Biography
Marion Franklin Dycus entered the world on 5 December 1939 in Hardmoney, Kentucky. Early on he showed no inclination toward songwriting as a profession, yet classmates regarded him as diligent, and by age fourteen he was already composing verses for his mother. After moving to California in 1955 he promptly enlisted in the US Air Force. There he took up the guitar and, alongside vocalist Don Gonsalez, assembled the duo Don And Frank. Modeling themselves on the Everly Brothers, they secured steady engagements across two or three states, occasionally supporting touring headliners such as Jim Reeves and Buck Owens, and for a period they appeared regularly on Spokane’s KPEG. Following his discharge in 1962 Dycus briefly tested Nashville’s songwriting scene without success, then relocated to Wichita, where he took employment with Boeing while also hosting a program on KATE. In 1967 he returned to Nashville and joined Pete Drake’s publishing operation as a staff writer. Three years later he established Empher Music with Larry Kingston and Roger Fox; the venture scored several modest successes, among them Wynn Stewart’s Top 50 entry “Paint Me A Rainbow.” In 1972 the partners sold Empher to Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, after which Dycus entered Parton’s Owpar Publishing and assumed management of the Fireside Recording Studios owned by Parton and Wagoner. At Wagoner’s urging he cut a series of skiffle sides under the name Lonesome Frank And The Kitchen Band, with Wagoner contributing backing vocals on several tracks. In 1979 Dycus traveled to Sweden to collaborate with Abba’s drummer and other local players, then came back to the United States to complete an album issued in Sweden by Sonet Records. George Strait achieved his first two Billboard chart entries in 1981 with Dycus compositions—“Unwound,” which reached number 6, and “Down And Out,” which peaked at number 16—followed in 1982 by another number-6 hit, “Marina Del Rey.” After years of declining health, Dycus underwent heart bypass surgery in 1987 and remained sidelined for more than two years. Although he initially planned to withdraw from music altogether, he launched a fresh Nashville publishing venture in 1990 and enjoyed renewed success when George Jones recorded the Dycus–Billy Yates collaborations “I Don’t Need Your Rocking Chair” and “Walls Can Fall.”
Albums
