Paul had no objection to going electric. He played a private party with Pink Floyd in October 1965. He performed ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone’ and then sang ‘Johnny B. Goode’ with Pink Floyd. Acoustically, you can see Paul sing ‘The Sound of Silence’ at Vient de Paraître in Paris on 27 November 1965 on YouTube. It’s a very clear film too but a cold night as Simon is wrapped in a thick scarf.
The heat was about to be turned on, but first, a brief but sorry interlude.
CHAPTER 4
Blues Run the Game
In the mid-60s, the artists who would be involved in the British folk revival were coming together in London. They included Martin Carthy, Donovan, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell, John Renbourn, Al Stewart and the various musicians who were to make up Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. Visiting Americans gained much from this community: both Big Bill Broonzy and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott had toured in the 50s and now the visitors included Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs and Paul Simon. Any American who came to Britain sang its praises and found it changed them in some way. Dylan for example was no longer singing the blues.
In return, the British musicians were impressed by the sense of purpose and the confidence of the Americans. One visitor was the troubled Jackson C. Frank, whose 1965 album was produced in London by Paul Simon. Jackson C. Frank is a fine album, untarnished by time, but it was not recognised outside the folk circle on release and Frank’s own career is among the most distressing in music history.
Jim Abbott has written a finely detailed biography of Frank, The Clear, Hard Light of Genius, the book being let down by its title: there is no evidence to call him a genius and if you do call him that, what word is going to describe Bob Dylan or Paul Simon? It is a story that is well worth telling: considering all the problems of just being Jackson C. Frank, it is remarkable that he made such a fine album in 1965. For a few short weeks, his personality and his album fit perfectly with the mushrooming folk scene.
Jackson Carey Jones, the son of Jack and Marilyn Jones, was born into a Catholic household in Buffalo, New York on 2 March 1943. Jack was a test pilot but he was also a womaniser and the marriage fell apart. Marilyn took Jackson (Jack’s son) to Elyria, Ohio and she met Elmer Frank, a serviceman who had been at the Nuremberg trials and then worked as a chemist. He adopted Jackson and raised him as his own son, although they had no children of their own. It was a musical household and in the light of events, it is ironic that Marilyn was often singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ to Jackson.
Marilyn wanted to return to her friends and family in Buffalo, and Elmer agreed. The city is on the shores of Lake Erie and there were long, icy winters where the snow could be two feet thick. Jackson attended the Cleveland Hill Elementary School and in March 1954, the winter was not yet over.
The school had an annexe with a wooden corridor that led to a timbered music room, where Jackson was on 31 March. A furnace in the basement was working hard to heat the school. It was an old furnace and the weaknesses in its structure had been badly repaired. The flames suddenly escaped and shot into the annexe, making their way to the music room. There was one door with no easy means of escape.
The teachers broke the windows in a frantic effort to get the children free but many were lost in the cauldron. There were some outstanding acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Fifteen children were killed and another twenty-three injured. Jackson was among them and he recalled, ‘Someone managed to throw me out of the window and into the snow. The snow helped to put out the flames that were on my back.’ Nearly sixty per cent of Jackson’s body was covered in burns and he was close to death.
Jackson, who was eleven years old, spent the rest of the year in hospital. His temperature soared to 108 degrees and he was placed on an ice bed to bring it down. A metal plate was inserted in his skull and calcium deposits built up in the wrong places, limiting his mobility and increasing his pain. He had a tracheotomy to help him speak. It was a long and painful recovery, although it was never complete. Far from it. He was badly scarred, he would walk with an ungainly limp, and he had limited movement in his arms.
When Jackson had some personal tuition in his sick bed, his tutor brought along a guitar and sang him folk songs from American history. Jackson wanted his own guitar and although he had limited movement, he taught himself to play. He listened to Burl Ives’ records and learnt his songs.
Life magazine was criticised for showing photographs of the injured children but the horror of the event did force authorities to change working practices. Safety precautions were upgraded and many schools had to install sprinklers.
Because the tragedy was global news, celebrities, hopefully for the best reasons, offered their sympathies. Kirk Douglas visited the injured children and there is a photograph of Jackson smiling, the only picture in which I have seen him smile. Elvis Presley sent Jackson a personal letter and, in 1957, when Marilyn took him to Memphis, they called at Graceland, just like that, and Jackson had his picture taken with the King.
Jackson struggled through college, having to cope with his physical disfigurement and incapacities as well as his mental torment, with flashbacks to the fire. He wanted to be a writer and study journalism but he also liked the musical scene around Buffalo with such promising musicians as Paul Siebel, Eric Andersen and Joachim Krauledat, later John Kay of Steppenwolf. He sang in coffee houses with a Kingston Trio-like group, the Grosvenor Singers.
His compensation was $80,000 (over $500,000 today), a considerable sum which became payable when he was twenty-one. He was able to drive and instead of setting the money aside, he wanted a small fleet of expensive cars.
In February 1965 Jackson sailed to the UK on the RMS Queen Elizabeth with his girlfriend, Kathy Henry. He wrote his first song, ‘Don’t Look Back’, a protest song about a racial murder in Alabama where the killer went free. This led to the melancholy ‘Blues Run the Game’ with its opening line, ‘Catch a boat to England, baby’. The songs flowed quickly. Shortly after arrival, Kathy found herself pregnant and they returned home for an abortion. Then they split up.
Jackson returned on his own in June 1965. He was a floor singer in the city’s folk clubs, notably in the basement of a Greek restaurant in Soho, Les Cousins. Jackson helped the owner’s son, Andy Matheou, to arrange evenings and book guests. Ralph McTell recalls, ‘I didn’t know Jackson C. Frank but I saw him play. Sandy Denny was his girlfriend and I saw him at Les Cousins or Bunjies but everyone sang “Blues Run the Game”. It has a mystery about it and when you are young, you understand your mortality for the first time, and so it seemed quite advanced to me. The song mentions “room service” and I didn’t even know what that meant.’
Jackson was popular; he had a strong voice and he was good at fingerpicking, having developed a style similar to Paul Simon’s. Ralph McTell attributed this to being in London: ‘Because we couldn’t see what the great masters were doing, we could only hear it on vinyl, a guitar style evolved. We listened to Elizabeth Cotton who was left-handed and played the guitar upside down and so she was playing the melody with her thumb but we didn’t know that. Just think of Archie Fisher and Martin Carthy. We evolved a style that Paul really liked and Jackson C. Frank was doing the same thing and absorbed stuff from us as well. It is that British style that Paul then took back to America.’
Judith Piepe introduced Jackson to Paul Simon. Through his publishing company, Paul secured a deal to produce a similar album to The Paul Simon Songbook with Jackson for the Columbia label, which was part of EMI and not related to the American label.
Two three-hour sessions were booked at Levy’s in New Bond Street. Bob Dylan had been there in May to record promotional messages and to put down a ragged, drunken version of ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’.
The recording should have been straightforward but Jackson was suddenly overcome with nerves. He insisted that baffles were put around him so that Simon could not see him. Simon pressed ‘Start’ and eventually Jackson began singing – and
singing well. Garfunkel was around but neither added backing vocals. The album featured just Jackson and his guitar but Al Stewart added a second guitar to ‘Yellow Walls’, which marked Al’s recording debut.
Ten of the songs found their way onto the album. Nine were written by Jackson and the other was a traditional song, ‘Kimbie’, a prison song he had heard in Canada.
‘Yellow Walls’ is a song of torture with Jackson reliving his experiences. He is trapped in himself, having to view his body as his eyelids are burned away. The album often alludes to the fire and the luck, or otherwise, of survival. ‘Here Comes the Blues’ has the line, ‘No bottle of pills, babe, can kill this pain’. Nick Drake made a home recording of this song and it is easy to see why this appealed to the troubled singer, who also put down ‘Here Comes The Blues’, ‘Milk and Honey’ and ‘Kimbie’.
One of the best melodies is ‘My Name Is Carnival’ but the bad rhymes and mispronounced words make this track irritating. You can imagine Frank in an amusement arcade, thinking, ‘I’ll write a song about this.’ Bert Jansch performed it better, partly because it showcased his guitar.
The album was simply called Jackson C. Frank and is best known for its opening track, ‘Blues Run the Game’. Simon & Garfunkel recorded their own version of this, ending with a very typical Simon guitar chord, but it was not released until the 1990s when it appeared as a bonus track.
It is easy to see why the songs and the singer appealed to Paul Simon but the only potential single was ‘Blues Run the Game’. As it happens, ‘Blues Run the Game’ was remade and released as a single with a new song, ‘Can’t Get Away From My Love’, on the reverse.
The album has an impenetrable sleeve note from Jackson C. Frank himself – shades of Kerouac, and perhaps Art wasn’t available – and it would have been far better if it had simply printed Paul Simon’s assessment, ‘“Blues Run the Game” is a jewel of a song.’ If they had released their version at the time, it would have improved Jackson C. Frank’s fast-depleting funds and his status.
He was still buying cars and during his time in the UK he had a Bentley, a Land Rover and an Aston Martin, so there was little cash left. Maybe he was banking on the album doing well.
With little promotion, the album only sold 1,000 copies, but since then it has been reissued, invariably with additional songs from the session. In ‘Marlene’, he writes of his young girlfriend who died in the explosion, about his scars and about being ‘a crippled singer’. I would have taken a chance and put this on the album.
Jackson’s new girlfriend, eighteen-year-old nurse Sandy Denny, played him her own new songs, which may have included ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’, a song that would top anything Jackson C. Frank ever wrote. Possibly he wrote ‘You Never Wanted Me’ about their relationship. She included it on her first album and wrote a cryptic song about him, ‘Next Time Around’. Roy Harper wrote about him in ‘My Friend’ on the album Sophisticated Beggar.
After Sandy, Jackson took up with a society girl, Caroline, and for a time he favoured the city-gent look of a pinstripe suit and bowler, albeit still with long hair, and would turn up to dates in an Aston Martin. He had a more substantial relationship with the model Elaine Sedgwick, who was based in England and was a cousin of Edie Sedgwick, a mainstay of Andy Warhol’s Factory and the subject of Bob Dylan’s ‘Just like a Woman’. They were married in 1967 and moved to Woodstock. After a miscarriage, they had a son and daughter, but their son died of cystic fibrosis.
In 1968 he was back in the UK for An Evening of Contemporary Song at the Royal Festival Hall with Fairport Convention and Al Stewart. He recorded a five-song session for John Peel’s Night Ride, four of the songs coming from the first album and the other ‘Jimmy Clay’. The full session can be heard on the 3CD set, Complete Recordings, released in 2015. His angry new songs, full of thrashing guitar, found few takers. Jackson was uncomfortable when he was back in London. He was disillusioned and would hide behind furniture rather than meet people.
Now a star, Paul Simon lent Jackson $3,000 to open a boutique and, as surety, he wanted the publishing rights to his songs, which suggests that it wasn’t wholly an act of friendship. They opened Bell Bows Boutique in Woodstock with Elaine designing and making the stock but it did not do well, and so Simon had the songs.
Jackson and Elaine moved in with her parents and their daughter, Angeline, was born in 1969. She left him after he had an affair and although they reconciled, they were soon divorced. His behaviour became more erratic. He sometimes dressed as a Viking and would wave a ceremonial sword. Other times, he would spend hours watching traffic lights change.
When Art Garfunkel was making his first album in 1971, he invited Jackson to submit new material. There was a new song, ‘Juliette’, that might suit Art and so Art went to Woodstock to meet him. He showed up with some hippies who mocked Art for his wealth and he never recorded the song, although he did give him a new Martin guitar.
Although Jackson’s album was reissued in1978, he was in no state to promote it. He had no money and he sold his letter from Elvis to buy food and cigarettes.
Paul Simon owned his publishing and in 1984 Jackson went to New York to get it back. He didn’t see Simon and he slept on the street, cursing at passers-by. Sometimes he didn’t take his medication, which made him worse.
In 1993 a student and a fan, Jim Abbott, befriended him and helped him straighten out his life. He was in and out of hospital and hearing voices in his head. But worse was to follow. Some callous youths said, ‘Let’s shoot the homeless guy,’ and shot out his left eye. In 1997 he went into a care home and Simon returned his songs to him the following year. Jackson C. Frank died from pneumonia and cardiac arrest. His game had been run on 3 March 1999, the day after his fifty-sixth birthday.
Jackson C. Frank was unlucky in so many ways. Just one song can set you up for life – ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’, ‘Streets of London’, ‘American Pie’, ‘The Sound of Silence’. Jackson C. Frank had a song, ‘Blues Run the Game’, that could have had that status, but although it has been much recorded (Sandy Denny, John Renbourn, Simon & Garfunkel, Eddi Reader, Counting Crows), it has never been a hit single or used in a major film.
Extract showing Paul Simon (13 September) from the accounts of Geoff Speed’s Widnes Folk Club, 1965
CHAPTER 5
1966 and All That…
Tom Graph, Artie Garr, Jerry Landis, True Taylor, Tico and Paul Kane had served their purpose, not to mention Tom and Jerry. The world was ready for Simon & Garfunkel. Simon said with some surprise, ‘People thought ‘Garfunkel’ was an English name like Clive or Colin – one of those names that Americans didn’t have.’ Maybe, but I doubt that anyone in England thought that Garfunkel was an English name.
Although ‘The Sound of Silence’ was climbing the American charts, it was out of character for Paul Simon not to hotfoot back home. He remained in Europe and watched the record sell with a certain detachment. Questioned by the New Musical Express, he said, ‘I don’t even feel it at all. You see, here I am in London and this record is supposed to be selling well. I’m not even over there and so I don’t know the excitement that’s going on. I’m here in England and I’m going to folk clubs and I’m working like I was always working. It hasn’t changed me at all. Oh, I’m happy about it, man. I’ve got to say that I’m very pleased. It’s a very nice gift.’
So why was Simon like this? After all this time, he was about to have a major hit, so why didn’t he (and Garfunkel, for that matter) pursue it? It can’t have been the obligation to play a few club dates. No, they were waiting for Columbia to come up with a decent offer to make it worth their while.
That could have been the prospect of making a new album to capitalise on the hit single. Art wanted to continue with his studies but he’d welcome quick cash through an album and some concerts. In mid-December 1965, Simon and Garfunkel teamed up for sessions, this time produced by Bob Johnston, who had been working with Bob Dylan.
They already had three tracks, that is, both sides of the single and ‘Somewhere They Can’t Find Me’. As The Paul Simon Songbook had not been released in the US, the intention was to keep it that way and record some of those songs with new arrangements for Simon & Garfunkel.
Simon and Garfunkel, 1966 (Camera Press, E. Taylor)
Paul Simon (Harry Goodwin)
The starkness of ‘A Most Peculiar Man’ is better suited to one man, one guitar, but ‘Kathy’s Song’ is just as attractive and I like Garfunkel taking ‘April Come She Will’ as a solo. ‘Leaves That Are Green’ has a jaunty accompaniment reminiscent of a fairground. The most marked difference is with ‘I Am a Rock’, which is given a fashionable folk-rock treatment that drains the defiance from the song.
‘Richard Cory’ is presented with ‘apologies to E. A. Robinson’. Like ‘A Most Peculiar Man’, this song can be traced back to a newspaper cutting, in this instance from April 1897. The American poet E. A. Robinson had read how Frank Avery had killed himself with a shotgun. Three months later he told a friend that he had written ‘a nice little thing called “Richard Cory”. There isn’t any idealism in it, but there’s a lot of something else – humanity, maybe. I opine that it will go.’
E. A. Robinson opined right and the poem became well known after being included in his collection, The Children of the Night. The poem itself ran to four verses of four lines each and told how the workers looked up to their wealthy employer, Richard Cory. In the poem’s last line, Robinson uses Cory’s suicide as a surprise ending. It runs,
So on we worked and waited for the light,
Simon & Garfunkel Page 6