Frank Lowe (June 24, 1943 – September 19, 2003) was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist and composer.
Born and brought up in Memphis, Tennessee, Lowe took up the tenor saxophone at the age of 12. As an adult he moved to San Francisco, where he met Ornette Coleman. Coleman suggested Lowe visit to New York, which Lowe did, and he began playing with Sun Ra and then Alice Coltrane, with whom he recorded in 1971. Unusually for the jazz culture at the time, Lowe had had no extended apprenticeship or slow paying-of-dues: one moment he was an amateur, and the next he was playing with the late John Coltrane's rhythm section. With Alice Coltrane he recorded World Galaxy in 1971.
Lowe began recording with his own group in 1973, with his album Black Beings, on ESP-Disk.
Lowe was a tenor saxophonist who was extremely influenced by the first and second waves of free jazz throughout the 1960s. His composition "Spirits in the Field" was performed on Arthur Blythe's 1977 album The Grip.
Sir Frank Budge Lowe is a pioneer of the advertising agency. He first rose to fame running Collett Dickenson Pearce, which he built into one of the best known agencies in the United Kingdom. In 1981, he started Lowe Howard-Spink, which eventually became Lowe & Partners Worldwide. In 1979 Lowe arranged sponsorship of the Queen's Club Championships which became known as the Stella Artois tournament, an arrangement that lasted almost 30 years. He became founder and president.
In the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours Lowe was knighted for services to charity and advertising, allegedly less than a year after donating £2m to the country's first City Academy, Capital City Academy, in North West London.
He quit his eponymous agency in 2003, becoming its chairman emeritus, after falling out with parent Interpublic who had acquired Lowe Worldwide in 1990.
After fulfilling a two-year non-compete clause, Lowe founded the Red Brick Road integrated agency, taking its name from the route that Dorothy didn't follow in the Wizard of Oz. He launched by poaching Tesco's £50m advertising account from Lowe Worldwide. Other clients include Gala Coral, Sky One, Heineken and Olympus.