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Frank Melrose was born Franklyn Taft Melrose on November 26, 1907 in Sumner, Illinois, the younger brother of Walter and Lester who set up the Melrose Brothers Music Company in Chicago in 1918. His first instrument was the violin, but he later took up the piano, strongly influenced by his brothers’ business partner, Jelly Roll Morton.

In 1924 Frank left home and began drifting around, playing and settling for short periods in St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit and playing occasionally in Chicago with Jelly Roll. In 1929 his brother Lester recorded him performing piano solos that were released under the pseudonym of “Broadway Rastus”.

1930 saw Melrose recording “Jelly Roll Blues” and other tunes that were released on the Brunswick Record label’s “race” series under the pseudonym of “Kansas City Frank”, and for some years were wrongly assumed to be the work of Morton. Throughout the decade he continued to play piano in small clubs and bars, either solo or as part of a band, recorded sporadically with Johnny Dodds and others while occasionally working in a factory to support his family.

Pianist Frank Melrose, one of the leading figures in the Midwest blues and jazz scene during the 1920s and 30s played his last recording session with Bud Jacobson’s Jungle Kings. On Labor Day, September 1, 1941 he was found dead in the road after apparently being killed in a fracas in a club in Hammond, Indiana.

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