⬇️ FRANK HOVINGTON ⬇️
(William Franklin Hovington a.k.a "Guitar Frank")
(3CD)
(Eagle & LeBlanc 2013: "apparently Frederica, Kent County",
Delaware)
d. June 21, 1982 at Milford Memorial Hospital in Milford,
Delaware
buried at Gibbs Memorial Gardens, Woodside, Delaware
This bluesman, who also called himself Guitar Frank, remains
largely unknown because he hated to travel. He only recorded one and
a half albums, but they're all magnificent, and that's reason enough
to take a closer look at his career. We know very little about him,
and what little we do know comes from notes written by Bruce Bastin
in 1975 when he released his only full-length album (“Lonesome Road
Blues”, Flyright), which I've used as the basis for this article.
Franklin Hovington was born on January 9, 1919 in Reading,
Pennsylvania, a town northwest of Philadelphia. He sees little of
his father, who has been working in Frederica, Delaware, 200 km
south of Reading, since 1913. Then his mother managed to move, too,
and the family ended up in Frederica.
Some of his forebears were musicians, including his grandfather who
operated in a fife and drum band, and one of his uncles played piano
and organ. But his first mentor was guitarist Adam Greenfield, from
North Carolina, where he was born in the early 1880s, and who ran a
small farm nearby where he organized Saturday night parties, of
which Hovington told Bastin: “I used to go with my father to see
Adam Greenfield play, and he was my first influence on playing
guitar and banjo. (...) I was only five or six and I loved to sit
next to him and watch his guitar and his fingers when he played. My
dad would let me go so I could stand there and watch him, and
whenever I heard he was coming to town, I'd always manage to find
out where he was playing so I could listen to that guitar.”
Greenfield plays old traditional tunes, ballads like Railroad Bill,
but also pieces soon popularized by Blind Blake and Blind Boy
Fuller.
Hovington actually started out on banjo (bought by his father in
1930, when he was eleven) and even ukulele, while hanging out with
another local musician, William Walker: “I started on banjo by
meeting this William Walker, who played banjo but also guitar. In
those days, guitars were pretty rare, and it was hard to get one
because they were so expensive. You could get a banjo for next to
nothing. That's how I first got a banjo, although I think the very
first one was a little ukulele... As for Walker, this guy must have
come from Suffolk in Virginia, and he was around for quite a few
years. He knew I had a banjo, I'd seen him play a bit, and I asked
him to show me some chords. But when he realized that I tended to
play picking with three fingers, he said: “You should get a guitar
and play like that and really make music.” ” In 1934, the year he
turned fifteen, his father bought him a guitar on which he applied
the techniques he had learned from Walker.
We then lose track of Frank Hovington, who, for no apparent reason
according to Bastin, settles in 1938 or 1939 in Alexandria, a suburb
of Washington. He only reappeared in 1960, still in Alexandria, as a
singer in Stewart Dixon's gospel quartet! At the same time, he
learned that his mentor William Walker was still alive, managed to
track him down and even performed with him. After Walker's death,
Hovington played with Gene Young until Young's death in 1971. He
also made occasional trips to Philadelphia, where he rubbed
shoulders with other artists including Blind Connie Williams, Blind
Boy Fuller and Washboard Sam. But from 1967, he also returned to
live in his native region, in Felton near Frederica, and this time
permanently.
Hovington doesn't want to make a living from his music, but his
talents as a tenor singer and guitarist have earned him regular club
appearances. That said, he's reluctant to travel because he's afraid
of losing his welfare benefits, which means he can't find any better
engagements. Fortunately, on July 5 and 6, 1975, musicologists Dick
Spottswood and Bruce Bastin recorded him at his home for what would
become the album cited in the preamble to this article, “Lonesome
Road Blues” on Flyright, reissued on CD in 2000 as “Gone With the
Wind” with five previously unreleased songs. After this record,
which is a marvel in the Piedmont Blues style, the bluesman recorded
six additional equally remarkable sides under the name Guitar Frank
on October 11, 1980 for German producer Siegfried A. Christmann,
collected on the album “Lonesome Home Blues - Living Country Blues
Vol. 8” (L+R), which he shared with James “Guitar Slim” Stephens.
Frank Hovington died on June 21, 1982 at the age of
sixty-three.