Frankie Ford

New Orleans R&B singer Frankie Ford was born on August 4, 1939 in Gretna, Louisiana. He was the adopted son of Vincent and Anna Guzzo. He studied singing and dancing as a boy and made his stage debut at age five in 1945. He performed on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour in New York City in 1952 and won many local, national, and regional vocal competitions while still a child. Frankie was a singer and piano player for the group the Syncopators during his high school years. He had a good-sized regional hit with the song "Cheatin' Woman" for Ace Records in the late 1950s, but he scored his biggest and most beloved smash with the infectiously buoyant "Sea Cruise," which peaked at #14 on the Billboard pop charts in 1959 ("Sea Cruise" has not only been used in TV commercials for such products as Coors Light Beer, Diet Coke, and Sprite, but has also been featured on the soundtracks to the films My American Cousin (1985), Stewardess School (1986) and Ski Patrol (1990)). Alas, such equally fine follow-up singles as "Danny Boy," "Alimony," and "I Wanna Be Your Man" were only modest successes. In 1962 Frankie was drafted into the US Army and entertained troops in Vietnam, Korea, and America as a member of the Special Services. He appears as himself in the excellent 1978 Alan Freed bio movie American Hot Wax (1978). Ford continued to tour and perform at various concerts, festivals, and nightclubs on a regular basis throughout for several decades. In addition, he closed the Gretna Heritage Festival every first weekend in October and appeared every year as a headliner at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2010. Frankie Ford died at age 76 on September 28, 2015 at his home in Gretna, Louisiana.