Thirty years ago, when the music writer Jim Abbott tried to track down the “lost” folk singer Jackson C Frank, he had no idea what he’d find. All he had to guide him was a tip from an old associate of Frank’s to go to a housing facility in Queens, New York, where he was told he was living. When he finally arrived there, the man he saw bore no relation to the Frank he was expecting. “All I had to go on was his album cover from 1965 when he was much younger and looked pretty dashing,” Abbott said. “This was the 90s when he was much heavier and was hobbling around looking really grouchy.”
The place Frank was living in “was populated by drug addicts and hookers and, for some reason, had this gigantic sand pit in the middle of the lobby that you had to walk around. It’s very hard to weird me out,” Abbott said. “This did.”
