Upper Lake >> At just four years old, Frank Bey was singing gospel by day and listening to blues by night. After belting it out with his group, the Rising Suns, he’d retreat to his bedroom to hear the sound of the blues drifting through the walls from his older brother’s room. As the son of a gospel singer who frowned upon the popular music of the day, this was something of a rebellious act. But it was hardly a deterrent, not when Bey caught notes from a Little Richard or a Fats Domino tune.
“I knew early on that I was going to be a singer,” Bey said. “There wasn’t much doubt about that.”
Even so, gospel has had a heavy influence on Bey’s musical career. He credits his mother as his inspiration, growing up listening to her sing at home and in church. When he was a toddler, he would wriggle off the pews and join his mother as she sang in front of the congregation. He also looked to the Swanee Quintet, a gospel group out of Augusta, GA who used to visit his church and high school, and the Soul Stirrers. But at the heart of it is his mother.
He couldn’t stay with gospel forever though. By the age of 15 he was expanding his horizons, playing whatever was popular and convenient, whether it was country or rock. Around that time, Bey would run errands for his mother in downtown Millen, Georgia, where he met a man strumming the blues on his guitar day by day. Bey would sit and sing along with the man whenever he was near.
But blues didn’t stick for long. R&B and rock and roll were the popular genres at the time, and Bey couldn’t get a girlfriend playing the blues, he admitted with a laugh. Although he switched styles, his determination to sing never faltered.
He was inspired by guys like James Brown and Lloyd Price, not just musically, but because he hoped to one day achieve success, too.
“If I kept singing I could get out of Millen and Millen was a place to get out of because there wasn’t very much opportunity,” Bey said.
He got his wish. Bey’s voice has taken him all over the country and even overseas for performances in Europe. Three times now he’s been nominated by the National Blues Foundation for Soul Blues Artist of the Year. His band, the Bey Paule Band, also received a nomination for Soul Blues Band of the year.
Though Bey hasn’t performed gospel in years and he doesn’t have plans to return to the genre, he does still lean toward uplifting songs, favoring them for their positive energy. It’s the law of attraction — sending out good vibes usually brings them back around.
“If there’s a song that can do anything to uplift someone that’s the song I want to sing,” Bey said. “I feel like I’m in the arms of love all the time.”
Throughout his music career, Bey has always formed his own band, which allows him to choose those uplifting numbers. It all began at the age of four, when he started the Rising Suns with his brother and cousins. He’s been spearheading his own ventures since.
“I only like to sing songs that mean something to me,” he said. “I don’t want to do just anything.”
Bey plans to continue his adventures in singing and performing for years to come. At 70-years-old, retirement is far from his mind. “I’m like Ray Charles, I think I’ll quit when the curtains close,” he said. “If they’ve got a band over on the other side I’m going to be singing over there, too.”
But he has faced his share of trials over his long singing career. In the 1990s he fell ill, going into kidney failure in ‘99. During dialysis he was so sick he couldn’t hold his head up. And through it all, he kept playing in his own way.
“I would cluck my feet together and sing in my head. I would sing songs in my head and in my own mind I knew this wasn’t the end,” Bey said. “I did some of my best shows when I was sick on my back in bed.”
He could have quit music then — he would have had every reason to — but he could never leave behind his deep passion for singing. Music lifts him up when he’s feeling low. He finds it healing, a drug of the best kind. Whether he’s performing for a crowd of 10 or 10,000, he gets the same level of joy, simply because he’s doing what he loves. “It’s the joy in performing, that’s what keeps me going, that’s my charge,” Bey said. “The battery goes down, put me on the stage.”
Bey will be performing with saxophonist Nancy Wright at Running Creek Casino, located at 635 Hwy 20. in Upper Lake, today from 2 to 6 p.m.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
