Testimonial – Don Wilcock
Building a career for Delta blues artists and roots musicians in general was hard enough when Michael Frank started on his odyssey four decades ago. Positioning such artists in the clutter of today’s glut of media vehicles screaming for the public’s attention is next to impossible. Michael does it with finesse and style backed by a record of success that’s second to none for a single contributor without a major corporation behind him.
He turned Honeyboy Edwards, an artist who had been at best a secondary footnote in delta blues history, into a standard bearer for the genre and finally the last man standing, creating a heritage performer who not only became a major player in the game late in his career but who presented a platform for the profiling his style of music to a mass audience in the process. Michael is a 21st century renaissance man who has both the business acumen and the artistic skill to present artists in their best light on record, on tour, in the press, and in social media with all its permutations. In today’s terminology, he creates a buzz in a genre that doesn’t even recognize the term.
He’s label owner whose 62 releases between 1978 and 2015 are a treasure trove of heritage recordings by legacy artists including: Honeyboy Edwards, Louisiana Red, Johnny Drummer, The Jelly Roll Kings, Big Jack Johnson, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Dawkins, Louis Myers, Homesick James, and Liz Mandville Greeson – a virtual who’s who of the creative geniuses who inspired headliners from Buddy Guy to Eric Clapton.
Perhaps more importantly, Michael Frank has the passion, experience, skill, knowledge and sensitivity to offer services in social media campaigns, marketing and promotion, and distribution, as well as consulting in the music business: talents it would normally require a dozen people to accomplish. Oh, and he’s a musician, too, having played harmonica on many of Honeyboy Edwards’ tours.
As if that weren’t enough, he’s just a nice guy with a great sense of humor who is fun to work with. Michael and I both received our Blues Foundation Keeping the Blues Alive awards in 2007, his for artists management and mine for print journalism. I’m proud to have worked with him and written about his artists for all the years of Earwig Music. He’s always been there for me, and he’ll be there for you, too.