When Frank sang John Lennon's "Imagine," he was narrating the true meaning of his entire life. Frank Bey (1946-2020) had a complicated life journey, an excellent singer, and you could find nothing in his baritone voice other than passion. The son of a gospel singer, he joined the family group, The Rising Sons, in his native Georgia as a child. Later, he moved to Philadelphia, where he worked as a driver for Otis Redding and even opened some of his shows. In the early '70s, after a short period in Montreal where he had formed the band Honey and the Bees, Frank returned to Pennsylvania to form the short-lived The Modern Mixers and finally joined the funk group Moorish Vanguard to perform on the East Coast and Canada. With them, he recorded the song "The Sunshine of Your Love" for the Country Easter Music label. James Brown, who frequented those studios, heard the song and recorded it for Polydor under the title "Sitting in the Sunshine of Your Love." This led the rest of the band to accuse Frank of selling out to Brown behind their backs, and they left him in the middle of the tour, causing Bey to abandon his music career. Later, James Brown himself acknowledged appropriating the song.
In 1996, Frank decided to sing again, and a few years later, he released his first album, "Steppin' Out," but health problems prevented him from performing to promote it. In 2007, a second album, "Blues in the Pocket," was released, and soon he moved to the Bay Area to work with guitarist Anthony Paule. With Paule, he performed for a decade and recorded three albums. In 2018, Nola Blue Records produced his comeback album as a solo artist, "Back in Business" an anthological album, whose recording process was documented in the film "All My Dues Are Paid", a recording that took six years to complete and was finally released in 2022, paying the necessary tribute to a figure and a life intertwined with blues and soul that needed to be recognized. The album, "All My Dudes Are Paid,", also through Nola Blue, was released in 2020. This posthumous album, "Peace," contains eleven songs selected from the best of his music career, and it is a gift for any soul who loves this music.