- Born
- Died
- Birth nameFranklyn Leon Smith
- Frankie Smith was born in 1953 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for Hollywood Homicide (2003), The Specials (2000) and College Road Trip (2008). He died on March 8, 2019 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Formerly a staff writer at Philadelphia International Records in the 1970s, in 1981 Frankie Smith recorded his first single, "Double Dutch Bus," where he rapped about a funky bus where everybody's getting down. Like "Rapper's Delight" and many other rap songs that were gaining traction, the song tells a clever and self-deprecating story: He misses his bus and has to walk 15 blocks to get to work. But "Double Dutch Bus" has a secret weapon: a hook filled with a kind of pig Latin variation sung by Smith and a group of kids. The song charted at number 1 on the Billboard R&B charts for four weeks and eventually reached 30 on the pop charts that summer.
- 'Double Dutch' is a tribute to all the girls in the world, especially the girls on my block. I've been watching them for 25 years. They use their mothers' clotheslines to play the game - it's an art. It's a tribute to them - they're really good at it.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content