Jackson C. Frank, debut and goodbye.

To appreciate and understand more the album, I feel it’s important to mention some details

regarding the talented and interesting artist that was Jackson C. Frank (1943-1999).

He was a folk musician born in Buffalo, New York, an only child with a normal life, until one day,

with just eleven years old, his life made a drastic change. An explosion happened in his

elementary school causing him burns in fifty percent of his body and that also caused the death

of fifteen classmates, among them his then girlfriend Marlene du Pont, whom later he would

write a song about ‘Marlene’, that is part of this debut and only album.

One man and his guitar, he begins the album with one of his most famous songs ‘Blues Run the

Game’, which he wrote on his way to London after he received an important amount of money

from that tragic accident ten years prior.

When you listen to this song you can feel some of the pain that he had to deal with, and it

pretty much sums up the whole album, talking about how sometimes things can get rough and

that no matter where you go, no matter how much you try to run and hide, the blues will

always follow. This song was his key to open so many doors for his promising career.

One of the songs that stood up for me was ‘Don’t Look Back’, and that was because of the

contrast it creates with the rest of the album, that song is the only time he talks about politics

and the injustice they were living at that time, with some examples as the civil right

movements, the murder of Medgar Evers, and the police brutality during the Selma-

Montgomery march on “Bloody Sunday”. Seems like if things hadn’t changed at all, you know

the saying, if we forget history, we are prone to repeat it.

Anyway, as the album goes by you can feel the pain he has gone through, the heartbreak and

how all of that really affected him in every aspect of his life, you can sense it in the lyrics and his

voice while he is singing, also if you take your time to dig more into every song you may find the

whole story or understand a little bit more of what he was going through, just like mentioned

before, ‘Marlene’ where he sings about how she died, how he hopes she is fine, how much he

loved her and how much he misses her.

Unfortunately, as much as his career seemed to be very bright and promising, this was the only

album he had, along with some ep and unreleased songs. After so many years struggling with

his mental health, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but he refused that diagnose

and only treated it as depression caused by his childhood trauma, this causing him to take a

break from music for a while, but things only seemed to get worse, he did tried to get back to

making music but it didn’t work out the way he wanted to and in 1999 he died from a

combination of pneumonia and cardiac arrest due to him living in the streets of New York.

Personally I have never heard of him even though I grew up listening to music from the 20’s to

the latest releases, but it was quite nice listening to this album and pointing out how he indeed

was a blueprint in the genre and in music in general, and how many artists that I like now have

been influenced by him.

And as much as I would like to make a track by track review, I’d better invite you to listen to the

album carefully, read the lyrics and connect as much as you can with the artist and his art,

because he was an amazing artist, that inspired a lot others, such as Simon and Garfunkel, John

Mayer, Nick Drake, and so many more.

My personal favorites were ‘My Name Is Carnival’, ‘You Never Wanted Me’, and ‘Yellow Wall’,

that I also like what he says about this one, “How many of us are running without moving,

hiding behind walls grown from the dim recesses of birth?, How many of us believe, when

hidden, that we truly cannot be seen, and seen through, at that? I would have to admit to the

whole paradox, were I asked, and I think the song is asking us exactly that, nothing more or

less”.

I feel like this is an album that you really have to be in the mood of, cause it may not be

cheerful, it also can become a little bit tedious, because there is no a lot of change in the

rhythm, definitely not the go to album when you wanna party, but an album that not just make

us understand more about our artist, but that also make us understand more about pain, love,

grieve, letting go, not knowing how to let go, heartbreak and also some relieve and a little bit of

happiness once you learn to let go, or at least learn to live with it.

Not one of my favorite albums, maybe not that life changing, but if you really like music, you should definitely listen to it at least once in your life.