Author’s Note: An earlier excerpt about Frank Hicks ran in the September 2014 FFS newsletter. This excerpt picks up from his high school graduation in June 1941. Frank went to work for the railroad in 1950, became an engineer in 1956 and continued his career with the railroad until retiring in 1982. Fortunately, his railroad career enabled him to take off time to play music. Frank’s introduction to Sweet’s Mill (via Bob Thompson) changed his life and the lives of others. As jazz violinist Paul Anastasio recalled, “Until I met Frank, I had never seen anyone play like that; it made me the player that I am now. He was the finest rhythm guitarist I’ve heard live or on record. He was simply a phenomenal jazz musician and a great guy who should have been better known.”
(l-r) Paul Anastasio, Frank Hicks, Barry Shultz, Rip Van Winkle, Joe Holley. photo: Evo Bluestein
Frank Hicks 1922-1995
I had been doing cabinet work right after high school, but sawdust and redwood dust got to me, and I had headaches. The doctor told me to get away from it and get into something else. So I quit mill work and did it as a hobby.
I graduated [high school] in June and the war broke out in December 1941. We went to bed Saturday night no more thinking about war than we would be in the morning. I woke up and happened to turn on the radio. I was nineteen. I heard all this stuff about Pearl Harbor being bombed and Roosevelt was on the radio giving a speech. I said, ‘What the hell is going on here?’
I was in the first draft. A little later they let me out because they found out I had a heart condition in elementary school and that I’d had a heart attack in junior high. So they told me I was through with the Army and could do whatever I wished.
‘What if I play music?’ I asked.
They said, ‘That’s great.’
A lot of people don’t know it [but] guns are not the first priority in war. Do you know what the first priority is? Music–the band. That is the first. I don’t care if you listen to the most violent program on TV, there’s a music background that goes with everything and music hefts people up. Marching band music is patriotic so people feel like going to kill. It’s brainwashing. They [the Army] said, ‘There’s a lot of music to be done.’ So I played U.S.O. and a couple of shows in Castle Field with Bob Hope–stuff like that. We played different army bases. There were so many soldiers and sirens going off all the time [that] I was brainwashed too. I thought I wanted to get into something and kill. I got in the damned military police thing–Marine Army MP in San Francisco. It wasn’t for very long, and I got to playing music up there. I was playing with different bands around Richmond. I did a few shows with Duke Martin and the Sunrise Roundup and decided I’m just gonna play music. The Army] said I could do it, so I didn’t have to worry. They gave me clearance.
One day I was over at [fiddler] Floyd Hodge’s place and one of our singers was there for a jam. We decided to get a band together. ‘Hell, there ain’t no other bands, so let’s get a band together and run a dance.’
We organized the band which became the Texas Tornadoes but then we got sued because there was a Clem Duncan and The Texas Tornadoes back east so we had to say Floyd Hodges and The Texas Tornadoes. We got to be a big band and traveled all over playing western swing–Bob Wills type of stuff and our own stuff too. Never made a record, but we were supposed to–supposed to have been in two movies, too. Half the guys were drunks and they’d break a contract and not show up, and we’d get kicked out. That’s when Joe Holley moved out here in 1945 and Bob Wills and many of his band members followed. We [the Tornadoes] worked up and down the Valley. I was with several other bands at the same time: The Yachtsmen, a little band with Dick Gifford; Jack Riley and his Orchestra; Jack Martin and his Orchestra. I played with everybody. If a big band came to town they’d call the union and ask me to sit in with them.
I quit the Tornadoes and went to work for Junior Bernard in 1948. He was one of Will’s first guitar players–’Fat Boy Bernard.’ I played with Junior until he got killed in a car wreck in 1949. His brother, Gene, also lived here in Fresno. He sent his brother over to ask me to play with him and many players from Bob Will’s band–Harley Higgins, Alex Brashear, Johnny Cuviello (drummer). I was playing guitar or bass. That’s when I met Joe (fiddle) and Alex (trumpet). Alex worked for Sears in the electrical department but he was the arranger for Bob Wills. Joe was with Wills the longest and then Johnny Gimble went to work for him in 1950. I got fed up and quit the seven-nights-a-week playing clubs around 1957.
I went to school with Bob Thompson’s nephew. Bob Thompson built some guitars and he also played but he couldn’t keep good time. He was trying to play with Pete Everwine, and he invited me up to Sweet’s Mill and introduced me to Pete as someone who’d be able to really play with him. I had never heard Pete, so we sat down to play. It was simple for me. I heard those tunes all my life but nobody wanted to hear ‘em. The banjo didn’t make a comeback until the hootenanies. I hadn’t played that music in a long time. I was doing other kinds of music. I was working at Arabian Nights with Guy Chakurian for a belly dance show.
Anyway Pete and I became friends, and Pete said a fiddle would go well with this, but he didn’t know any fiddlers. We had a program for a club started by Roger Derryberry called The Gallery–just the two of us and everybody liked us so that’s when Pete said we ought to get a fiddler. I had played with Ron Hughey back in 1934, ’35 and ’36 for dances. We went to see Ron in his welding shop, in Fowler. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. He turned around, and he had that welding helmet on, and I said, ‘Is Ron Hughey here?’
‘Damn you!’ he said. ‘Damn you son of a bitch! Where you been?’
He come up a-hugging me you know.
I said, ‘Do you still play the fiddle Ronny?’
He said, ‘There it is–right there in the corner!’
I said, ‘Get it out. I brought a banjo player.’
He took off all that welding stuff, grabbed a fiddle and played good as ever he did. He was a hoedown playing fool with arms six feet long.
We got to playing quite a bit, did some concerts, and I started going to Sweet’s Mill and playing folk music. I never was in that [scene] before. I like folk music and potlucks and bringing my steam engine I built to grind coffee. I liked Sweet’s Mill. Hell, I would have lived there, forgot everything, no mail, nothing else, just stay there. I loved it. I liked the type of people. I have played with a lot of fakes in my life. Out on the stage they were half-way human, but behind the curtain they were just a bunch of fakes. It’s just a show out front. You get them back stage and they all hate each other.
When I got to doing this folk thing, I quit all other music. This is really what I liked. It was no pressure; it was simple. We got to playing around a lot and Alan Oakes said he’d like to book me and Ron and Pete. There was no one playing oldtime music around here. Virgil Byxbe loved that and came to all our concerts. I said we need a name and we thought of different things and came up with The Sweet’s Mill Mountain Boys. Pete said I should be the leader and I said, “Okay, but you be the MC. I’m not gonna talk.” There wasn’t really a leader, but it was just to let them know when we were gonna play and all that. Ronny said this gave him a chance to play all the old hoedowns and tunes that he liked. He was telling Pete, ‘Me and Frankie, when we played this back in the 30s they’d walk off. People didn’t want to hear hoedowns.’
I met fiddler Paul Anastasio at Sweet’s Mill. He was looking to meet me and play swing music. We got to playing together and loved it. When it was time to leave, something was wrong with his car and he didn’t have the money to fix it. I asked him how much he needed and said I’d get it for him. I told him to come down to Fresno with me. We went to this club next to where the Tropicana Lodge was, and I asked the people I knew there if they’d like to have some fantastic jazz music. They asked how much we wanted, and I said we didn’t want nothing. We packed the place and they were selling booze like I don’t know what.
We played till one in the morning and made some tips, but I made the manager agree to pay us fifty bucks a man for the next three nights. I gave all I made to Paul. I told him, ‘If you want to make money, go in and play for nothing the first night, and then make them beg you to play.’ Paul and I became good friends, and we made that record with Joe Holley. Paul asked about Joe and I told him he lived right here with all these other great musicians. Chris Strachwitz bought that record right up for Arhoolie records. It all boils down that I was lucky enough to live in an era that I got to meet all of these people. You could have done it too if you’d been around then.
John and Marie Halcomb were visiting Ron and taping some tunes when Pete said, ‘You know what would be good with this, would be a mandolin.’ I told him I knew a mandolin player, but I hadn’t seen him in many years. He was a blind man named Kenny Hall, who I had heard play with the Happy Hayseeds in Modesto and Stockton, but I didn’t know where he was at–if he was still alive. John Halcomb said he knew right where Kenny Hall was. He was up in Napa. I knew Kenny, but had never played with him. I knew he was good. I used to listen to The Happy Hayseeds on the radio. John Halcomb went up to get him and brought him back. So he joined us then. We played the Ash Grove and the San Diego Folk Festival and other clubs.
Ron got me going to the Weiser Idaho fiddle Convention, and then we went to a Bakersfield convention and we won third place and a bunch of money. Later on, we went to the Oregon State contest. I met fiddler Virge Evans up there. He was a smooth fiddler. I asked if I could play with him. He liked my playing and, later on, he asked me to make a record with him. Kenny was on it too. Virge was a perfect swing player, great on waltzes and schottisches too–not a hoedown player.
The Sweet’s Mill Mountain Boys were supposed to go back to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, but Pete was tied up teaching (CSUF) and Ronny got sick with cancer, which is how he died. We were supposed to make a record with Ronny while he was dying, but I was making a record with Virge Evans and couldn’t do it, so they [Newport FF] got a band out of Bakersfield, from Buck Owen’s outfit.