Frank Fisher was born and raised in Huntsville, Texas, where his parents operated the only African-American hospital in the city. He took up the trumpet at age twelve and played in school bands. In the oral history, he remembers summers in Galveston with relatives, singing in a youth choir at Saint James African American Methodist Church, and discrimination in the South. He majored in music at Prairie View A&M and served in the U.S. Army in Germany during the postwar occupation. He moved with his wife to California in 1947 and settled in the East Bay, where he worked for decades as an electronics systems mechanic at the Alameda Naval Air Station. He eventually moved into Parchester Village in Richmond, where he raised his children. He was active in Bay Area jazz for seven decades, playing such famous Fillmore clubs as Bop City, hotels in San Francisco's Nob Hill district, and venues in Oakland and Richmond. On one occasion, he performed with Duke Ellington's band, which he calls "about the most memorable thing that I can think of." He discusses Bay Area venues where African Americans could not perform, clubs that had separate performances for white and African-American audiences, and the musicians' union merger that helped with employment. Fisher wrote and recorded many songs such as "Ape Shape," "Obama Do Swing," and Grandpa's Thing." He performed with Del Courtney and the Oakland Raiders band and the 49ers band from 1968 to 1981, and claimed that when Lou Rawls sang the national anthem the Raiders always won. He performed with and wrote songs for the Junius Courtney Big Band until 2017, when he retired at the age of ninety-two.