Styles: blues, R&R, jump blues, harp blues
Released: 2007
File: MP3 @ 192K/s
Size: 98,5 MB
Time: 71:41
Scans: front
1. You Haul - 3:02
2. Diamonds at Your Feet - 5:24
3. Big Road Blues - 3:55
4. What Can I Do - 6:04
5. Boom Boom - 3:32
6. Moon Flower - 8:18
7. Devil by Her Side - 5:02
8. Big Leg Polka - 3:21
9. Rainy Day Blues - 5:53
10. Let Me Go About My Business - 3:53
11. Short Term Goal - 8:09
12. Guitar Rag - 3:58
13. Freeway - 5 Am - 6:37
14. Right by My Side - 4:24
Sometimes it's all about the blues.
So it was with Terry Frank's music. So it was with the news of his death.
Frank and his bands brought the blues to Summerfest and other local venues for decades. His forte was slide guitar and the Delta blues.
"He was one of the mainstays as far as being a player in Milwaukee," said Tom Crawford, station manager at WMSE-FM (91.7), which features live performances and the "Blues Drive" in weekday afternoon drive time.
"He was one of the people who kept the blues going here," Crawford said. "You mention the blues in Milwaukee, and you have to bring up Terry's name."
Frank died in his sleep Jan. 25 in St. Petersburg, Fla., where he moved with his wife, Cheryl, in August. He was 52. No cause of death is known, but he was on medication for high blood pressure, his wife said.
In town for the holidays, Frank played with friends at Liquid Johnny's.
He grew up in Wauwatosa, learning to play the guitar as a teenager and becoming fascinated with the blues.
"He started playing with a cast of characters, and they used to have practice at the warehouse of the family business," paper distributor A.D. Schinner Co., Cheryl said.
By the late 1970s, his Black Cat Bone band was tapping the rock-blues vein and drawing crowds to live music clubs such as Murray Tap, Century Hall and Stockholders.
"Back then, we pretty much stuck to playing straight-ahead, big-city blues," Frank recalled in 1999. "Albert and Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters - all the electric-blues masters."
That started changing in the 1980s.
"Customers started wanting more of the blues-rock stuff - the Stones, the Allman Brothers, Thorogood; younger crowds began thinking of those guys as ancient classics," Frank said. "So we began mixing a lot of rock covers in but remained pretty much a blues band."
The band morphed into Terry Frank and Bone Deluxe. Frank did solo gigs, too.
"I like the acoustic shows because I get to do an earthier, more rootsy exploration of the blues," Frank said in another interview. "Shows with the band are more of a rocking, weekend-relief kind of thing. I think the more intellectual blues fans like the acoustic shows because they deal with the authentic aspects of the music."
"He was always true to the blues," said bass player Rick Holmes, who sometimes performed with Bone Deluxe. "He was a blues player, and he was proud of it."
Family responsibilities and his day job - sales rep and vice president at the family paper firm - kept Frank based in Milwaukee, but he earned a wider reputation with his recordings, especially "Blues in the Night" and "Devil by Her Side."
"He could do it all," including writing and singing lead vocals, Crawford said. "He was more known for his band, but he could sit down and entertain a crowd on his National steel guitar, playing the original Delta blues."
Frank was a key supporter of the blues on WMSE, including at special events at the Up & Under Pub.
"Terry would get all the great blues players in Milwaukee into the same room," Crawford said. "They helped us raise thousands of dollars."
Frank taught his wife to play the bass. She played with Bone Deluxe until child-care arrangements got too complicated when both were out on gigs.
"I met Terry when I was 17 years old," Cheryl said. "And we got married pretty quick, about a year and a half later. And it's worked ever since."
"The only hard rules I've learned about having a family and being a musician is that you have to deal with one crisis at a time," Frank said good-naturedly. "And you have to have a real love for music."
