Frank Howard’s face was the logo of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Night Train to Nashville exhibit and Grammy-winning album compilation that focused on the city’s R&B heritage.
Now a banker by day and a showman at night, he was the front man for the ’60s group Frank Howard and the Commanders, which recorded songs like I’m So Glad and I Feel Sorry.
He was a major voice in the Jefferson Street R&B scene, but he pretty much restricted his singing to soaring gospel songs in churches and revivals across Tennessee in the couple of decades before the exhibit lighted a spark that now has him actively participating in the city’s show band scene.
Though he has reformed The Commanders for some gigs, most of his work comes as a new member of The Valentines, another deeply rooted Music City R&B band.
The four singers in The Valentines and White Chocolate, their powerful all-white backing band, perform an average of "two-three gigs a month."
"There’s nine of us. I’m just really enjoying it," says Howard, whose personal archives of the old Jefferson Street scene – including the nights at the Del Morocco and other clubs – helped curators Michael Gray and Dan Cooper assemble the Hall of Fame exhibit.
He traces his lineage as a performer back to the time when The Jimmy Church Band was just getting started, when Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox were playing in show bands and when Jefferson Street was considered among the greatest American avenues of black music and culture.
"It was a gas," Howard says of those times.
Nowadays it’s more tame, of course. And whether as a Valentine, by himself or with The Commanders, Howard says "we very seldom play a club anymore." Country club dances, weddings, festivals and corporate outings are The Valentines’ primary outlets.
"I’m in hog heaven to be able to sing with these guys and hear this harmony and do the things together. We are a good show. We got suits. We dress the part. We look the part."
And, of course, they sing the part, delivering the harmonies and melodies the way people remember them.