Frank Brown was born in River, Kentucky, in 1922, and spent years on radio before he made a record. He started at seventeen on the Asa Martin program over WCMI in Ashland, Kentucky, and later sang tenor for Bradley Kincaid. His nickname came from Smoky Ward, a disc jockey at WPFB in Middletown, Ohio. After hearing Brown sing a falsetto “Prisoner’s Song” early one morning, Ward named him High-Low, and Brown respelled it Hylo for his first Capitol sessions.
His song “Lost to a Stranger” reached Capitol’s Ken Nelson, who offered Brown a contract to record it himself. He cut it on 7 November 1954 at Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel, with Joe Drumwright on banjo, Gordon Terry on mandolin, Howard Watts on bass and Red Taylor on fiddle, and it became his first single, with “Get Lost, You Wolf” (Capitol F3124, May 1955). After it came out, the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling gave him two half-hour spots on Saturday nights. He went on recording in Nashville about once a year. The June 1956 date, with Grady Martin on electric guitar and mandolin and Dale Potter on fiddle, produced “The Only One” and “The Prisoner’s Song” (F3554, October 1956). Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played on his session of 29 May 1957, which gave him “Stone Wall” and “Foolish Pride” (F3853).
Flatt and Scruggs then took him on as a featured act on their shows. When their sponsor, Martha White, added a second television unit, Brown put together the Timberliners to front it. With Jim Smoak on banjo, Red Rector on mandolin, Tater Tate on fiddle and Jack Phillips on bass, that band spent four days in August 1958 at Bradley’s studio in Nashville. They cut twelve songs for the Capitol album T 1168 and eight more with the Jordanaires added, and those sessions supplied the rest of his Capitol singles. The last were “Just Any Old Love” with “I’ve Waited as Long as I Can” (Capitol 4380, May 1960) and one more that September. In 1959 Brown’s band backed Earl Scruggs at the first Newport Folk Festival.
From 1961 to 1965 he recorded for Starday at its Dickerson Road studio in Nashville, with Tommy Hill producing. The first session, on 21 November 1961, used Josh Graves or Shot Jackson on dobro, Chubby Wise on fiddle and Junior Huskey on bass, and gave him “Picture in the Wallet” and “Hills of Georgia” (Starday 578). In November 1962 the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers backed him: Melvin and Ray Goins, James Roberts, and Ezra and Curly Ray Cline. That December Starday issued his remake of “The Prisoner’s Song.” Next came singles for K-Ark from 1967 to about 1970, a run of Rural Rhythm albums recorded in Akron, Ohio, and releases on smaller labels into the late 1970s. He died in 2003.
Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.
Tracklist
- 1 The Only One
- 2 The Prisoner’s Song alt version
