Life and Career
He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, Illinois, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design.
He served slightly less than a year in the Army in 1918–1919 and rose to the rank of sergeant. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver and Freddie Keppard among others. He also performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and his Quarts Of Joy.
Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short called Black and Tan Fantasy (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927).
His recordings, such as "Fan It" (later recorded by Red Nichols and Woody Herman), are mostly filled with bawdy comedy, double entendres and hokum. Blues fans reserve a special place in their hearts for his orgasmic parodies of "How Long How Long Blues" and "It's Tight Like That", louche collaborations with Tampa Red, Georgia Tom and assorted jugbandsmen.
In 1941 he retired from show business and worked at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. He was transferred to Los Angeles, California. According to most sources, he died in the veterans hospital in 1944; Allmusic says lived in Los Angeles until 1970; however, his headstone application as a military veteran indicates that he died May 15, 1953.
Read more about this topic: Frankie Jaxon
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