Harmonica Frank Floyd born 11 October 1908

Frank Floyd, known as Harmonica Frank (October 11, 1908 – August 7, 1984) was an American blues singer, guitarist and harmonicist. He was his own best caricature. A hobo and refugee from the old Southern medicine shows who sang and played like a throwback from the 1920s, he was as colorful as they come, and a case could be made that without Frank there wouldn't have been an Elvis. 

He was born to itinerant parents in Toccopola, Mississppi, and his parents promptly separated without even giving him a proper name (he decided to call himself Frank Floyd as a teen), leaving Frank to be raised by his sharecropping grandparents. He taught himself to play harmonica when he was ten, and eventually became a pretty decent guitar player as well. 

Following the death of his grandparents, and while still a teenager, Floyd began working as a clown and musician on the carnival and medicine show circuits. His circus skills are said to have included fire-eating, hypnotism and make-up artistry.  He performed as a bogus Hawaiian, and specialised in nonsense talk and farmyard noises, leading to some 30 years of hoboing that would generate his frequent boasts that he never spent two nights in the same place. 

He learned many types of folk music and became a mimic, effortlessly switching from humorous hillbilly ballads to deep country blues. With his self-taught harmonica technique, he was a one-man band, able to play the instrument without his hands or the need for a neck brace. While also playing guitar, he perfected a technique of manipulating the harmonica with his mouth while he sang out of the other side. He could also play harmonica with his nose and thus play two harmonicas at once, a skill he shared with blues harp players Walter Horton and Gus Cannon's partner Noah Lewis. 

                                    

He began working in radio in 1932, and cut a few sides for Chess Records in 1951, the most notable of which was "Swamp Root." He cut the ultra-primitive "Rockin' Chair Daddy" for Sam Phillips' Sun Records in 1954, becoming the first white musician to record at the studio. "Rockin' Chair Daddy" sounded like a song and recording straight out of the country blues era of the 1920s, but it had just a tinge of what would eventually be called rockabilly, and one can imagine Phillips wondering what would happen if he could find a young, good looking white guy who could sing this kind of stuff -- enter Elvis. 

Harmonica Frank's songs appeared on many all-black blues compilations in the 1960s and 1970s, collectors being unable to distinguish his race. In 1972 he was "rediscovered" by Stephen C. LaVere and in the following years recorded two albums for the Adelphi and Barrelhouse labels, including a compilation of the early material. Additional full albums were recorded before his death in 1984, many of which have become available on CD, though his vintage recordings (1951–59) remain mostly out of print and unavailable aside from occasional tracks on compilations. 

In his 1975 book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music, author Greil Marcus presented a unique vision of America and music, and how they relate by using (as metaphors) six musicians, one of whom was Harmonica Frank. 

Floyd never abandoned his archaic, medicine show-derived style, and when the folk revival hit, he found himself in demand again. He continued to perform and record occasionally right up until his death in Blanchester, OhioH, on August 7, 1984 due to complications from Type II diabetes (which had previously cost him his leg) and lung cancer. 

An American original, his life linked the medicine show tradition to early rock & roll, and there are precious few who could ever make that claim. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & Mustrad.org)