In London during 1965, two unknown American folk singers met and recorded an album of rare beauty. One of the musicians, Paul Simon, went on to become a global superstar as one half of Simon & Garfunkel. The other, Jackson C Frank died penniless and in obscurity, haunted by a lifetime of disasters, poor decisions and just pure, bad luck. This is his story.

I didn’t know who Jackson C Frank was until a couple of years ago, when Vikki was asked to sing in a ‘Tribute to Sandy Denny’ concert. So, you’ve not heard of Sandy Denny either then? Well, I’m not overly surprised. Both Frank and Denny (no, not the restaurant chain) were famous on the folk music circuit from the mid 60’s to early 70’s but never achieved mainstream commercial success.

Sandy, can’t you see?

So, Vikki was asked to sing in a tribute show and suddenly I began delving into a surprisingly murky world of 60’s folk music. I knew of Sandy Denny, not because she was the lead singer of Fairport Convention but because she’d famously out-sung Robert Plant on the Led Zeppelin track, The Battle of Evermore, from the 1971 album Led Zeppelin IV (aka Four Symbols).

I discovered Denny had a brief and tumultuous relationship with someone called Jackson C Frank in the 60’s. And so, I began to uncover the sad tale of Jackson C Frank.

Cleveland Hill School

Jackson C Frank was born in March 1943 in Buffalo, New York. He had a fairly ordinary upbringing until he was eleven years old when in a single moment his life changed forever. Sound dramatic? It is. He and his classmates were at school one day sitting in a music lesson, when a furnace located in the basement directly below the classroom, exploded, killing fifteen of his friends, including his then girlfriend Marlene Du Pont.

And though the fire had burned her life out
It left me little more
I am a crippled singer
And it evens up the score, Marlene

Frank suffered burns to over 50% of his body. The trauma from the episode damaged his thyroid which in turn caused weight gain and a build-up of calcium in his body, causing extensive joint problems throughout his life. And that’s only the beginning.

Elvis

He spent months in hospital recovering and when a school teacher gave him a guitar to occupy him during his convalescence, he found something he could put his mind and energy to. His hero was Elvis and in 1957 his mother took him to Graceland where he got to meet his idol and have his picture taken with “The King”.

Take a boat to England baby

He spent time crafting his guitar style and writing folk songs until he was 21, when he received an insurance pay-out for the accident which had scarred him both physically and mentally, ten years previously. The amount he received was $110,000 which was more than enough for him to travel to the UK where he met with many UK folk scene luminaries, including Sandy Denny with whom he had a relationship. It was he who convinced her to give up her job as a nurse and concentrate on her singing career.

Pentangle guitarist John Renbourn met him when Frank’s girlfriend, Sandy Denny, brought him along to Les Cousins folk club on Greek Street in London: “He told me he came from Buffalo and that it was a good place to come from. And then started to tell me that he’d been in a fire.”

John Renbourn – The Guardian

Paul Simon

Also in the UK was fellow ex-pat Paul Simon, still relatively unknown (although he had recorded one album as the duo Simon and Garfunkel which hadn’t sold well). When he heard Frank play and sing he was sure he was onto something and convinced Jackson to record his songs. This they did, in six hours at the CBS recording studios in New Bond Street, London. The result is a number of evocative pieces, with additional guitar from Paul Simon and Al Stewart.

The album, Jackson C Frank sold relatively well and songs such as Blues Run The Game, the haunting Milk & Honey, My Name Is Carnival and Dialogue (I Want To Be Alone) really should have set him up for a long career in music, but his psychological issues began to manifest themselves and sometime later he entered hospital for evaluation. Around the same time he started to struggle with writer’s block and also his insurance money began to run out. Under increasing pressure, Frank decided to return to the US.

Woodstock

Now living in Woodstock, New York (yes, that one) he continued singing but he became troubled by his past and he spiralled in and out of depression. He was wrongly diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia when indeed he really suffered with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and so his ongoing treatment caused him further psychological damage.

London Again

He returned to London in 1968 but a number of changes had occurred in the interim. One was the folk scene had moved on and changed dramatically in the UK. Bob Dylan had invented electric folk and suddenly Jackson C Frank felt like an outsider. The second change was in Frank himself. His psychological issues had affected him more than he had appreciated. Gone was the quiet, shy singer with the beautiful voice and extraordinary guitar style and its place was an angry, frustrated man of rage and bitterness. Al Stewart (of The Year of The Cat fame) met up with him:-

He proceeded to fall apart before our very eyes. His style that everyone loved was melancholy, very tuneful things. He started doing things that were completely impenetrable. They were basically about psychological angst, played at full volume with lots of thrashing. I don’t remember a single word of them – it just did not work. There was one review that said he belonged on a psychologist’s couch. Then shortly after that, he hightailed it back to Woodstock again, because he wasn’t getting any work.

Al Stewart – Wikipedia

Woodstock

Back in Woodstock his life briefly took a turn for the better when he married Elaine Sedgwick, an English model and actress who had met through the UK folk scene. They had a child, a boy and for a while Frank’s life seemed to be coming together, until the child died of Cystic Fybrosis. Frank’s turmoil returned, the marriage ended in divorce and Frank was alone again once more.

In the 70s, Pentangle guitarist John Renbourn was in Woodstock shortly after receiving a letter from Frank, and tried to trace him by describing him to friends.

“I was told there was a guy who was odd, even by Woodstock standards, who went around looking at traffic lights.”

John Renbourn – The Guardian

It was Frank, but aside from a brief phone conversation the two friends didn’t meet. 

Buffalo

He returned to Buffalo to live with his parents and stayed for a few years, until his mother went into hospital for heart surgery. When she returned home Frank was gone. No note, no forwarding address, he had just disappeared. And nobody saw him again. For ten years. It transpired he’d had a brain wave. That he would hitch hike to New York City, meet up with his old pals Simon & Garfunkel (who were now global superstars) and ask them to help get his career back on track.

The meeting never took place and Frank was forced to sleep rough for a few nights while he waited for Paul Simon to appear. A few days became a few weeks, which became a few months and then ten years had passed. Illness had ravaged his body, his psychological issues meant he couldn’t work, he was obese because of his thyroid issue and struggling to survive.

Jim Abbott

Until fan Jim Abbott tracked him down and offered to help him by re-releasing his album.

When I went down I hadn’t seen a picture of him, except for his album cover. Then, he was thin and young. When I went to see him, there was this heavy guy hobbling down the street, and I thought, ‘That can’t possibly be him’…I just stopped and said ‘Jackson?’ and it was him. My impression was, ‘Oh my God’, it was almost like the elephant man or something. He was so unkempt, dishevelled.” 

Jim Abbott

Air Rifle

Whilst waiting at a bus stop in Queens a street gang started firing an air rifle indiscriminately at people in the street. A pellet hit Frank in the face and he was permanently blinded in one eye.

Abbott helped him move back to Woodstock where he began writing and recording once more but in 1999 his underlying health conditions caught up with Jackson C Frank and tragedy struck for the final time. He contracted pneumonia, the complications of which resulted in a cardiac arrest. Frank died a day after his 56th birthday.

The Joker

A few weeks after reading Jackson C Frank’s story, I found myself sitting in a comfy sofa at The Everyman Cinema in Chelmsford, watching a film I wasn’t overly keen to be watching. It was called The Joker and starred Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker.²

And a short way into the film The Joker is having a therapy session when he mentions a song he heard on the radio, “where the guy singing was called ‘Carnival’.” He explains it was his stage name as a clown. And then the song “My Name Is Carnival” begins and it’s that unmistakeable tone of Jackson C Frank singing and I was sitting in the cinema welling up because of the story I’d just discovered and here he was, 20 years after his death, and 40 years after finding himself, penniless, destitute and homeless on the streets of New York, his song playing out in a Hollywood blockbuster. Fate played him a cruel hand but as the man said, Blues Run The Game.

Consideration

This has been a difficult piece for me to write, purely because of the emotional strain it put me under researching the details of the story. I spent some time considering whether or not to post it but I decided I would for a number of reasons. 1.) To tell the story and to make people aware of the musical genius of Jackson C Frank. 2.) To remind people that your life and the specifics within it, can be taken away without notice, at any time. Nothing is certain. 3.) Not everyone on the street is a scrounger, malingerer, mumper or a slacker.

So, the next time you’re stepping over the prostrate body of a homeless person at Liverpool Street Station (as I have done) remind yourself that you may have been listening to their album recently and perhaps they really do have nowhere else to go.

Thank you for your time.

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1. Denny died aged 31, after a number of falls (usually down the stairs) which were sometimes drug/alcohol related and sometimes a cry for help
2. I find the whole DC/Marvel Comics film franchise, dull, insipid and uninspiring. However, The Joker turned out to be a tour de force and well worth a visit, if like me you really have no time for ‘those types of films’.