Frank Stokes

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.

Biography Stokes was born in Shelby County, Tennessee, in the vicinity of Whitehaven, located two miles north of the Mississippi state line. but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give 1877, the date on his World War I draft card. 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.

Around 1920, Stokes settled in Oakville, Tennessee, where he went back to work as a blacksmith. Their duet style influenced the young Memphis Minnie in duets with her husband, Kansas Joe McCoy. The Sheiks also continued to busk on the streets and perform at parties. In the 1940s, he moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and occasionally worked with Bukka White in local juke joints.