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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Jackson C. Frank was an American guitarist and folksinger who moved to England and familiarized with the crowd of the British folk-rock scene. He recorded only one album, Jackson C. Frank (1965 - Castle, 2002), produced by Paul Simon (who was also living in England at the time), just when Donovan
was debuting with
What's Bin Did (1965) and
Fairy Tale (1965),
and Bert Jansch was debuting with
Strolling Down The Highway (1965) and
It Don't Bother Me (1965).
Frank doesn't have Donovan's musical imagination
(he only uses the guitar) and eskews Donovan's hippy languor for vibrant
elegies infected by both
black music and white folk music.
Both the melodic peak, Blues Run The Game,
and the aptly titled Here Come the Blues
as well as the traditional Kimbie (a gospel-y rendition of the traditional I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground),
incorporate elements of black music.
Stylistically, Frank covers a broad range:
the rocking Don't Look Back is balanced by the martial Yellow Walls, and
the country-esque lament You Never Wanted Me coexists with the
philosophical meditation of Just Like Anything,
in the style of a medieval bard.
My Name Is Carnival, the other melodic gem, could have been on Morricone's soundtrack for the spaghetti-western A Fistful of Dollars (1964).
Meanwhile, solemn introverted odes like Milk And Honey and Dialogue exude more psychological depth than pathos.
A 1996 reissue added five songs, notably the bluesy Marlene, and the tense and tragic Marcy's Song.
A series of personal tragedies kept him from ever recording again. He died at the age of 56.
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