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Frank Stokes (December 1887 or January 1888 – September 12, 1955) was
a blues musician, songster, and blackface minstrel who is considered by
many musicologists to be the father of the Memphis blues guitar style.
Career Born in White Haven, Tennessee, two miles north of the Mississippi
state line, Frank Stokes was raised in Tutwiler, Mississippi, after the
death of his parents. Stokes learned to play guitar as a youth in Tutwiler,
and, after 1895, in Hernando, Mississippi, which was home to such African
American guitarists as Jim Jackson, Dan Sane, Elijah Avery (of Cannon's Jug
Stompers), and Robert Wilkins. By the turn of the century, at the young age
of 12, Stokes worked as a blacksmith, traveling the 25 miles to Memphis on
the weekends to sing and play guitar with Sane, with whom he developed a
long-term musical partnership. Together, they busked on the streets and in
Church's Park (now W.C. Handy Park) on Memphis' Beale Street.
