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    Blues Run The Game - Jackson C. Frank

    Catch a boat to England, baby
    maybe to Spain.
    Wherever I’ve been and gone,
    the blues are all the same.

    Jackson C. Frank had one of the most sad, tragic lives of any musician I’ve ever come across, misery piled upon misery, on and on and on. He managed to show up on the folk scene briefly, making a record in 1965 (produced by Paul Simon, who often played shows with him at the time), but it was to be but a small period of success in an otherwise awful life trajectory.

    From the horrific school fire that killed several of his classmates and left him with burns over half of his own body at age 11, to a mental health “unraveling” shortly after the release of his only record, to losing his son to cystic fibrosis (which led to a depression so severe he was ultimately committed to an institution in the mid-70s), to an eventual diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and a life of homeless destitution throughout the 1980s, to being accidentally shot with a pellet gun in the left eye (and subsequently blinded) in the early 90s, Frank’s life was a heartbreaking one. He died in 1999, only 56 years old, of pneumonia and cardiac arrest.

    His self-titled 1965 record was the only record he would ever make. And, though he was only 22 at the time he recorded this track (“Blues Run the Game”), the world-weary sadness in his voice was already readily apparent.

    Just try not to feel it.

     
    1. eceu posted this