Following the death of his grandparents, and while still a teenager, Floyd began working as a clown and musician on the carnival and medicine show circuits. His circus skills are said to have included fire-eating, hypnotism and make-up artistry. He performed as a bogus Hawaiian, and specialised in nonsense talk and farmyard noises, leading to some 30 years of hoboing that would generate his frequent boasts that he never spent two nights in the same place.
He learned many types of folk music and became a mimic, effortlessly switching from humorous hillbilly ballads to deep country blues. With his self-taught harmonica technique, he was a one-man band, able to play the instrument without his hands or the need for a neck brace. While also playing guitar, he perfected a technique of manipulating the harmonica with his mouth while he sang out of the other side. He could also play harmonica with his nose and thus play two harmonicas at once, a skill he shared with blues harp players Walter Horton and Gus Cannon's partner Noah Lewis.
He began working in radio in 1932, and cut a few sides for Chess Records in 1951, the most notable of which was "Swamp Root." He cut the ultra-primitive "Rockin' Chair Daddy" for Sam Phillips' Sun Records in 1954, becoming the first white musician to record at the studio. "Rockin' Chair Daddy" sounded like a song and recording straight out of the country blues era of the 1920s, but it had just a tinge of what would eventually be called rockabilly, and one can imagine Phillips wondering what would happen if he could find a young, good looking white guy who could sing this kind of stuff -- enter Elvis.
In his 1975 book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music, author Greil Marcus presented a unique vision of America and music, and how they relate by using (as metaphors) six musicians, one of whom was Harmonica Frank.
Floyd never abandoned his archaic, medicine show-derived style, and when the folk revival hit, he found himself in demand again. He continued to perform and record occasionally right up until his death in Blanchester, OhioH, on August 7, 1984 due to complications from Type II diabetes (which had previously cost him his leg) and lung cancer.
An American original, his life linked the medicine show tradition to early rock & roll, and there are precious few who could ever make that claim.
(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & Mustrad.org)