Frankie Ford was adopted as a child and raised in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna, Louisiana. He began performing remarkably early—by age five he was appearing at local shows alongside entertainers such as Sophie Tucker, Ted Lewis, and Carmen Miranda. Throughout his childhood he entered and won numerous local, regional, and national vocal competitions, eventually performing on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour in New York in 1952. In high school, he played piano and sang with a group called The Syncopators. His early piano influences included Clarence “Frogman” Henry, Huey Smith, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and Professor Longhair. Ford’s first regional success came with “Cheatin’ Woman” on Ace Records, followed soon after by the song that defined his career—“Sea Cruise”—which reached #14 on the national charts in 1959 when he was just nineteen.

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Over the next few years, Ford released additional singles, including “Roberta,” “Alimony” (#97), “Time After Time” (#75), “I Want to Be Your Man,” “Danny Boy,” and “What’s Going On.” In 1960 he moved to Imperial Records, where he recorded songs such as “You Talk Too Much” (his cover of Joe Jones’ hit), “Seventeen,” “Saturday Night Fish Fry,” “Dog House,” “The Groom,” “Let Them Talk,” and “A Man Only Does.” Drafted into the Army in 1962, he joined the Special Forces and spent his service entertaining troops in Vietnam, Korea, and across the United States. His dynamic stage presence earned him the nicknames “The New Orleans Dynamo” and “The King of Swamp Pop,” and he continued performing and recording steadily until 2009.

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Reflecting on his most famous recording, Ford once remarked, “Some people have five records that sell a million each. Some sell none. I’ve had one that sold 30 million! And I’ve outlived that one record.” Frankie Ford was inducted into the Museum of the Gulf Coast Music Hall of Fame in 1998.