Frank Otis "Playin' From The Stomach" Frost.

Born Auvergne, Arkansas 15 April 1936; died Helena, Arkansas 12 October 1999. By
Karl Dallas Saturday 13 November 1999 for The Independent
A prophet is without honor in his own country, it is said, but that wasn't true of Frank
Frost, the pioneer blues harmonica-player. The street where he lived for most of his life
and died had been called after him several years before.
He was born in 1936, in Auvergne, Arkansas, but did not really get into music until he
moved to St Louis, Missouri, at the age of 15. He had started his musical life as a
guitarist, playing with the drummer Sam Carr and harmonica player Little Willie Foster in
1956, and later with the great Sonny Boy Williamson in St Louis from 1957 until 1959.
After a hand injury he graduated to the mouth organ and was lucky to be taken on by
Sonny Boy, who taught him the tricks of the mouth-harp. By 1954 he was touring with
Sam Carr, and Carr's father, Robert Nighthawk, in a trio that later became known as the
Jelly-Roll Kings, from a song on their album Hey Boss Man, issued by Sam Phillips,
notable for his discovery of Elvis Presley some years earlier.
Presley's guitarist, Scotty Moore, produced Frost's next album in Nashville in 1966.
Playing with Frost. Carr, Big Jack Johnson, whom they had met in the early 1960s, and
the session bassist Chip Young were in the R&B charts for three weeks with "My Back
Scratcher", based on Slim Harpo's "Baby Scratch My Back". Frost was scathing about
Sam Phillips. "I never got a quarter off that album," he said. "We recorded it, and all he
offered me was $800. That's all. We didn't come out with it. Then it came out later, and I
didn't get paid." This may have been because the album didn't sell, because its
authentic, gutbucket sound was out of keeping with contemporary taste in those rock-
influenced years.
Frost's attack and tone were legendary. When asked how he did it, he would touch his
stomach and say "You gotta play from your stomach, not from up here," pointing to his
chest. What some critics called his "whisky- filtered-through-gravel voice" was in the
same, down-home vein. When other black musicians were searching after the elusive
"cross-over" sound, Frost and his fellow musicians stayed true to their roots. In 1998
there was a reunion with Sam Carr and Big Jack Johnson on the album Off Yonder Wall.
Frank Frost performed just four days before he died, at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in
his home town of Helena, Arkansas, on 8 October. He was a sick man, and playing with
tears in his eyes. Years of cigarettes and alcohol had taken their toll.
==
Frank Frost. Birthplace - Augusta, Arkansas. Birthdate - April 15, 1936 by deltaboogie
dot com
Frank Frost is one of those Blues legends. He began performing when he was a child.
The roads he traveled were long and sometimes very hard but most of them have been
shared with Sam Carr. In the 50's he and Sam were picked up by the Philip's label. They
were one of the first acts Sam Philips picked up for his newly formed company. "The
Mighty King, Frank Frost" is one of the most incredible harp men you will ever hear. He
ought to be he learned from one of the most revered harp player's in the world, Sonny
Boy Williamson, of "King Biscuit Time" fame. Frank is often sought out by budding young
harp players. They travel to Helena, Arkansas during festivals in droves. The question is
always the same "Frank, how do you get that tone?" The answer is always the same,
too. Frank touches his stomach and says "You gotta play from your stomach, not from
up here and he points at his chest."
==
Born on a small cotton farm April 15, 1936 in Auvergne, Arkansas, was one of the
foremost American delta blues harmonica players of his generation. He is the second of
seven children of T.R. Winston and Dorthula Frost. Frank Otis Frost learned to play
piano at church as a young boy. Frank, in the search to find his place in the world, left
home to get a glimpse of the 'big world' around him and try to get ideas as to what it took
to get into the music business. His love for music was natural and automatic and his
ability with the guitar, piano and harp was seemingly born in him. He moved to St. Louis,
Missouri at age 15, and spent time as a guitarist with drummer Sam Carr and Carr's
father, Robert Nighthawk. He learned to play harmonica from Sonny Boy Williamson,
who he toured with. While playing with guitarist Big Jack Johnson, Frost attracted the
interest of the record producer Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records. Some recordings
of note that followed included "Hey Boss Man" and "My Back Scratcher". Elvis Presley's
ex-guitarist Scotty Moore produced Frost's next sessions in Nashville in 1966 for Jewel
Records. Augmented by session bassist Chip Young, the trio's tight down-home
ensemble work was once again seamless. "My Back Scratcher," Frost's takeoff on Slim
Harpo's "Baby Scratch My Back," even dented the Rhythm & Blues charts on
Shreveport-based Jewel for three weeks. In the late 1970s, Frost was re-discovered by
a blues enthusiast, Michael Frank, who began releasing albums on his Earwig Music
Company label by the trio, now called The Jelly Roll Kings, after a song from ''Hey Boss
Man'' LP. Frost appeared in the films ''Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the
Crossroads'' and ''Crossroads''. Frank Frost died of cardiac arrest at his home in Helena,
Arkansas on October 12, 1999 at the age of 63.
==
This is an abridged version of the
Frank Frost/Sam Carr article of
BLUES ACCESS No 27.
Down Home in Helena With Frank
Frost and Sam Carr by Andrew
Cody.
HELENA, Ark. -- Admittedly, it's hard
to get used to. This is Helena, the
stomping grounds of Sonny Boy
Williamson II. Just walking around,
you half expect to see the big fella
bouncing down the street in his bowler
cap and two-tone suit, twirling a cane and playing harp out of the corner of his mouth, a
bit late for the King Biscuit Time program on radio station KFFA.If you don't see the
legend, well, you can feel it.
This ain't the "Show Me" state, after all. During the '50s and '60s Helena was a jumpin'
Mississippi River harbor town crisscrossed by countless blues legends, an incubator for
what would become Chicago blues. The rich and raucous "Helena Sound" blasted out
over the Delta table for 15 minutes daily on King Biscuit Time, which every Juke Joint
Charlie and Charlotte from the night before knew about and never missed. Sonny Boy,
Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Nighthawk, Robert
Junior Lockwood and virtually every major blues artist in the region played Helena's two
streets lined with blues bars, cafes and street blues musicians. Sonny Payne, the
original King Biscuit DJ who started out with Williamson and Lockwood, has remarked
many times, "Yes, the Helena jukes had great blues.
But you could go down by the docks after work and hear the best, tightest blues combos
in the world set up outside on a log. It was high quality music -- well rehearsed. They
came right out of the fields or off the docks and played. I don't know how they did it."
Today Helena is a town with echoes in it. The modern world hasn't tampered much with
the daily life. There's not even a fast-food franchise; you have to spin over to the more
modern sister city West Helena to quell a Big Mac attack. The port is pretty quiet. Bubba
Sullivan at Blues Corner and Morris Gist at Gist Music are amused at the steady stream
of Sonny Boy-deprived Europeans, blues-starved Asians and lost-bent-note Americans
who find their way to this town hounding them for blues lore and listening to those
echoes.
But Helena never has the vacant air of a blues ghost town. The legends and wannabe
blues stars all went North long ago, but Helena maintains an active Sonny Boy Blues
Society, a nationally recognized, still wonderfully low-key King Biscuit Blues Festival
every autumn, a newly dedicated Sonny Boy Williamson Concert Hall, a KFFA radio
show complete with museum and blues artifacts, a fine blues record/memorabilia shop
in Blues Corner and a home page on the World Wide Web. It's also managed to keep
two blues legends for itself.
Walking in Helena, the windows of an old building at 121 Missouri Street catch the eye.
In one it reads Eddie Mae's Cafe; in the other, it says Home of Legendary Bluesman
Frank Frost -- in bold orange and yellow boldface script. The Frank Frost of the Jelly Roll
Kings? When the sign says "home," it means it. Way in back of the oblong cafe sits the
Midnight Prowler himself. "I live right back there," the lanky Frost says, gesturing to a
curtained door leading to a back room, "but it's Eddie's place."

Eddie, a strong, warm presence comes bustling by the table set way in the back. "That's
E-d-d-i-e," she spells out. "My daddy was sure I was going to be a boy." She directs
herself toward Frost. "You may as well call me your wife. I've lived right with you for
years back there." Frost, separated from his legal wife for the last eight years, laughs
lustily, for him, and concedes, "Yes, I guess that's right." It's easy to tell that the frail
musician is well taken care of and by whom.
Frost is presently in a weakened physical state. He had fluid around his heart and had
been rushed to the hospital on Tuesday night. "Doctor told me to blow no harp," Frost
leans towards me as if in confidence. On Thursday night, the eve of the King Biscuit
Festival, Frost and his lifelong friend Sam Carr jammed on the steps of the Helena train
depot just a couple of blocks east of here. Frost, without a mike and on keyboards only,
seemed keen and lively. But after the performance he moved off, responding weakly to
the well-wishers surrounding him.
It seemed that there was no way Harmonica King Frank Frost would blow his Helena-
style harp at his afternoon concert appearance Friday. There was talk of John Weston
replacing him on the bill. But the next day, Frank and Sam show up early for their gig.
Frost's golf cap and muted plaid-lined shirt hang on him as if on a coat hanger. Carr, 10
years older than Frost at 69, offers a dramatic contrast.

He is athletically built and moves with the easy grace of a man 20 to 30 years younger.
He nervously taps his drumsticks together. "You want to run as it's set up," a roadie calls
out to the two. "Yeah, but let me check it out," says Sam, hopping up onstage to inspect
the drum kit and Frost's setup. It's time for KFFA's Sonny Payne to introduce the band,
and he mentions Frost's iffy health in a way that makes us wonder if the venerated
musician will play much. Frost inches his way up onstage and sits on a folding chair,
hunched over with a harp folded in his huge hands. The first two tunes are athletic,
warm-up blues shuffles, with Fred James abandoning his baby blue Strat for a rawer,
crisper Telecaster sound. James is capable of flash guitar, but he reins it in out of
respect for Frost.
On a recent disc he produced, Deep Blues, James carefully showcases Frost yet adds
his own '50s flair: It's deep blues with a streak of candy apple red.
Carr and the rest of the ensemble click along, forming a relaxed groove as Frost just
sits. It's Friday, and most of the expected throng are still working or heading in this
direction. Those assembled on the hill facing the stage are townies and dedicated
bluesers -- blues society members from all parts of the country. Most are fond of Frost
and aware of his health problems. Then he gets up on his birdlike legs and offers a
pained, gap-toothed grin. There is a hush, as if the hometown quarterback has just been
sacked and is struggling to get up for the next play. With more than a hint of
showmanship, Frost grabs the mike and suddenly he is totally present, that Helena harp
with its Sonny Boy-saturated phrasing and Midnight Prowler riffs that seem to come and
go as they please. "Don't ever tell me the things you do, Keep 'em right to yourself and
don't tell nobody else."
Frost's voice can only be termed superbly classic. Like his harp, Frost's vocal tone is
deeply layered with no artificial aid. He is playing through the PA, using the same mike
for both voice and harp -- no "fat" dispatcher mike or warm little overdriven tube amp to
boost matters. Looking at Frost's gaunt frame, I figure he's got the highest power-to-
weight ratio in blues. Between songs, even during songs, he turns and peers back at
Carr, who snaps an affirming look back as if sharing an inside joke that yes, they can still
break off a piece of this blues thing between their fishing trips, and damned if people
don't love it. The crowd is enthusiastic (if a bit relieved), and Frost feeds off of it. Known
for his encyclopedic storage of harp riffs ("He can play Sonny Boy, Little Walter or
anybody without even thinking," claim the locals),
Frost turns clichés inside out. His harp tone is effortless, his style fighter-like as he
attacks you with a phrase, jabs, and then feints. There are none of the machine-gun riffs
you hear from the younger harp players. In fact, there is nothing staccato in his style at
all. He is fond of simple, memorable figures. As in his recorded work, there is a
pronounced lack of throat vibrato on held notes -- odd, particularly considering the heavy
Sonny Boy II influence. He is certainly capable of the technique, but he holds several
notes strong and steady as if in defiance of blues harp tradition. His style is vocal and
completely devoid of horn influence. On the other hand, Frost's fluid use of dynamics is
much more apparent in his live act.
For the 35-minute set, Frank plays one C-harp. When you take your focus off Frost,
Carr's acclaimed drum work lays down a precise groove that any lead would find
comfortable. He is not a slapper, and it is easy to tell why he's considered a studio
engineer's dream. Says Blues Corner's Bubba Sullivan, "All the drummers in the Delta
want to play like Sam. They study him, but they just can't seem to get the knack."
Standing there absorbing the historic Helena atmosphere saturated with the classic
blues of two legends, the clear air tinged with barbecue smoke, in the company of an
appreciative, savvy audience, with Frost capturing the feeling perfectly -- "Got a
pocketful of money and it's all in 10-dollar bills" -- you have entered level one of blues
nirvana. After the unexpected performance, even a brief interview now seems unlikely.
Frost, having agreed to it by phone the previous week, declines at first.
I'm ready to write it off to Frost's ill health, when, suddenly, a buoyant Sam Carr walks
up with an invitation: "Frank's place for some talk?" Frost grimly approves. We sit down
together in Eddie Mae's Cafe. The tables have been cleared for tonight's bash, and only
a pool table, juke box and our table remain. Frost immediately waves off my tape
recorder. When I pull out a note pad, the bluesman eyes it suspiciously. Here is a
second clue to Frost's relative anonymity: He is not God's gift to self-promotion. And I
firmly jump in on the wrong foot. "Your first recording, 'Hey, Boss Man,' for Sam Phillips,
is considered a collector's item. Did you enjoy working with Sam?" "I've got nothing good
to say about Sam Phillips," Frost states with finality. After an uncomfortable pause he
continues, "I never got a quarter off that album. We recorded it, and all he offered me
was $800. That's all. We didn't come out with it. Then it came out later, and I didn't get
paid."
"Have you got a copy?" "Sure." Answers are like that, very monosyllabic, until a question
about Willie Foster breaks the ice. "I've got Willie right up there," Foster gestures with a
fond look up at a two-color poster on the wall announcing a Willie Foster appearance. "I
started out with Willie in St. Louis in 1951. Played guitar for him. On the side I was
learning from a lot of Jimmy Reed style on the harp.
 Willie asked me, 'Why are you
always playing way up on the
small end of the harp, you know,
playin' the high notes?' Willie got
me to play the big end, playin'
low. And I credit him with
starting me out on playing the
harp in the right direction. "After
him, Sonny Boy taught me the
most. I don't know who taught
me how to bend notes. Got it
just from listening. I could play
pretty well by the time I met
Sonny Boy. I think I play harp
mostly in his style. We were
close. He called me his son. I
played guitar for him from 1956
to '59 all around here 'til I cut my
hand on a bottle and had to quit
guitar. "And when he got back
from Europe, he found me, and
we played, sometimes both
harps together. He kept saying,
'I'm showing you this. After I'm
dead, it's up to you to carry it
on.' He kept talking funny like
that after he got back. I always
loved Sonny Boy. He was great.
Lots of people had different opinions of him. Some people were afraid of him. He treated
me just like his son, and my family still calls me Sonny Man after Sonny Boy."
At the mention of harp types and brands, Frost blanches. "People are all over me about
the harps. I play all kinds -- all kinds. It doesn't matter one bit. Hohner, Lee Oskar, any
brand. I just go over to Gist Music and get whatever he has." For the record, on this
occasion Frost is packing a Hohner Marine Band in the key of C. I look at his cigarettes.
They are generic. Frost was born April 15, 1936, in Augusta, Arkansas. "My family was
all musical. My father played horn, and my mother played keyboards. No, they never got
recognition. They played in church, gospel, that sort of thing."
By age 15 he had joined Willie Foster's band, and in 1954 Sam Carr approached him.
Carr, the son of guitar legend Robert Nighthawk, needed a front man. "Willie didn't really
need Frank," remembers Carr. "So I didn't feel bad stealing him. I played guitar like my
dad and was fronting the group. At that time, I knew more guitar than Frank, and I was
teaching him how to play. But I couldn't keep a drummer. It drove me crazy.
So I hired Frank and had him be out front because he could handle the guitar, some
keyboards and he was just starting to get on with the harp." The hiring began a 42-year
friendship. Countless blues gigs and fishing trips later, you have to wonder if they ever
fight. "Only once, and I kicked his butt," Carr says, and they both laugh.
Carr is a happy, solid, comically troubled presence. All he's done is hold the whole thing
together for four decades. His drumming is like his persona. You can build a bank on his
sense of rhythm, rock solid, impeccable. Carr currently plays with Frost and does some
session work. His father once told Carr flatly, "You'll never be able to play the drums.
Why you couldn't even cool soup." "I guess I fooled him," Carr says and continues, "Dad
was touring around when I was young. Sort of like Sonny Boy, he always had his own
band. No, he and Sonny Boy never played together much. They always had their own
bands.
They were strong personalities. Probably wouldn't have got on. So, while dad was on
the road, I was raised and adopted by the Carr family. Moved in with dad at about 16. I
started out on the upright bass and I learned guitar from my dad. He also said I'd never
sing. He was nearly right about that one, though." Carr has sung just one studio-
recorded song. "I got on the drums 'cause I could never find no steady drummers. I had
to do it. I just gave up and took the back seat." Carr shakes his head at the memory.
Regardless of his back-seat position, Carr, who is fluent on guitar, bass and keyboards,
has always been the boss. He owns all the band's equipment and the van that hauls it. "I
bought a Fender Rhodes keyboard with 16 speakers, and I said to Frank, 'You can
make all the noise you want to with that.' He just looks at me and says, 'Who you gonna
get to play that?' That's the way it is being the boss. No matter how good of friends you
are, people will always resent you."
In 1962, Frost and Carr added Jack Johnson, the "Oil Man," to a band they dubbed the
Jelly Roll Kings. Johnson's rugged guitar style became part of the signature sound found
on their Earwig albums. Johnson has since parted ways with Frost and Carr after a
misunderstanding at a King Biscuit Festival. It was perceived that Johnson took too
many solos, leaving Frost in the background. Johnson even wound up insisting that
Frost play keyboards only and refrain from playing harp. Johnson currently tours Europe
and the U.S. with a band of his own.
Asked why the Jelly Roll Kings didn't head north to Chicago to seek their fortune like
Muddy Waters and the others, Frost says one word: "Fishin'." Then he elaborates, "The
livin's too hard up there. Here it's easy, slowed down, warm, and plenty of good fishin'
holes." The argument is raised that Sonny Boy went to Chicago to record. "Yeah, and
you see where he wound up. Right here," Frost says pointedly. "We all play at Eddie
Mae's on occasion and the festivals. What keeps us going is I know we have good talent
and we need to be doing something with it. But having a band full-time is a job and a
half." Nevertheless, blues has taken Frost and Carr all over the Delta, to both U.S.
coasts, Europe and Australia.
Photo by Don Buroker
During the festival Eddie Mae's Cafe is packed. Eddie Mae herself is shooing teenagers
away from the door. The crowd has spilled out into the street, and you can just catch
Arthur Williams hunched over his high-compression harp. Sam Carr is providing a
groove and Frost is nowhere to be seen. You hope he's in bed. I notice the sign on the
levee, "Welcome to Helena: the Ridge, the River, the Romance." Then it's back in the
car and off to the motel room in Brinkley, where if legend is correct, Howlin' Wolf used to
send a teen-aged Harmonica King Frank Frost to the local Walgreens to buy harmonicas
for him.
The echoes are back on the streets of Helena, and the simple, yet profound words of
Frank Frost, the blues giant who stayed here with his friend Sam Carr because the
fishin' was good, echo in my head. "I listen to everything around me and make it into
blues. I played for nothing, and I made blues for nothing. You just have to do that for a
long time."
==
Frank Frost, Blues musician who kept his
songs of heartache in the South
By Tony Russell on Wednesday 20 October 1999 for The Guardian

Most of the blues musicians who grew up in America's deep south in the 1930s and 40s
sooner or later went to work in the north, usually in Chicago. Frank Frost, who has died
aged 63, was one of the few who stayed behind, content with local celebrity. By one of
the ironies of blues history, his decision to keep the music in its place would eventually
bring blues enthusiasts from all over the world to neighborhood clubs like Eddie Mae's
Cafe in Helena, Arkansas, where Frost dispensed his down-home harmonica blues.
He was born in Auvergne, Arkansas, a town too small to appear on many maps, and at
the age of 12, encouraged by his saxophone-playing father, took up blues piano, only to
earn "the worst whuppin' in the world" when his mother caught him playing a song called
My Baby Don't Wear No Drawers.
Photo by Don Buroker
In his teens Frost moved to St Louis and began to play guitar with the harmonica-players
Willie Foster and Sonny Boy Williamson. Later, he teamed up with the older singer and
guitarist Robert Nighthawk and his son, Sam Carr, who played drums. In 1960 Frost and
Carr relocated in the south, and, a couple of years later, formed a trio with the guitarist
Big Jack Johnson called, in memory of their mentor, the Night-hawks. Following an
accident to his hand, Frost was now playing harmonica and keyboards more than guitar.
An album the trio recorded in 1962 for Sam Phillips, the Memphis producer and owner of
Sun Records, found him sounding, with his slurred, laid-back vocals, rather like the then
hugely popular Jimmy Reed. The LP, Hey Boss Man!, rapidly became a rarity, more
talked about than heard. For many blues lovers, their first encounter with Frost on record
was his 1966 single My Back Scratcher, a cheeky exercise in claim-jumping Slim
Harpo's hit of the previous year, Baby Scratch My Back.

Throughout the 1960s and for much of the 70s, Frost, Johnson and Carr played their
music in small southern venues barely known even to blues specialists. They were now
known - after one of their early recordings - as the Jelly Roll Kings, and under that billing
made their first album in more than a decade: Rockin' The Juke Joint Down. It was for a
new label, Earwig Records in Chicago, but they went no further than Memphis to record
it. "The livin's too hard up there in Chicago," Frost would say. "Here it's easy, slowed
down, warm - and plenty of good fishin' holes."
There would be further albums over the next 20 years - most recently the 1998 Off
Yonder Wall for Fat Possum and the 1999 Frost-Carr collaboration for Hightone - as the
Jelly Roll Kings built on their reputation as the longest-established working band in the
blues business. "What keeps us going," Frost once explained, "is I know we have good
talent and we need to be doing something with it. We all play at Eddie Mae's on
occasion, and the festivals. But having a band fulltime is a job and a half."
There were spells when the band was dormant; Big Jack Johnson developed a career in
his own name; Frost himself occasionally recorded with other musicians, such as the
guitarist and producer Fred James. He played with Carr in London at the 1989 South
Bank Blues Festival, but earned the largest audience of his life when he appeared in the
1986 blues film Crossroads, with its score written by Ry Cooder. In the meantime,
Helena's reputation as a hometown of the blues had been affirmed by an annual King
Biscuit Blues Festival, founded in memory of the local radio show that had helped to
launch the careers of Sonny Boy Williamson and other Mississippi and Arkansas blues
musicians in the 1950s.

With most of those pioneers dead, Frost became a grand old man of the Helena blues
scene. The street on which he lived was renamed Frank Frost Street, and in the window
of Eddie Mae's Cafe hung a sign saying: "Home of legendary bluesman Frank Frost".
He had been in poor health for at least a decade, the result of years of heavy smoking
and drinking. As he warned himself in his autobiographical Frank Frost Blues: "If you
don't lay that bottle down, Frank, that bottle goin' to lay you down." He made his last
public appearance, as ever with Sam Carr, at this month's King Biscuit Blues Festival,
but was barely able to play. He died four days later. Frank Otis Frost, blues musician,
born April 15 1936; died October 12 1999.
==

Frank Frost: Jelly Roll King

Published on Monday, May 4, 2009 by Bob Pomeroy.

Frank Frost was one apple what never fell too far from the tree. Arkansas born and bred,
and, by now, anno domini 2009, Arkansas dead. In blues ology he ranks as one of
Helena, AR’s patron saints, both cursed and blessed to dwell in the shadow of King
Biscuit main-man Sonny Boy Williamson.
In fact, in the 50s, Frost, a talented multi-instrumentalist (guit, keys, and harp), played for
several years in SBW’s band, an experience that Frost credited as a big influence on his
own playing style. Before Sonny Boy, however, Frost played with Little Willie Foster, up
the river a ways, in St. Louis. This was young Frank's only extended foray away from
good Arkansas fishing holes. Here he met lifelong friend and band-mate, drummer Sam
Carr, whose father was Robert Nighthawk. Frost and Carr formed the Jelly Roll Kings
and played together as such for the rest of Frost’s life.
As a harp player, Frost was an able imitator, known to possess an encyclopedic
repertoire of riffs. He could hang way up in the upper register, piercing eardrums like
Jimmy Reed, sustain mid-range blasts like Little Walter, and peel off inventive phrases
that recalled the style of his former employer. Frost’s talent, along with Carr’s⎯possibly
the greatest drummer to ever come out of the delta⎯eventually came to the attention of
Sam Phillips. In April, 1962, along with guitarist Jack Johnson, they cut a batch of songs
for Phillips International. Among these are the Howling Wolf cop “Everything’s Alright,”
plus “Jelly Roll King,” “Baby You’re So Kind,” “Gonna Make You Mine,” “Pocket Full of
Shells,” and “Crawlback” (featuring guitarist Roland Janes), plus others.
These tunes demonstrate both the stylistic range of Frost’s harp playing, and his subtly
powerful vocals. And say what you will about Sam Phillips⎯you can add Frost to the list
of black musicians who, in the end, had nothing good to say about him⎯the man knew
how to get that slap-back reverb. Eventually Frank Frost jumped labels, moving over to
Jewel Records, owned and operated by Shreveport Svengali, Stan “the Man” Lewis.
Stan the Man also owned Stan’s Record Shop, where Dale Hawkins once worked (see
archived GS post on Hawkins), and had connections with most of the great R&B labels
of the day. Through Leonard Chess’ urging, he formed Jewel.
In 1965 he booked a session in Nashville where Frost, Carr, & Big Jack Johnson, cut
“My Back Scratcher,” fashioned after Slim Harpo’s hit “Baby, Scratch My Back,” b/w
"Harp & Soul,” plus other sides, all produced by Elvis’ former guitar player, Scotty
Moore.

The Jelly Roll Kings remained regulars of the King Biscuit Blues Festival until Frost’s
death in 1999. Later in his life, the cigs had robbed him of the lung power to blow harp,
so Frost mostly stuck with the keys. On one of his last recordings he and Carr backed T-
Model Ford on a cut from his 1997 Fat Possum debut Pee-Wee Get My Gun, “Been a
Long Time,” which does sorta capture the sound of old men dying.
Matthew Johnson’s liner notes for that album are pretty funny, recalling how, at one
point in the session, T-Model’s “constant refrain (‘T-Model is going to remember you
sorry fuckers how it’s done’) became more and more emphatic. Seconds before ‘Been a
Long Time’ was recorded, Frank Frost felt compelled to state, ‘I want everyone to know
that I’m now playing against my will.’”

Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sam Carr and Frank Frost

==
Two Photo's from November 8th, 1981 at Ede The Netherlands Tapperij De Jug, in
concert with The Dutch B.J Hegen Blues Band by J.L. Warntjes.