Father of the Memphis Blues

Recorded February 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee with Frank Stokes (guitar, vocals) and Dan Sane (guitar).

Frank Stokes was born January 1, 1888 in Shelby County, Tennessee, in the largest Southern vicinity of Whitehaven, located two miles north of the Mississippi line. He was raised by his stepfather in Tutwiler, Mississippi, after the death of his parents. Stokes first learned to play guitar as a youth in Tutwiler and after 1895, in Hernando, Mississippi, which was home to such guitarists as Jim Jackson, Dan Sane, Elijah Avery (of Cannon’s Jug Stompers), and Robert Wilkins. By the turn of the century, at the age of 12, Stokes worked as a blacksmith, traveling the 25 miles to Memphis on the weekends to sing and play guitar with Sane, with whom he developed a long-term musical partnership. Together, they busked on the streets and in Church’s Park (now W. C. Handy Park) on Memphis’ Beale Street.

In the mid 1910s, Stokes joined forces with fellow Mississippian Garfield Akers as a blackface songster, comedian, and buck dancer in the Doc Watts Medicine Show, a tent show that toured the South. During this period of touring, Stokes developed a sense of show business professionalism that set him apart from many of the more rural, less polished blues musicians of that time and place. It is said that his performances on the southern minstrel and vaudeville circuit around this time influenced Jimmie Rodgers, who played the same circuit. Rodgers borrowed songs and song fragments from Stokes and was influenced stylistically as well.

Around 1920, Stokes settled in Oakville, Tennessee, where he went back to work as a blacksmith. Stokes teamed up again with Sane and went to work playing dances, picnics, fish fries, saloons, and parties in his free time. Stokes and Sane joined Jack Kelly’s Jug Busters to play white country clubs, parties and dances, and to play Beale Street together as the “Beale Street Sheiks,” first recording under that name for Paramount Records in August 1927. All told, Stokes was to cut 38 sides for Paramount and Victor Records. “The fluid guitar interplay between Stokes and Sane, combined with a propulsive beat, witty lyrics, and Stokes’s stentorian voice, make their recordings irresistible.” Their duet style influenced the young Memphis Minnie in her duets with husband Kansas Joe McCoy.

The Sheiks next recorded at a session for Victor Records, in February 1928 with an emphasis was on blues, rather than the older songs that were also part of Stokes’ repertoire. In 1929, Stokes and Sane recorded again for Paramount, resuming their “Beale Street Sheiks” billing for a few cuts. In September Stokes was back on Victor to make what were to be his last recordings, this time without Sane, but with Will Batts on fiddle. Stokes and Batts were a team as evidenced by these records, which are both traditional and wildly original, but their style had fallen out of favor with the blues record buying public. Stokes was still a popular live performer, however, appearing in medicine shows, the Ringling Brothers Circus, and other tent shows and similar venues during the 1930s and 1940s. During the 1940s, Stokes moved to Clarksdale, where he occasionally worked in local juke joints with Bukka White.

Frank Stokes died of a stroke in Memphis on September 12, 1955 and was buried there at the Hollywood Cemetery. He is now considered by many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style.

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