Frank Hamilton (born August 3, 1934) is an American folk musician, collector of folk songs, and educator. He co-founded the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, Illinois in 1957. As a performer, he has recorded for several labels, including Folkways Records. He was a member of the folk group The Weavers in the early 1960s, and appeared at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959. He was the house musician – playing guitar and other folk instruments – for Chicago's Gate of Horn, the nation's first folk music nightclub. After many years of teaching, playing, and singing in California he married a third time, and with his wife relocated to Atlanta, where he performs on banjo, guitar (many styles, including jazz), ukulele, voice, and other instruments and co-founded the Frank Hamilton School in 2015.
Early days
Hamilton was an only child. His father, Frank Strawn Hamilton, died before his son's birth; he had been a California socialist philosopher, genius street-corner orator, and mentor to Jack London. His mother, Judith Bley Strawn Hamilton, then married Phil Street, who had been a good friend of Hamilton's father; he encouraged his stepson's songwriting. That marriage ended when Frank was 12, and he never saw Street again. Classical music was what Hamilton, aka Strawn-Hamilton, first heard: he listened as his mother taught classical piano in their Los Angeles home. His mother – who changed her name from Gladys Antoinette to Judith after seeing the actress Judith Anderson perform – supplemented her income as a dance accompanist. As a teenager Hamilton developed an interest in the labor movement, playing jazz trombone with Local 47 at Club 47, and also with the Los Angeles City College jazz band. He was especially influenced by Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker, and learning guitar, studying jazz guitar with Sam Surace. He began learning and collecting folk songs, with a special interest in the music of the American South; he spent much of the late 1940s and early 1950s traveling there, performing in bars and on street corners. He returned to Los Angeles in 1953, and with Jack Elliott and Guy Carawan formed The Dusty Road Boys, who toured the Midwest. At Will Geer's artist colony in Topanga, California. he played with Woody Guthrie; he also met Bess Lomax Hawes there, absorbing her teaching methods.
Chicago Old Town School of Folk Music
In 1956, at the Gate of Horn folksong nightclub in Oak Park, Illinois, Hamilton met Win Stracke, who took an interest in his teaching career. In Dawn Greening's dining room in Oak Park, Hamilton began teaching a group of 15 instrumentalists. In 1957 Hamilton, Stracke and Greening recruited teachers and an organizer, rented a space, and founded the Old Town School of Folk Music. Hamilton taught guitar and banjo and served as unofficial dean. Several hundred prospective students, performers, and educators attended the first session, and famous singers and folklorists – without compensation – began performing during the Second Half. Among them were Pete Seeger, Odetta, Studs Terkel, Doc Watson, Mahalia Jackson, Bill Monroe, the Weavers, and Jean Ritchie. Second Half, which follows the class lessons, is essential to the Old Town School method: both teachers and students sing and play together at their own level, and especially talented men and women are invited to perform. The School continues to promote the spontaneity, playful joyousness, improvisation, personal relationships, and progressive ideals which are hallmarks of Hamilton's teaching.