He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design. He served slightly less than a year in the United States Army in 1918–1919 and rose to the rank of sergeant. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver, Freddie Keppard and others. He performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s, he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, titled Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and His Quarts of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short titled Black and Tan (1929), and with Bessie Smith in "St. Louis Blues" (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927).
In 1941 he retired from show business and worked at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. He was transferred to Los Angeles. According to most sources, he died in the veterans hospital in 1944; Allmusic states he lived in Los Angeles until 1970. However, an application for a headstone as a military veteran, in the name of Frank Devera Jackson, has been suggested by writer Brian Berger as referring to him; it indicates that he died on May 15, 1953.
"If this song's too hot, go out and buy yourself a five cent fan." - Frankie Jaxon, Fan It.
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By Scott Yanow
Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon was an eccentric singer and a mysterious figure who disappeared after the mid-'40s. Called "Half Pint" due to being 5'2", Jaxon (who was an orphan) grew up in Kansas City. At 15 he began singing in variety shows and at clubs. He toured with a theatrical troupe in Texas and Oklahoma, forming a song and dance team with Miss Gallie De Gaston that did well in vaudeville during 1912-1924. When he was 21, Jaxon began working regularly in Atlantic City (usually the Paradise Café) in the summer and the Sunset Café in Chicago in the winter. An expert at staging shows, Half Pint helped Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters (among others) put on their productions. Jaxon, who also worked as a female impersonator, a pianist-singer, and a saxophonist, was mostly in Chicago during 1927-1941, a period when he made many recordings. In 1930 he formed the Quarts of Joy and he often appeared on the radio in the '30s. Jaxon used his best-known composition "Fan It" (which would later be recorded by Woody Herman) as a trademark song. Although still popular, Jaxon dropped out of music altogether in 1941, working for the government in Washington D.C. In 1944 he moved to Los Angeles and largely disappeared, never to be heard from again by the musical world. Half Pint Jaxon's recordings as a leader (which date from 1926-1940) include such sidemen as washboardist Jasper Taylor, pianist Georgia Tom Dorsey, banjoist Ikey Robinson, cornetist Punch Miller, the Harlem Hamfats (1937-1938), clarinetist Barney Bigard, pianist Lil Armstrong, and trumpeter Henry "Red" Allen.