The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

In 1951, Frankie is the guitar player in Marcus’s band. Frankie is just a teenager playing for free food, when a man starts choking a woman in the audience. Frankie immediately plays louder and faster than anyone thinks possible. The man choking the woman is almost hypnotized by Frankie’s playing, and the girl manages to get away. Frankie runs after her, and Marcus notices that one of the strings on Frankie’s guitar had turned blue.

Music admits that Frankie saved the woman in the bar’s life. The woman was possibly Aurora. Music talks about when Frankie was born, how his mother, Carmencita, hummed Francisco Tárrega’s “Lágrima,” to Frankie so that he wouldn’t cry, lest he be heard by the raiders downstairs and murdered. Frankie’s past doesn’t seem to match the 1960s-popstar version of Frankie that people in America knew, as he was fully Americanized and without an accent by then.

Music talks about how “[e]veryone joins a band in this life” (19), and how a band doesn’t have to revolve around music. Family, friends, even an army can be part of someone’s band, but “as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up—through distance, differences, divorce, or death” (19).

Music talks about Frankie’s infancy, how he and his mother (although it’s later revealed that his real mother died in the church, and the nun took him and fled) lived alone on the outskirts of town. He was a silent baby who never cried, and the nun was desperately poor and relied on the charity of others to survive. Once Frankie heard music for the first time, specifically “Lágrima,” he cried for the first time and wouldn’t stop. Feeling desperate because she can’t calm him nor feed him, the nun threw the baby Frankie into a river. 

Clem recalls how he used to sing “with the Jordanaires, which was Elvis’s backup group” (25). One day, Elvis has a secret meeting with the army, and he’s unable to sing at his concert later that evening. Elvis’s manager, Colonel Parker, is too greedy to cancel the concert, so Colonel asks Frankie to fill in for Elvis. Frankie looks similar to Elvis and pulls it off. 

A hairless dog saves Baby Frankie from the river.

Baffa Rubio, a highly religious man, adopts Baby Frankie: “the discovery of an abandoned child was, for him, a divine act, like finding Moses in the reeds” (35). He loves and cares for the baby and names him Francisco Rubio.

Throughout Frankie’s childhood, he has trouble with his vision, and Baffa fears he may one day go blind. Noticing the child’s innate interest in music, he decides to get him lessons, thinking that at least music is a skill that doesn’t need eyesight and could earn him a living. Baffa tries to get him lessons with a music teacher at a school, but the teacher refuses him because he’s too young. Baffa goes to El Maestro and lies, telling him that Frankie is seven instead of five, in the hopes that he will agree to be his teacher.

Darlene, at 18 years old, wins a contest with some girls from church choir to sing back up for Nat King Cole during his Hollywood Bowl Performance. She meets Frankie backstage, and she thinks he’s incredibly handsome.

After the performance, the girls are taking a bus on the way to the ocean, when they see Frankie walking alongside the road. The girls beg the driver to pick him up, and he comes with them to the beach parties. She and Frankie walk off by themselves and talk. They don’t kiss, but she wants to.

She says she came to Frankie’s funeral because she always remembered that moment: “You’re never in love with anyone the way you are when you’re eighteen, on a beach, at night, with your shoes off” (49).

Music says, “Talent is a piece of God’s shadow, and under that shadow, human stories intersect” (57). He tells how Frankie “shared a story with another Francisco—Táregga, the great Spanish guitarist” (57), who was born in Frankie’s hometown of Villareal, Spain. Both men share similar tragic backgrounds, and both are/were incredibly talented guitar players and singers.

Music says, “Talent is a piece of God’s shadow, and under that shadow, human stories intersect” (57). He tells how Frankie “shared a story with another Francisco—Táregga, the great Spanish guitarist” (57), who was born in Frankie’s hometown of Villareal, Spain. Both men share similar tragic backgrounds, and both are/were incredibly talented guitar players and singers.

El Maestro doesn’t let Frankie play a guitar until the end of one entire year of lessons. Throughout that year, Frankie and El Maestro grow close. When Frankie tells his teacher that his fingers hurt from practicing so much, El Maestro says that “Music is pain” (66). He makes Frankie speak in English rather than Spanish, saying, “There is a big war going on, boy. We are all going to be speaking English or German soon” (67), and that he prefers English.

Tappy, Frankie’s agent, claims to have “discovered” him. He tells the story of a Romanian man who was in charge of paying the musical acts at a festival but was withholding the money; Frankie took the money and gave it to the family of Ritchie Valens, a young boy and musician who died in a plane crash. 

Music says that money is a mystery:

While it clearly means a great deal to humans, it seems, to me, an enormous burden. I have never held it. Never experienced its benefits. All I know is that while some of my disciples have grown quite rich, many more, in need of money, have chosen to abandon me (76).

Music thinks back to when Frankie was little, and the war in Spain was growing more violent. A highlight amidst the difficulties came when Frankie found an abandoned phonograph that a store had discarded because “recordings were considered subversive” (80).

Young Frankie keeps asking Baffa about his mother, who he believes was Baffa’s wife, and he makes up a story to satisfy the young, motherless boy. Baffa tells him that his mother died in America, and when Frankie finds a photo of Baffa and his sister and asks if it’s his mother, Baffa says yes to satiate him.