The Story of the Jelly Roll Kings

" We might not know what happens when an unstoppable force hits an unmovable object, but the Jelly Roll Kings demonstrate what happens when three unstoppable forces collide. "

By Ross Gohlke

The lineup of this year's King Biscuit Blues Festival (Oct. 9-12 in downtown Helena, Ark.) doesn't have a headliner of the stature of the late Luther Allison or Buddy Guy.

And though Frank Frost, Sam Carr and Big Jack Johnson, collectively known as the Jelly Roll Kings, aren't the oldest living bluesmen, nor the most celebrated, nor the most famous, they belong to an even nobler class - that of legendary Delta blues combos.

And in a stroke of poetic irony possible only in this territory, though all three are slated to perform at the festival, they won't be playing together. Frost and Carr take the stage Oct. 10 at 12:10 p.m., while Johnson doesn't come on until Oct. 11 at 4 p.m. Even worse, Frost and Carr's early slot means that the biggest crowds won't yet be there to see them.

Not that any of those people will realize what they're missing. The Jelly Roll Kings are lucky to even get mentioned in most blues compendiums. They garner nothing more than a footnote in Robert Palmer's seminal book about Delta music Deep Blues, where Palmer claims the age of innovation in Delta blues has passed. But the Jelly Roll Kings remain one of the last Delta blues combos still making original music. They are a solid connection to a vanishing past.

If the history of the Jelly Roll Kings flowed predictable and mighty like the river in whose cradle they came together, the band would have conquered the world by now. Instead, it is a history that meanders through swamps and out-of-the-way fishing holes, often splitting into casual detours which occasionally come together somewhere downstream. In the end it makes for a much more interesting tale, even if the ending seems tragic.

The story begins in St. Louis in the '50s, where Frost and Carr, who both grew up in the Delta, met and started playing together. A barely legal Frost was sitting in with Willie Foster's band when Carr, 10 years his senior, approached him in need of a piano player and vocalist for his band, Sam Carr and the Blues Kings. For several years they played together and backed up Sonny Boy Williamson in St. Louis.

The story becomes legendary in 1962, and not just because Frost and Carr met a younger oil truck driver (by day) and guitarist (by night) Jack Johnson for the first time in a Clarksdale juke joint. In 1962, Sun Studio's rockabilly roll having run its course, Sam Phillips' post-Sun label Phillips International was experimenting with what Phillips had started out doing - recording black blues artists from the Delta. One of the musicians he cut and released was Frost, who had since moved back to Lula, Miss. Frost brought in his favorite collaborator and friend, Sam Carr, to play drums. The pair enlisted Johnson to play guitar, like a bass.

You don't need a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology to realize the mythic proportion of this record: first of all, a Delta blues trio is practically an oxymoron; and recording for the father of rock 'n' roll. The magical outcome of the Phillips sessions is available in a CD reissue from London-based Charly Records, along with a few tracks from a 1966 session they cut on the Jewel label, again under Frost's name. (The CD is available at Shangri-La Records, 1916 Madison).

Practically speaking, the Jelly Roll Kings didn't exist until 1978. Throughout the '60s and '70s the trio traversed the Delta as Frank Frost and the Nighthawks. When they cut Rockin' the Juke Joint Down for Earwig in 1978, they took the name Jelly Roll Kings (the title of a Frost song from the Phillips release), apparently to avoid confusion with a white band called the Nighthawks. By this time the innovative Jelly Roll Kings format had solidified - Frank singing, blowing harp and playing keyboards; Big Jack singing and picking; Sam shoring it all up with a hellacious backbeat.

Since then they have drifted together and apart countless times. They didn't record again under the name Jelly Roll Kings until 1996, when Robert Palmer recorded them and produced Off Yonder Wall for Oxford, Miss.-based Fat Possum Records, proving that no matter how much time passes, Frank Frost, Sam Carr and Big Jack Johnson can still conjure the old magic.

Individually and collectively, the Jelly Roll Kings simply don't sound like anyone else. We might not know what happens when an unstoppable force hits an unmovable object, but the Jelly Roll Kings demonstrate what happens when three unstoppable forces collide. They produce unbeatable music that folds elements of country, jazz and rock 'n' roll into deep Delta blues - with effortless style and grace. As is the way with all bluesmen, they borrow heavily (what would be called plagiarism in a college classroom) from other songs. And as with all great bluesmen, they make something new from it.

The fact that all three musicians are accomplished multi-instrumentalists accounts for their musical acuity. A classic Jelly Roll technique is to synthesize the bass. What sounds like a bass on recordings is either Johnson's guitar or Frost's keyboard doing double duty. That's just one way they make three people sound like five or six. For any other combo incorporating riffs from several songs and musical styles in a single song would be called schizophrenic. The Jelly Roll Kings not only make it sound natural, it comes across as an homage to the greatest practitioners of popular music.

Today, the Jelly Roll Kings are once more no more, despite the implication in Off Yonder Wall that they might be back to their old tricks.

Johnson, 57, now has his own band, the Oilers, based out of Pennsylvania, with whom he travels better than 200 days out of the year. At 71, Carr's eyes still sparkle, and he still drums with the enthusiasm of a giddy teen-age rocker and the precision of a jazz master. Sixty-one-year-old Frank Frost's health isn't so good and his enthusiasm for playing is even worse.

With an ear to the ground you might pick up word of Carr and Frost, with a band that sometimes includes North Mississippi All-Star Luther Dickinson on guitar, playing a party or social function in their Delta neighborhood between Helena and Lula. Occasionally they play together at Delta blues festivals, and even less occasionally they make it up to Memphis.

Earlier in the summer at Clarksdale's Sunflower Blues Festival, Frost and Carr played, as Johnson and the Oilers. Some naively figured a Jelly Roll Kings reunion was inevitable. It was not to be. Indeed, after his Saturday night performance, Big Jack could be found playing in a local juke joint. Frost and Carr were not around.

With both acts again on the bill for the King Biscuit Blues Festival, we can only hope some good mojo will contrive to bring this trio back together once again. Frost's wife, Ellie Mae, has a pool hall just off the south end of Cherry Street where the festival takes place. The Jelly Roll Kings could rock that juke joint down.

Whether they come together or not, go to the King Biscuit Blues Festival. And even if you have to take an extra day off, go see Frank Frost and Sam Carr on Friday and Big Jack Johnson on Saturday. And who knows? Maybe the story ain't over after all.