Summer in series: A life, a (single) work… 3/6.
Since 1965, the songs of Jackson C. Frank have been passed down like precious secrets. Fans like Simon & Garfunkel picked up the neurasthenic nuggets of his only album, Blues Run the Game, perpetuating the myth of the most famous of unknown folk singers, capable of moving even the robots of Daft Punk who, in 2006, used the title Dialogue (I want to be alone), in the soundtrack of their feature film, electrome.
Blues Run the Game, “the blues is master of the game”. Rarely has the title of a disc stuck so closely to the destiny of its author, even if “Tragedy Run the Game” would have described Jackson C. Frank’s cursed journey even more accurately. Fate overwhelmed him from childhood, when, in March 1954, the explosion of a boiler set fire to his school in the small town of Cheektowaga, in the suburbs of Buffalo (State of New York). Fifteen students perish in the flames. With snow, classmates manage to put out Jackson’s burning clothes, but the blonde’s burns will cost him seven months in hospital. A gift from one of his teachers during his convalescence, a guitar relieves his months of ordeal and serves as a guide to a voice that already enlivened family meals by covering the successes of the time.
LONDON EXILE
Child of the lower middle class, Jackson then lets himself be won over by the excitement of rock’n’roll. A fan of Elvis Presley, he electrifies his six-string and plays in his first bands. His mother even takes him on a pilgrimage to Memphis, in front of Graceland, the King’s legendary villa. Like the bohemian students of the East Coast, in the early 1960s, Jackson Carey Frank – then an apprentice journalist – let himself be seduced by the intimate emotions of folk and the rediscovery of the blues. With a friend, John Kay, future singer of Steppenwolf, he scoured the clubs, inspired by the aura of a rising icon, Bob Dylan.
At 21, luck finally seems to smile on him. As compensation for the trauma he suffered as a child, he received 100,000 dollars from an insurance company – a fortune at the time. Passionate about cars, the young man bought himself a Jaguar. He also notices that the most attractive automobile sales are made in Great Britain. Why not go to England? Especially since his girlfriend at the time wants to go into exile in London. On board of Queen Elizabeth II, on which he crosses the Atlantic, Frank composes the title song of his future only album. Ballad of luminous gravity, Blues Run the Game is the first testimony of an inspiration that will sparkle for several months.
In London, Jackson C. Frank flourished in this liberating effervescence. He who limps because of the skin taken from his leg for grafts in the torso and face, discovers himself a dandy folk. His romantic encounter with a 19-year-old nurse, Sandy Denny, encouraged her to devote herself full-time to singing, to become one of the most bewitching voices on the British scene. The American also shares an apartment with compatriots in exile, Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon. After the commercial failure of a first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., the duo came to breathe fresh air in Europe and England.
Impressed by Frank’s songs, Paul Simon offers him to produce an album at his expense. Alone on the guitar, the singer records in such a state of nervousness that he asks to be hidden behind screens. A friend at the time, guitarist Al Stewart, future 1970s folk pop star (Year of the Cat), accompanies him on a piece. “It was probably the weirdest recording session I’ve ever experienced,” he testified, in 1995, in the magazine Folk Roots. “When Paul was saying, ‘OK, we’re ready,’ there was first two or three minutes of absolute silence while Jackson was getting into condition. Then came this beautiful guitar and voice.”
OLD SUITCASE AND BROKEN GLASSES
All in dark lace, the songs of Blues Run the Game upon their release, in 1965, met with an enthusiastic reception. The record is released by John Peel, a young BBC underground DJ. Frank is invited to English television and fills the clubs. Several of his depressive jewels become standards in the folk repertoire. Simon & Garfunkel engrave a magnificent version of Blues Run The Game. Her friend Sandy Denny records many of her songs. Nick Drake, cult figure of musical melancholy, tries his hand at repeating his choruses. Everything seems ready to write the chapters of a career. This album will remain the only discographic episode, preceding a long descent into hell.
Because, when the time comes to think about a sequel, the young man is paralyzed in front of the blank page. After a flamboyant lifestyle, his pecuniary resources also ended up evaporating. He left to recharge his batteries in the United States, moved to Woodstock, which has not yet given its name to a legendary festival. He ran a local newspaper there for a while, then returned to Great Britain where he missed his comeback in a country now devoted to rock.
Back in Woodstock, her marriage to a former model falls apart, as their son dies in infancy from cystic fibrosis. Broken, the singer plunges into an endless depression. From psychiatric institutions to foster homes, stunned with drugs, Jackson C. Frank drifts to New York, where he survives as a vagabond for nearly twenty years. Miraculously found, at the beginning of the 1990s, by a young fan, Jim Abbott, Jackson is treated and finds accommodation thanks to this guardian angel.
Abbott recalled the first visit to Frank, of which he had seen nothing but a picture from the 1960s: “It was like meeting the elephant man!” The slender folksinger has become an obese tramp. “It was so sad. All he had was an old suitcase and some broken glasses.”
Fate will once again hound Jackson when, outside the asylum where he was staying, he is shot by a gang of young men and loses his left eye. However, with the help of Abbott, who managed to obtain the copyright on his only album, reissued in the 1970s (with some very beautiful unreleased songs, dating from the 1975s), the singer set out again in Woodstock. He will spend a few less miserable years there, sometimes replaying in clubs in the city, before his heart breaks definitively, on March 3, 1999, the day after his 56e birthday. Never enslaved by the blues.