Frank Melrose
American musician (1907-1941)
Franklyn Taft Melrose (November 26, 1907 – September 1, 1941) was an American jazz and blues pianist, who recorded as Kansas City Frank.
He was born in Sumner, Illinois and was the younger brother of Walter Melrose and Lester Melrose, who had set up the Melrose Brothers Music Company in Chicago, in 1918. He became one of the leading figures in the Chicago blues and jazz scene of the 1920s and 1930s.
Frank's first instrument was violin, but he later took up piano. He was strongly influenced by his brothers’ business partner, Jelly Roll Morton. In 1924, he left home and began drifting around, playing and settling for short periods in St. Louis, Kansas City and Detroit. He also played occasionally in Chicago clubs with Morton.
In 1929, his brother Lester, recorded him performing piano solos, which were released under the pseudonym of "Broadway Rastus", and in 1930. Following another trip to Kansas City, he recorded "Jelly Roll Blues" and other tunes.
“Frank Melrose” enters the record as american musician (1907-1941). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frank, Melrose and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Frank Melrose” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Frank, Melrose and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1443771. VIAF identifies the subject as 39573173. The Library of Congress control number is n00075397. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1941, 1918 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Melrose” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.