Frank Stokes (musician)
| Frank Stokes | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 1, 1877 or 1888 Shelby County, Tennessee, United States |
| Died | September 12, 1955 (aged 67 or 78) Memphis, Tennessee, United States |
| Genres | Delta blues, country blues |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, guitarist, songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar |
| Labels | Vocalion, Victor |
Frank Stokes (January 1, 1877 or 1888 – September 12, 1955) was an American blues musician, songster, and blackface minstrel, who is considered by many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style.
Stokes was born in Shelby County, Tennessee, in the vicinity of Whitehaven, located two miles north of the Mississippi state line. There is uncertainty over his year of birth; his daughter and later sources reported 1888, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give 1877, the date on his World War I draft card.
His parents died when he was a child, and he was raised by his stepfather in Tutwiler, Mississippi. He learned to play the guitar as a youth in Tutwiler and, after 1895, in Hernando, Mississippi, which was the home of the guitarists Jim Jackson, Dan Sane, Elijah Avery (of Cannon's Jug Stompers), and Robert Wilkins. By the turn of the century, Stokes was working as a blacksmith, traveling 25 miles to Memphis on weekends to sing and play the guitar with Sane, with whom he formed a long-term musical partnership. Together, they busked on the streets and in Church's Park (now W. C. Handy Park) on Memphis's Beale Street in Memphis.
In the mid-1910s, Stokes joined another Mississippi musician, 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 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 the country singer Jimmie Rodgers, who played the same circuit. Rodgers borrowed songs and song fragments from Stokes and was influenced stylistically as well.
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