Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Blues Run the Game
2. Don't Look Back
3. Kimbie
4. Yellow Walls
5. Here Come the Blues
6. Milk and Honey
7. My Name Is Carnival
8. Dialogue
9. Just Like Anything
10. You Never Wanted Me
11. Blues Run the Game [Single Version]
12. Can't Get Away from My Love
13. Marlene
14. Marcy's Song
15. Visit
16. Prima Donna of Swans
17. Relations
18. Cover Me with Roses
19. Cryin' Like a Baby
20. Spanish Moss
21. Have You Seen the Unicorns

Disc 2:

1. Goodbye to My Loving You
2. October
3. Mystery
4. I Don't Want to Love You No More
5. Child Fixin' to Die (Aka Young Child)
6. Halloween Is Black as Night
7. Night of the Blues [Version 1]
8. (Tumble) In the Wind [Version 1]
9. Bull Men
10. Maria Spanish Rose
11. Singing Sailors
12. Spectre
13. Half the Distance
14. Night of the Blues [Version 2]
15. (Tumble) In the Wind [Version 2]
16. Last Month of the Year
17. Ananias
18. Borrow Love and Go
19. Washington Jail
20. Jesse James
21. In the Pines
22. On My Way to the Canaan Land

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #603347 in Music
• Released on: 2003-10-21
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Import

Customer Reviews

Beautiful music
I have recently discovered Jackson C Frank and cannot now understand why his music isn't more well known. OK, he only released the one album but what an album! This music is quite simply beautiful, inspiring, well written and well performed. He does not do anything too fancy but instead sticks to playing a good range of music that is obviously written from the heart. If you read more about his tragic life and listen to many of his lyrics it brings even more poignancy to the music.

The highlight on this album for me is Milk and Honey, which was later covered by Nick Drake. I have rarely heard such a haunting song and the lyrics are superb.

If you like the more well know artists such as Donovan or Dylan then you would be a fool not to buy this album too.

Priceless.

Cult figure posthumously given the release he deserves
The last word from a truly tragic artist, 'Blues Run the Game' is the definitive collection, comprising Frank's sole album and all the available demos from the 1970's and 1990's, along with numerous 'lost' recordings of civil war songs and originals, which have surfaced seemingly from thin air. Chilling, stark, passionate and beautifully intense, this is as authentic as it gets. Another reviewer used the term "integrity" to describe Frank; I can't think of a better one.

You couldn't make it up. Badly injured in a fire as a child, Jackson C. Frank received a sizeable insurance payment and came to England to buy a Jaguar, subsequently making a big impression on the London folk scene way before Dylan. His debut album sold well in the UK but subsequent attempts at a follow up failed, and Frank lost touch with his contemporaries. Fate then ran him up a thoroughly depressing tally of bad fortune, including but not limited to the loss of a son to Cystic Fibrosis, bouts of clinical depression, parathyroid malfunction, misdiagnosis for paranoid schizophrenia and subsequent institutionalisation, chronic poverty and, after his luck looked like it was finally coming round, being shot in the face by a stranger leaving him blind in one eye. This last disaster came after his 'rediscovery' in the early '90's by a fan called Jim Abbott who helped him recover lost royalties and record some new material, resulting in an upsurge in interest in his work. His debut album was re-issued once again, to an appreciative audience, but Frank died in 1999, aged 55. When he wrote 'Blues Run the Game' on a boat to England as a young man it was as though he somehow already knew what was coming.

Frank's work is better known through its coverage by other artists, including Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and Sandy Denny. Perhaps this release will finally redress the balance. A remarkable songwriter, a startling lyricist, and in short, a great guitarist, Frank's work sorely needs to be rescued from doomed folk obscurity.