Jackson C. Frank: a memory of Jack by Marianne Collins and Diana Boggs

A note of explanation from Diana Boggs:  When I was a student at Alfred University, I used to get away to Buffalo to visit my brother Norman who was working for our old friend, Jerry Raven at the Limelight Café.  That is where I met Marianne Welch (who was later married to my brother, Norman for a while) and Jackson C. Frank who was part of their group The Grosvenors.  Marianne and I were nineteen, Norman was twenty-two and Jack was twenty.  I used to hang around with them running the tape recorder and being their most appreciative audience.  We brought Jack to Woodstock, a place he later considered his home. Marianne and I offer the following memory of Jack.

We are grateful to those who recognized Jack Frank’s prodigious talent and have honored him at the Buffalo Music Hall Of Fame. And, to Jim Abbott, author of Jackson C. Frank: The Clear Hard Light Of Genius, whose years of dedicated friendship and caring for Jack, not an easy task, resulted In a thoughtful and sensitive book that will also help to keep the body of work that Jack accomplished alive and available. Jack and his work deserve to be remembered and afforded their place in that extremely creative time of the singer songwriter in England and America in the 1960’s.

It was Jerry Raven who welcomed Jack into his first regular performing gig at Jerry’s iconic coffeehouse, The Limelight, on Edward Street in Buffalo. For several years, Jack performed with Norm Boggs, who was Jerry’s good friend from his Woodstock days and a grad student at U.B. Another grad student, bass player, Ev Neinhaus and Marianne Welch, stepping out from her role as The Limelight’s cook and into female vocalist, soon joined them.

The group was well received and performed around the Northeast and Canada. But. It wasn’t hard to see that once he got his stage “sea legs”, Jack was able to stretch more and grow into himself as a solo. His voice was mesmerizing and his playing style, possibly because of his physical limitations, gave him a unique sound that brought people back again and again.

Close friends knew of Jack’s miraculous, however, only partial recovery from the severe burns he received in the historic Cleveland Hill school fire.  It is probable that Jack should not have survived, never walked, never been able to live on his own. The limp, the bent arms, the scars he carried, and his constant pain, were, frankly horrific.

But, despite all of it, Jack was regarded by his friends as one of the funniest, wryly humorous people ever.  It was a gift that he could not avoid, even if he had wanted to. It made him completely engaging and adorable while at the same time being the biggest pain in the ass one ever met!

His music had an informal sound to it that he could only achieve by meticulous practice. The themes he addressed in his lyrics melded deeply personal and universal concepts and feelings and his love of language shone throughout all of his writing. It was no small accident that Jack had an enormous repertoire of traditional English and American folk songs. Those who heard his first performances of that music can hear it reprised in very subtle ways in some of his own writing.

The fire, the settlement from the fire, and his subsequent travel to England and Europe, are the triggers that set his creative juices free but – they also held the seeds of the physical, emotional, and psychological problems that, ultimately, he could not overcome.

By the time he returned home and settled in Woodstock, money gone, marriage beyond shaky, and his first child, a son, tragically taken just hours after birth, Jack began a downward trajectory from which he never fully emerged.

Marianne Welch Collins notes the following:  The Boggs family and I did what we could to soften the hard places that Jack landed, but ultimately we knew it was not going to be enough. For many years, we became the home that” when you go there, they have to take you in.” He was always welcome, but we always knew that when Jack came to us, he wasn’t doing well.

Now, Jack’s artistic output and his contributions to the music of his time are being acknowledged. He overcame so much to be able to accomplish anything. He was a beautiful, brave, tenacious, gifted and inspiring individual and all of us who had the opportunity to experience him – from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle, his European traveling companions, to Sandy Denny, his lover and quite possibly his soul mate, to John Kay, his friend before Steppenwolf fame, and all the rest of us, he is truly unforgettable. Thank you for helping to keep his memory alive. And, thanks again to Jim Abbott for his dedication to Jack and his legacy.

8-4-2015