Albums That Deserve Another Listen

The Great Original Recordings Of Harmonica Frank (1951-1958)

01 Swamp Root (Chess 1475)
02 Step It Up and Go (Chess 1475)
03 Rock A Little Baby (F&L 100)
04 Howlin' Tomcat (Chess 1494)
05 Goin' Away Walkin' (Chess 1475)
06 The Great Medical Menagerist (Sun 205)
07 She Done Moved (Chess 1494)
08 Monkey Love - vocals by Larry Kennon (F&L 100)
09 Howlin' Tomcat (Alt Take) 2:41
10 Rockin' Chair Daddy (Sun 205)

Frank Floyd, known as Harmonica Frank (October 11, 1908 – August 7, 1984) was an American country/blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. He was born in Toccopola, Mississippi, the son of itinerant parents who separated before giving him a name, though he is recorded in the 1910 census as Shankles Floyd. He was raised by his sharecropping grandparents, who died while he was a teenager. He taught himself to play harmonica when he was 10 years old, and he eventually learned guitar. He gave himself the name Frank Floyd, and began performing in the 1920s for traveling carnivals and medicine shows. 

He learned many types of folk music and became an accomplished mimic, effortlessly switching from humorous hillbilly ballads to deep country blues.

With his self-taught harmonica technique, he was a one-man band, able to play the instrument without his hands or the need for a neck rack. While also playing guitar, he perfected a technique of manipulating the harmonica with his mouth while he sang out of the other side. He could also play harmonica with his nose and thus play two harmonicas at once, a skill he shared with blues harp players Walter Horton, Howlin' Wolf and Noah Lewis.

After years of performing on the medicine-show circuit, Harmonica Frank began working in radio in 1932. His first records were made in 1951, recorded by Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee, thus Harmonica Frank became the first white musician to record at Sun studios. The songs, "Swamp Root", "Goin’ Away Walkin'", "Step It Up and Go", "Howlin’ Tomcat", and "She Done Moved", were licensed to Chess Records. Phillips put out another single on Sun Records, "Rockin' Chair Daddy" / "The Great Medical Menagerist" in 1954. And in 1958 Floyd and Larry Kennon released a shared single, "Rock-A-Little Baby" / "Monkey Love" on their own record label, F&L.

Harmonica Frank's songs also mistakenly appeared on several all-black blues compilations in the 1960s. "She Done Moved" (Chess 1494) appeared on 1966's Memphis On Down - The Post-War Blues Volume 2. "Howlin' Tomcat" (Chess 1494) on Blues Classics Volume 3, and Goin' Away Walking (Chess 1475) appeared on 1968's "Memphis And The Delta - 1950s". This was at a time when the blues record collectors who compiled the reissue series would never knowingly include a white artist on any of their albums. Frank's country blues sounded so authentic that record collectors were unable to distinguish his race and presumed he was a black artist. It wasn't until his 1972 rediscovery that photos of him appeared, and blues researchers then realized that Harmonica Frank was in fact a whiteman. 

Following his 1972 rediscovery by Steve LaVere, Frank recorded two albums for the Adelphi and Barrelhouse labels. This compilation of his early material came out on Puritan 3003 in 1973. Additional full albums were recorded before his death in 1984, many of which have become available on CD, though these vintage recordings (1951–1958) remain mostly out of print and unavailable aside from occasional tracks on compilations.

Frank Floyd died in Blanchester, Ohio, on August 7, 1984, from lung cancer, along with complications from Type II diabetes, which had previously cost him his leg.

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