Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, born Frank Devera Jackson (March 3, 1896 or 1897 – May 15, 1953),[1][2] was an African American vaudeville singer, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s.
[3] 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.
[2] 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.
Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short titled Black and Tan (1929), and with Bessie Smith in "St. Louis Blues" (1929).
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.