The 62-year-old Bob Frank was born and raised in Memphis, where he attended East High School. He was also a cohort of Jim Dickinson and others on the city’s underground folk scene in the Sixties. After a high-profile eponymous album for Vanguard Records in 1972 went awry, Frank moved to Oakland, California, and basically retired from the record business, re-emerging with a few obscure, self-released albums earlier this decade.
The 27-year-old John Murry was raised in Tupelo, relocated to Memphis as a teenager, and made a name for himself on the local music scene via first-rate alt-country bands the Dillingers and his own John Murry Band. Murry was quickly recognized as a major talent but never lived up to his promise while in Memphis. He followed his new wife to San Francisco in 2003.
Though separated by a generation, these two musical underachievers and kindred spirits came together in California, making a mark this year with World Without End, an album of original murder ballads that received a positive notice in Rolling Stone and has garnered rave reviews, particularly, in British music magazines. This week, the duo returns home to perform songs from the album in Memphis for the first time.
Read the rest of Chris Herrington’s story about Frank and Murry in this week’s Flyer.
