awhile, back in the 70's -- just before he got "lost in obscurity" -- Bob had this group, with Bruce Jackson on the bass and Joel Shapiro on the fiddle, called the Hardheads. They used to play around the Bay Area -- that's the San Francisco Bay area, not the Tampa Bay area -- at places like the Freight and Salvage, the Odyessy, La Salamandra, etc. That was around the time when Bob wrote that song, "Blood Red Wine", about the grape strike, on behalf of all those braceros who were out there picking those grapes. It won a big prize at the Santa Rosa folk festival back in '76. Utah Phillips was there. He said that was the "best protest song" he'd heard in many a year. That was about twenty-five years ago, but that song still has enough of a punch left to knock the crowd into an uproar. Why, not long ago, Bob sang it on the steps of the California State Capitol building at Sacramento for a big Union gathering. It caused such a hullabaloo, when Bob was through, a CHP came over and asked him to move off the steps. At another Union gathering in Oakland a few years ago, on the steps of City Hall, Bob sang another song he'd written just for the occasion -- the renewal of a Union contract between management and labor. That song is called "One Big Family", and Bob had to stop after each verse for the cheers and applause to die down before he could go on to the chorus. You think I'm lying? Listen. The same thing happened at a Buddhist teaching down in the Santa Cruz mountains. Bob sang "Peaches", a dharma song he'd written about the law of cause and effect -- or, as they say in the parlance, karma. The audience was laughing so hard after each verse, Bob had to stop and let 'em calm down before he could go on with the song. That's what Bob Frank songs are all about, and that's how Bob Frank sings 'em. “He plays the same way he did thirty-five years ago. He uses the same chords, still writing the same songs he wrote when he was seventeen, which is heroic… People have responded to it because it’s real.” -- Jim Dickinson, in an article by Bill Ellis in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Authentic SongsBob's had some songs recorded by other artists, such as JPT Scare Band, Chris LeDoux, Gary McMahan, The Starlite Ramblers, The Thrifts, and Jim Dickinson himself -- all these sort of semi-obscure characters. But unless you're really hip to the inner wheels of the American music industry, even if you were ever actually listening to a Bob Frank song, you probably never knew it. Like we said back there at the beginning, none of Bob Frank's songs have ever been on the Top Forty, but if you were ever out on the north coast of California, along Highway 1, and you dropped in one of those bars up there around Fort Bragg, you might have heard some unknown hippie in there with a guitar singing "Sandy Banks of a Mountain Stream" to a bunch of fishermen and out of work loggers. That's a song that was co-written by Bob and Tony Palacios, back in the '60's, when they were hanging out in Elk -- or, as the locals used to call it, Greenwood. Or, if you're ever up in the Rockies over in Colorado or Wyoming, and you're sitting around a campfire one night listening to a skinny little old bowlegged cowpoke with a lip full of Copenhagen singing and yodeling, you can bet your Tony Lamas, some of the songs he's doing were written by Bob Frank. Take this email, for instance:
That’s from Gary McMahan. What he was asking Bob if he wanted to handle was this: —<>—
"The Buckskin Lady" is a song Bob wrote back in 1963. The Starlite Ramblers recorded it, and so did Gary. So did Chris LeDoux, on his first album. Then there's that back porch somewhere off in Missouri where ol' Sam Jackson and his buddies sit around knocking down the brews, picking and grinning and singing "Within a Few Degrees" and a couple of other Bob Frank numbers. And if you just go on down the River there a ways, to Memphis and vicinity, you'll run into some folks down there that can sing you a whole flatboat full of Bob Frank songs. Look up Bert Stegall or Jimmie Newman or Don McGregor or whatever's left of an old group called Crawpatch. They've got their own versions of some old Bob Frank songs like "Return to Skid Row Joe" and "Judas Iscariot" and "Before the Trash Truck Comes". Why, there's even this one friend of Bob's down there in north Mississippi who swears the only thing that got him through a night in the drunk tank was singing "Memphis Jail" over and over again, til they finally let him out of there. Or go on up to Nashville and drop in at The Bluebird some night when Cletus Haegert is up there on the microphone, singing a mixed bag of his own songs and some that were written by other artists. Hell, he knows more Bob Frank songs than Bob Frank does. Why, even as far north as British Columbia, outside of Williams Lake, way off in the boonies up there along the Fraser River, there's people who sing some of these songs. Just ask Mac Graham. He'll tell you. Check out these emails from Don Mason, up in Washington State: —<>— Hi, Bob. If you haven't already mailed those Cds, throw in that CDR of the Vanguard album and a second copy of "Keep on Burning" that I'll give to my brother... ...Where is Mac these days? Back in Tennessee? Why?Why would all these people all over North America (and the whole world, for that matter. Check out the What the Fans Are Saying.) — why would all these people care anything about any of these songs that were written by some old obscure folksinger hardly anybody ever heard of? Because these are real honest-to-God American songs. That's why. They're funny, they're tough, they're pretty, they're ugly, they're delicate, they're depressing, they're uplifting. Love songs, drinking songs, drug songs, cowboy songs, comedy songs, dog songs, horse songs, hunting songs, fishing songs, Civil War songs, Indian songs, outlaw songs, truck-driving songs -- songs about America today, yesterday and tomorrow. Yodels, blues and rebel yells. And when you've had enough of all that, there's the spiritual numbers. Influenced by Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, and Native American teachings. And if you're still not satisfied, pick up a copy of Bob Frank's A Little Gest of Robin Hood. This is Bob's version of an old English folk song that is 456 verses long, has no tune, and was originally published anonymously in the fifteenth century, in Middle English. A language nobody uses anymore. I call it "Bob's version" because he translated it from the Middle English into Modern English, and in doing so, couldn't help but give it that Bob Frank touch. Bob calls it "the world's longest talking blues." Jim Dickinson, that legendary producer from down around Backwater, Mississippi, says it sounds just like "another Bob Frank song" to him. If you're still hungry after all that, go watch Bob picking and grinning at one of his daughter's modern dance performances. You think I'm kidding? Click on this!
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The album Mr. Tosches was referring to (on the Homepage) is called Bob Frank
Back then, people were comparing Bob Frank to Bob Dylan. But then, they've been doing that ever since he first appeared in a coffee house down there in Memphis, way back in the early sixties. Bob used to knock the joint cockeyed singing his Civil War anthem, "