Saturday, March 02, 2024

Jackson C. Frank - I Want To Be Alone.

Blues Run The Game: The Story Of Jackson C. Frank.

 Jackson C. Frank died 25 years ago today on March 3rd 1999. He was a great and very underrated singer-songwriter, so I thought I'd dust off this piece I wrote about him several years ago.
I am indebted to an internet friend  for bringing this influential singer-songwriter to my attention because I had never heard of him before. I think he must have read some of my previous stories of musicians who had faded into obscurity and are only now being re-discovered and thought I might be interested in listening to Jackson C. Frank.
I am really pleased I bought this album because some of the songs are as good as any I have heard in the folk genre. The story of Jackson C. Frank is also one of the saddest I have ever read about any musician.  Although he released only one official album in his lifetime he was very influential on the likes of Paul Simon, Sandy Denny, Al Stewart, Dave Cousins, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and Roy Harper. It was only a series of misfortunes that stopped him from being remembered as one of the great folk singers.

Tragedy struck early in his life at the age of eleven. He was attending elementary school in a suburb of New York when a heating furnace exploded which caused a fire that killed fifteen of his classmates including his first girlfriend Marlene Du Pont. He later wrote a song about Marlene which is on the album. Jackson survived the fire but had burns to 50% of his body. It was during the long recovery process that he learned to play the guitar and began writing songs. In 1965 while studying journalism at Gettysburg College he received $100,000 in  insurance  compensation for his injuries. He dropped out of college and sailed to England to try his luck on the folk scene. It was on that voyage that he wrote the song Blues Run The Game.
Jackson soon made a name for himself in the Folk Clubs of London and made friends with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Paul Simon was so impressed with his talent that he offered to produce an album. The whole album was recorded in only three hours. Before long Jackson became quite famous in Britain. He persuaded his girlfriend at the time Sandy Denny to give up her job as a nurse and concentrate on singing. We should be grateful to him for that act alone because Sandy became arguably the greatest British female singer of all. Sandy recorded three of Jackson's songs for her first solo album in her pre-Fairport Convention days.
The following year though things began to go wrong. Firstly, he developed writers block and was never happy with the songs he came up with, and also he began to suffer with really bad stage fright. It was the beginning of the mental illness that was to haunt him for years to come. His money ran out. In only two years he had managed to blow the lot. He returned to the states and moved to Woodstock which was a haven for many artistic people at that time. He landed a job as a journalist and married a former fashion model. New songs were written and he was just about to relaunch his music career when disaster struck once again. His infant son died of cystic fibrosis and the marriage fell apart. These events drove him over the edge and he descended into an abyss of depression, finally ending up homeless on the streets of New York. Things got even worse when he was shot by a gang of street toughs which left him blinded in the left eye. For twenty years he was virtually forgotten and had lost all touch with family and friends.
A guardian angel then appeared by the name of Jim Abbott who was an American folk music fan who managed to track down the long lost singer. Jim took Jackson to see sympathetic doctors and his condition immediately began to improve. He had been mis-diagnosed as paranoid-schizophrenic but what he was actually suffering from was post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the terrible fire of his childhood. As soon as was taken off the anti-depressants and given trauma therapy instead there was a remarkable recovery. His music career was revived and his work was issued for the first time on CD with previously unreleased material.
Sadly, in 1999 Jackson C. Frank caught pneumonia and died of a cardiac arrest at the age of only 56. He has left a small but great legacy of music, and his influence continues to grow. His songs have been covered by Simon & Garfunkel, Counting Crows, Laura Marling, Robin Pecknold of the Fleet Foxes, Marianne Faithful and many others. His songs have also appeared in movie soundtracks such as Daft Punk's Electroma. Only today I discovered there is a book about him by Jim Abbott and a documentary film is a work in progress at the moment. His legend is finally beginning to grow.
The album I am listening to at this very moment contains all the songs from his eponymous album of 1965 plus five unreleased songs from 1975. I must say I love it, you can see the influence he had on Paul Simon on songs like Dialogue. To hear these haunting songs live in a folk club back in 65 must have been an amazing experience. The five songs from 1975 make me think what a shame it is that he left such a small body of work. One song called Madonna Of Swans I find particularly powerful.

 Marlene,the song about his girlfriend who perished in the fire is also very moving. To give you a taste of the album I have put a video of Blues Run The Game below which I urge you to listen to. 


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Blue River by Eric Andersen.

It was a lovely day yesterday, almost like Spring had arrived. I even managed to get a bit of gardening done. However, today is another story, back to grey skies and rain, so I thought I’d pass the time by telling you about an album I have been listening to recently. It is called Blue River by Eric Andersen, recorded in Nashville in 1972. I am amazed that I hadn’t discovered this music decades before now because this album is excellent. I first became aware of Eric a few months ago when I bought a 2CD compilation called Greenwich Village In The 60s. It contained a song by Eric called Close The Door Gently When You Go which I thought was great. Then more recently on youtube I heard another song I loved where Eric sang with Judy Collins called Thirsty Boots (See video below). This prompted me to read more about him. I learned that his most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album was Blue River. One reviewer compared it to Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. “That will do for me”, I thought, and bought a copy on eBay.

I am listening to the opening track Is It Really Love At All at this very moment. It is wonderful, but I don’t know where that reviewer got the Van idea from. The singer I was most immediately reminded of on this album is James Taylor. The production by Norbert Putnam throughout all these songs is first rate. This opening track has a very tasteful string and woodwind arrangement. Eric’s wife of the time Debbie Green sounds perfect on backing vocals. Debbie contributes a lot to several tracks on guitar, piano and vocals. I have read that Debbie taught Joan Baez how to play guitar and Joan imitated her voice and stole her repertoire. I don’t know how true that is though. Pearl’s Goodtime Blues is a tribute to Eric’s friend Janis Joplin. This track sounds Like The Band and even has ‘Rag, Mama, Rag’ in the lyrics. I see Kenny Buttrey who I know from his playing with Bob Dylan and Neil Young plays drums on this track and several others. 

Wind And Sand is much simpler with just Eric on piano and Norbert on bass. Simple, but very moving and effective, a melancholy meditation on the passage of time. Faithful is another wistful emotional song, but immediately accessible with a catchy chorus, quite country influenced. This song should have been a big hit. The title track Blue River is next, with Eric on piano. This has an epic gospel infused sound with the great Joni Mitchell on backing vocals. I’m sure Joni must have been influenced by this song when she was recording her album Blue (or vice-versa, maybe Eric got ideas from Joni). Florentine is another splendid track with Kenny’s percussion driving the song along, harpsichord courtesy of Gleen Spreen, guitar by Grady Martin

Sheila is the darkest song for me on this album. A wistful world-weary pleading song, possibly about the effects of heroin addiction. The haunting electric guitar adds to the feeling of desolation. It isn’t the kind of song associated with Nashville; it reminds me more of the denizens of New York’s Chelsea Hotel. More Often Than Not is the only track not written by Eric, David Wiffen an English-Canadian folk singer-songwriter wrote this one. It is more upbeat than Sheila, but the subject matter is again quite dark, a reflection on loneliness and betrayal. I see Rick Schlosser plays drums here. He played on three Van Morrison albums in this era of the early 70s. 

The final track is Round The Bend which is another introspective song of being alone, ‘stumbling hopelessly, yes I knew that man well, for that prisoner he was me’. This song has a full gospel treatment with The Jordanaires plus backing singers such as Florence Warner and Millie Kirkham. Eric plays piano on this truly epic wonderful song. It’s nice to see in the sleeve notes that Eric thanks Patti Smith for her help and friendship. Patti was still quite unknown in 1972. 

You will be pleased to know that Eric is 81 now and still singing and performing. The early 1970s were a golden era for great singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, you could go on and on, there were so many, so that might be why I overlooked Eric, but I think this album stands up very well indeed alongside all those people, so I am very pleased I finally discovered Eric Andersen, even if it took me over fifty years. Cheers.

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