Val Dane and The Spinners

From an interview with Frank Davis,
published in KPFT Radio Guide (June 1975):

Then this friend of mine got me
to learn how to play the electric guitar
because he wanted to become a star.
He was gonna become a star. There was no
two ways about it. Name of Bill Kuenstler,
and he had a made-up name: Val Dane.

Anyway, about a week later, he told me
we had a gig y'know. And I said! "Oh, gaw
damn, man. What the shit am I supposed
to do?" So I learned: Ka-tonk ka-tonk ka-tonk.

I figured I could play any song by just
knowing that. So when the weekend came
when the gig was, we rented these red
tuxedoes, sparkly and all, get on the back
of this float with Miss Houston up above
and go down to the Fat Stock show Parade.
And that was the gig. The debut. Right in
the parade ...

My eyes were just full of stars. 
I didn't know nothing. We had this
singer, guy was so incredible. The singer
had, I guess about four or five months
before, just been bitten in the forearm by a
six-foot rattlesnake. He was one of those
guys who catches snakes. Name of Grainger
Hunt, a son of a big judge in town. He's got
a scorpion named after him, a real science
nut.

He just barely lived from the snake bite.
Everyone was surprised that he lived at all.
But at any rate, his hand had no feeling at
all because it was starting to shrivel. So he
just taped this guitar pick to his hand. And
here we go. Got these red tuxedoes oh,
she's up on the top and we rolled on out to
the parade.

We did "Honky-Tonk," "Roll Over
Beethoven" and one other song: "Johnny
B. Goode." So up and down Main Street
we went. See, we didn't have to do but one
song because by the time we'd get by the
crowd on the street they wouldn't know we
could only do one song.

It was just perfect. All the time people
would be running behind the float trying to
grab the back of the drummer's seat. They
wanted to get on the back of the float.
We'd be playing rockin' music and they'd
want to dance on the back of the float.
They'd be yanking the drummer right off
the back of the float.

So, oh, the most hilarious thing was here
we are on the float, the generators are
humming, we're playing "Roll Over Bee-
thoven," and it starts to rain. I feel these
drops hitting me all over the back and I've
got this rented tux. Oh no, it's gonna
happen to me. I'm gonna be electrocuted
and I'm gonna have a bill to pay on top of
that.

So it was a beautiful, sunshiny day, I
couldn't figure out what the shit's hap-
pening. So I look up in front and here's
Granger: "Roll Over Beethoven," y'know,
and he has lost his pick and is grinding the
ends of his fingers off and he doesn't even
know it. He has no feeling there. Just
splattering blood everywhere, this rain of
blood all over and he's just singing, his
eyes arc closed and he's giving it this and
he has this nubby. bloody thing on the end
of his hand, just gushing blood all over
everything.

So I hit him on the back and said.
“Goddam. Grainger, look at your hand."

He says. "Unnnhh." pulls his shirttail
down - you know, it was cuffed -- pulls his
hand into his cuff, and ties it up . . .

Super-rare 45-rpm single by "The Frank Davis Foundation"

According to Amye McCarther, this 45 was "released on Walt Andrus' Texas Revolution label. Side A is a song called Grand Candy Young Sweet and Side B is the song Sandpiper." 
[Source: Melissa E. Noble, Friends of Frank Davis, Facebook, 16 January 2012.]

CLICK HERE to listen to this recording of "Grand Candy Young Sweet." It's as trippy as the title and Frank's label illustration suggests!

CLICK HERE to listen to the recording of the same song by the psych band Fever Tree. (Billy Gibbons, of ZZ Top fame, allegedly plays on this recording.)

"Far too original to envy"

"Frank played a harp guitar sometimes. It had extra six strings, bass strings – and he played the daddy banjo. He was far too original to envy."

—Don Sanders, 21 March 2017, Houston Folk Music Archive oral history project. Interviewed by Norie Guthrie, archivist at Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. 

[Note: Don, who was an integral part of the Houston folk scene, died last Saturday, 21 July 2018.]

Frank & Kay: "My Girl"

On the 1963 LP Look, It's Us -- which documented folk singers who performed at The Jester club in Houston -- Frank Davis and Kay Oslin recorded a haunting duet of the folk song "My Girl."

Frank's understated, weary singing effectively contrasts with Kay, whose voice just soars, beautifully.

To hear it in its entirety, CLICK HERE.

"My Girl" (not to be confused with the song of the same name by The Temptations), has a long and complicated history. Like many folk songs, it is a hybrid of more than one song, and is known by more than one title.

Folk song collector Cecil Sharp published it in 1917. 

The earliest known commercially-recorded version, under the title "In the Pines," was done by Dock Walsh in 1926. 

Bluegrass legend Bill Monroe recorded it in 1941 and again in 1952, and Lead Belly recorded it numerous times in the 1940s, under the titles "My Girl" and "Black Girl."

It has since been recorded many times, most famously by the rock band Nirvana on their MTV "Unplugged" show.

Hally Wood

Click photo to enlarge.

Hally Wood (1922-89) was a folksinger from Texas who was involved in the New York City folk scene in the 1940s. She was married at the time to John Henry Faulk, a fellow Texan who was a popular radio personality. 

Hally recorded solo albums for Elektra and Stinson in the 1950s.

In the late 1950s, she married her third husband, Dr. R.C. Stephenson, a professor of Russian literature and folklore at the University of Texas. They moved to Puerto Rico and lived there until the 1970s.

In 1976 she moved to Houston, where she met Frank Davis and associated with members of the Lomax family. She lived there until her death in 1989.

With the help of Joseph Lomax (d.1988), she privately issued an LP called Songs To Live By in 1979. (Joseph was a grandson of John Lomax, Sr. His father was John Lomax, Jr. His brother was John M. Lomax, aka John Lomax III. His uncle was Alan Lomax.)

Songs To Live By consists mostly of Hally singing folk songs without accompaniment. Two tracks are by Frank Davis. His rendition of the Lead Belly song "Old Man" features the Daddy Banjo.

Her comments below regarding Frank Davis and "Old Man" is taken from the liner notes booklet that accompanied Songs To Live By.

Click photo to enlarge.

Flyer for performance at Domy Books in Austin, 2010

Recording The 13th Floor Elevators

John M. Lomax:

In your engineering days you had a lot of contact with the 13th Floor Elevators. What did you think of them?

Frank Davis:

They made an incredible impression on me because, aahh, well Roky, his vibrance was so incredible. These people were just far out there. I thought they had instantaneous communication wiih some foreign sphere. Felt that they were really right there.

This song, "Slip Inside This House" [from Easter Everywhere]. We had been mixing it all night and all day; it's a real long, complicated song. Its got eight tracks. It was the weirdest goddam mix because of the way these people put their stuff down. They'd talk all the way through it. They'd be arguing about some of the craziest shit you ever heard. I mean it just didn't make any sense whatsoever and you'd start snapping and get back on the knobs and all of a sudden you're way out in space.

So we finished the mix, and they heard it, and Tommy Hall -- he was the writer -- just really spaced out. They didn't really talk about anything after that, after the final mix ...

So I ... Roky was there, he was the last to leave ... I said I thought this was this way and Roky said, "No man, wait just a second."

He told them [the band] to go on and he stayed and said, "C'mon over here and sit down." He just got yellow all over, this little, little thing all around the edges of his head started getting yellow.

His head was real wide and he had lots of hair, y'know. His eyes were just ... Phew! Like saucers, standing about three inches out from his head.

Yeah, so I just gave in to it right then. This happened to me on yoga one time, but it was nothing like this; this was very liquid. The whole top just started turning, and it was way up here [touches his head] and it was something not in vision.

It opened up like that, like a vortex right down into my head and he was up there looking down like that saying, "C'mon, like this."

And bong! I went out and I don't remember a thing after that for two or three days. I thought I was floating around the room. I thought I was levitating. I swore that he was levitating me. And after that I thought I could. I thought I did it once after that, too, which was a completely different scene.

Source: KPFT Radio Guide (June 1975)