Henry Franklin

Henry Franklin has been a prolific bassist for over 60 years, performing with a range of artists including Freddie Hubbard, Hampton Hawes, Dexter Gordon, Gene Harris, Doug Carn, Archie Shepp, Willie Bobo, Blue Mitchell, Al Jarreau and Hugh Masekela. With Masekela he appeared at the Monterey International Pop Festival of 1967 and The Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, which was depicted in the 2021 film, Summer of Soul. 

At the 54th NAACP Image Awards on February 25th, 2023, Henry Franklin, along with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge, took home the honors for Outstanding Jazz Album (Instrumental). 

We spoke on the phone before I finally met him in person at the the Album Release for The Art of the Trio with the Michael Carvin Experience.

Check out https://henryfranklin.com/  

and https://sprecords.com/ 

on the phone: January 2, 2021

Anders Griffen: It’s always fascinating to me, as a native New Yorker, I always like to learn about the music history of the other cities, and living out in Los Angeles for about three years, the history was way more rich than I had even a clue about at the time; it just seems endless.  

Henry Franklin: Yeah, well, we’re pretty underrated, or overshadowed by New York, one of the two. There’s quite a history here, quite a few great musicians, great players, and just not enough venues at this time. 

AG: Going back to the beginning, I guess you were always surrounded by music. Your father being a musician and you heard his band, The California Rhythm Rascals, is that right? 

HF: Yes, that’s right. Yeah, I had music all day long every day. 

AG: Because of rehearsals? Radio and records? All of the above? 

HF: Well, he had a couple rehearsals a week, and he always had guys over, you know, playing or sessioning or something like that. And, of course, when I got to be 16, 17, there was the radio all the time. We had a great jazz station at that time. I think it was called KBCA, or… KLOM at that time. So, there was always music. 

AG: By that time, when you’re a teenager, I guess you didn’t pick up the bass ’til the end of high school, but you must have already had the love inside. Music had already grabbed you. 

HF: Right. Well, my Dad started me very early at three or four years old tap dancing, which lasted about a year or so. It went from there to the piano, and then the clarinet, and saxophone. I was always taking some kind of lesson and was never really happy with my instrument until I discovered the bass and fell in love with it in high school. 

AG: I might have read about that in Steve Isoardi’s oral history, I saw you were at a jam session or something, maybe at school, and it was just a bass laying there in the corner of the room, nobody touching it, so you just picked it up and that was kind of it? 

HF: That was the beginning of a love affair. 

AG: What was the Los Angeles Police Department Junior Band? 

HF: That band was sponsored by the LAPD and they took all, I guess, the top kids, from junior high school and high school who wanted to to be in the marching band. So we played for all the events in LA, like the Rose Parade and all kind of police events when the public was invited and stuff like that. 

AG: That’s amazing… Do you know if that came from the Police Department budget? Or… 

HF: Yeah, I’m sure it had to be. It had to be.  It’s a shame they don’t have it any more. It was really enlightening. You got to meet musicians from around your age from all the different high schools and junior high schools and we would rehearse every week with the orchestra and do a couple parades a month. I did the Rose Parade two times, I think. 

AG: We talk about venues being gone, but programs like that are gone too. When I came up we still had concert bands and marching bands in school, but I don’t know how much of that there is now. 

HF: Yeah, I don’t know either. I don’t think there’s much, if any at all. They’re trying to wipe out all of the music programs all together in public schools, it seems like. 

AG: So, if you picked up the bass at the end of high school, I guess you studied pretty seriously with Al McKibbon for a couple years. I guess that was after school? 

HF: Yeah, that was a couple years after. I had a formal teacher from high school for a couple years … can’t remember his name now … So, a legitimate teacher, and he taught me the legitimate side, and I didn’t get to hang with Al until I was in my early twenties, and I would hangout with him a couple times a week and just kind of woodshed and he would show me everything about the bass that he knew and gave me pointers. He was very warm and very beautiful. Along with a couple other guys, David Dyson was a great bass player, he helped me quite a bit, and George Morrow also. 

AG: So that way you get a little deeper in to it. It sounds like, the way you describe Al McKibbon, you could really get into whatever you were interested in, is that right? Whatever you’re trying to figure out 

HF: Oh, yeah, because he had it all covered. He had the Latin side and he had the jazz side and he had the classical side too. So, he was the wealth of an encyclopedia. 

AG: I guess you were probably playing with Roy Ayers at that time? 

HF: That was the last year in high school, yeah. Roy was a little bit before that. Roy and I went to high school at the same time, not the same high school, but in the same, what they called Southern League. He started a band with a couple great players in it – Carl Burnett, drummer, and Bill Henderson, piano player, who’s played with Pharoah for years. They were all in Roy’s band, and myself. And that was from the last year in high school to about, I guess, two years after high school, about three years. Then Roy moved to New York with Herbie Mann, so that started his career off. 

AG: I guess with all the lessons you took on other instruments, that kind of helped you hit the ground running with the bass, right? 

HF: It did. You know, I was struggling and I was learning all the time. For me it was like a trial by error and everybody was cool enough to listen to my mistakes and stuff and we would just keep on playing, you know? 

AG: Typically, I would think, out of all the instruments, the bass is not one that you can just pick up and play. 

HF: It wasn’t easy and it’s still not easy. 

(laughs) 

AG: Then you were playing with Curtis Amy pretty soon. Did that overlap with Roy Ayers? 

HF: Curtis was after Roy. I was about 21 when I joined Curtis. That was really great because he was like the big jazz star in L.A. at the time, and he was always working. He always had a working band, and he liked to have young players, so, he had myself and Phil Moore, a young piano player by the name of Phil Moore, Jr. And Doug Sides was on drums. And, Ray Crawford was in the band, wonderful guitar player. And Dupree Bolton. I don’t know if you know any of these names. 

AG: Definitely Dupree Bolton and Doug Sides. I know Dupree Bolton probably from Harold Land first. His record, The Fox … 

HF: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah…  

AG: And I’ve got one Curtis Amy record that I guess came a little bit later and he’s on that too, Katanga, with Victor Gaskin on bass. 

HF: Riiight...  

AG: That must have been just after you or something, or maybe overlapping? 

HF: It was probably overlapping. Victor was, of course, a much better bass player, especially at that time. So, when they recorded, even if I was with the band, I’m sure he got Victor because he was playing better. I was still searching at the age of 21. 

AG: I got to play with Victor a little bit in the 90s on a couple of restaurant gigs. He just happened to be there. I knew him from a couple records. I was pretty green and he helped me out a little bit. Then I found him in a couple of places, including the after hours session at Small’s in New York. He helped me a lot there because it wasn’t always the most welcoming atmosphere, so it was good to see a friendly face. 

HF: Yeah, well, Victor was a great guy. I love Victor. Later we got to hang out quite a bit doing the Kool Jazz Festivals. He was playing with Cannonball and I was playing with Masekela, so we got to hang out for the whole summer together. Victor just died a couple years ago. 

AG: Yeah. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I was sorry to get the news. He had that unusual bass with the diamond shapes cut out of the sides. Do you know what I’m talking about? 

HF: I don’t remember. 

AG: Yeah, I don’t what you call that on the side of the bass right where it gets more narrow. There were these two, diamond-shaped holes cut right there. I thought it was so strange. I don’t think I ever asked him about it, but he always had that bass. 

HF: Huh. I don’t remember that. 

AG: Yeah 

HF: I remember he had a black bass. Very dark color. Is that the same one you’re talking about? 

AG: No, I don’t think so. It wasn’t black. This would have been a different bass then. 

HF: Okay. It wasn’t black, it was dark brown. Really dark. Huh. 

AG: Anyway, though, just looking back to Los Angeles, your teenage years and early 20s, I mean, it’s a completely different place, right? It sounds like there were a lot of clubs and a lot of music when you go back then.  

HF: Oh, in those days there were, I would say [more than] 30 night clubs, and everybody worked. I mean, every rhythm section person that was any good was working. I mean, four, five or six nights a week. 

AG: It just sounds like so much fun. 

HF: Yeah, man. You could leave your drums Tuesday and just leave them there ‘til the gig was over Saturday, you know? There clubs up and down every main street in Los Angeles on the east side, south side, west side, Hollywood, and in the valley too, at least 30 clubs. Jazz clubs. 

AG: And the way I always heard about it was every place was racially mixed, as I understand it – the neighborhoods, the bands, the audiences. That’s just the way it was. 

HF: Oh, yeah. That’s the way it was, yeah. Nobody thought anything about any color or anything. Black musicians, white musicians, hung out together, nothing was a big deal. 

AG: It certainly was elsewhere. I’ve heard people talk about how they tried to force integration and so forth. Like, it was a big deal at Stax Records in Memphis when they had a mixed band in the studio and all that. The musicians didn’t think anything of it, of course, but it was just different in different places. So, that’s part of the, sort of the romance and almost, like… I don’t know, it’s almost like a fairy tale to me, Los Angeles with all these clubs and life was good. 

HF: Oh, yeah. Yeah, life was good. There was no hint of anything racial. I’m sure there was, but I wasn’t aware of anything. It didn’t have an influence at all on the music or the people listening to the music. 

AG: Is it fair to say that the Watts riots or the uprising or whatever you want to call it, that this events in 1965, I believe, that changed everything for the worse? And it never really recovered, right? 

HF: Well… the Watts riots certainly didn’t help anything. Musically, I don’t think that affected the music or the musicians as much as it just affected everybody else with just the vibe of the racial tension, you know what I mean? Racial tension came more to the forefront, but it didn’t have anything to do with the musicians. They stayed the same. It was just that, even the police, I would say, changed their stripes, I guess. It was known that the violence they’d been doing, the abuse they’d been doing, it just came out more to the people that hadn’t been aware of it. 

AG: But didn’t you lose clubs as a result of that? 

HF: Oh, yeah, we lost many clubs. All the clubs on the east side of town and a few on the west side of town. Yeah, we lost a lot of clubs. But after that, that was what? ’65? Something like that? When was the Watts riots? 

AG: Yeah, ’65, I believe. August ’65?  

HF: Yeah, okay. There was still a gang of clubs left after that though. 

AG: And you just got back? You’d been based in New York for about a year working with Willie Bobo? 

HF: Yeah, that was ’65. That’s right. 

AG: He was a pretty popular guy, wasn’t he? Besides the music and the audiences, it just sounds like all the musicians kind of dug him? 

HF: Yeah, he was. He had that vibe about him. Yes, he did. 

AG: So, I just imagine you going to New York, that must’ve been a lot of exposure in more ways than one. You’re going to that city and you’re working with Willie Bobo, so everybody’s around, right? 

HF: Well, you know, first thing, that was, for every young musician in LA, that was their dream. New York, like, cats wait their turn, you know? Like, Roy went with Herbie Mann. Bobby Hutcherson went with… who’d Bobby go with? And Herbie Lewis went with somebody. To get the call, you know what I’m saying? For me, I was happy to get the call to go to New York with a big time group, and hanging out with Willie, yeah, it was… amazing, and New York City, that was amazing. I got to meet a lot of cats around Willie because he worked uptown quite a bit at Count Basie’s. And all the cats would come through there. He had Blue Mitchell in the band at one time, I met him. “Potato” Valdez, Sonny Henry(?), I got to meet all those guys, Mattie Boyd, you know, so it was… Plus you got to travel, it was a working band, so, I was elated. 

AG: Yeah. What did you guys do, the east coast? Maybe the midwest a little? 

HF: We did the east coast - DC, Jersey, Boston, everywhere around there. We did one on the west, which was LA, and that’s when I left the band. When I got home. 

AG: Was that when Hugh Masekela happened to be there and just about hired you on the spot? 

HF: Yeah, that was so great, man. Because I had put in my notice, and Willie fired me too at the same time. And in the audience, Masekela came the next night, I think it was, and he offered me a job. 

AG: Incredible 

HF: Yeah. I was kind of tired of playing Latin music and going through that. I wanted to do something else, I wanted to play. So, I said when I got back to LA I’m gonna give Willie my notice. Because I had a family and everything.  I had three young kids. But I wanted to play my music, which is jazz. 

AG: You got to do more of that with Masekela? It was closer to what you wanted to do? 

HF: No, it wasn’t closer to what I was trying to do, but it was sure more fun, I’ll tell you that. We went out there almost four years, we had a hit record, traveled around the world, made a lot of money and had a lot of groupies, and had a lot of fun. 

AG: I guess before you had the hit with “Grazing in the Grass”, you performed at the Monterey Pop Festival. How did that scene strike you at the time? Was that, like, a different world or were you kind of aware of, I don’t know, had you seen much of the hippie thing or whatever? 

HF: No, that was completely different to me, man. It was… (laughs) It was waaay different for me. I was listening to Trane and Miles and Monk, and I come to this festival, man, with millions of people, and Otis Redding and Janis Joplin and…  who's the guitar player?...  

AG: Jimi Hendrix? 

HF: Jimi Hendrix! And the people are going mad and everybody’s getting high and smoking weed. Some people got clothes off. It’s just a whole different scene. And then, being with Masekela, he was into that. He loved it. So, I started listening, I said, Wow! These guys are really… Otis Redding is a monster, you know? So, was Jimi. And Janis can sing the blues, you know, so… I got to meet all of them, but it took me a while to really absorb who they really were and to appreciate who they were. I guess that was the beginning of it. 

AG: Otis Redding… I think that was a different world for him and them Memphis cats too. Like landing on another planet, and then he was only around for another six months before his plane crash, I think. 

HF: Yeah, right, right. You know he was the only band that had suits on. They all had suits on, you know? So, they were coming from somewhere else too, but people loved them. 

AG: Oh, yeah. Because you were probably wearing a suit right up until about Hugh Masekela, right? 

HF: Yes, we were. I think everybody was in those days. Masekela was the first guy, I think, to stop the chain of musicians wearing suits. He came with the casual dress. And then, like on the jazz festival, the next thing you know we see Cannonball, he would be casual. Miles, I don’t know if that did it for Miles, but - and they were good friends too, Masekela and Miles, so, it may have. He was one of the first. He was the innovator of getting out of that suit.  

AG: I’m curious… Please bear with me, I’m trying to figure out what I want to ask you. I’m thinking of the hippie scene and “make love not war” and all that. I guess Malcolm X was already gone when you went to Monterey, and this was after Watts and everything…  I’m wondering if there was any feeling of common purpose with that counterculture movement that was at Monterey.  I’m not asking the question very well, but…  I guess you were a supporter to whatever degree of Malcolm before and Doctor Martin Luther King still, and the Black Panther Party was up and running by then and they were starting to circulate. So, all that activity seems completely different tfrom the hippie thing, but I don’t know. Did they relate in any way? Maybe it’s kind of an abstract question, but it just occurred to me. 

HF: Yeah, well, the people up at Monterey, they were just talking about love, love, love. So they accepted everything that was positive in that direction. I was heavy into Malcolm, and I guess they’re related because Malcolm wanted equal rights for sure. In the end he wanted equal rights. So, I’m sure there must have been some sort of correlation there. If that answers that at all. 

AG: I’m sort of just starting to try and wrap my around some of this, because I was born in 1973, and… 

HF: Ohhh… 

AG: for me, it seems lie, the window of opportunity for change was always kind of in the rear view mirror, you know. I never knew what that was like. But then this year with the protests and stuff, I’ve been kind of wondering if that window is opening again. It’s interesting talking to people remember the 60s and 70s, if you can relate these two different times, and if it does feel like there’s an opportunity again. 

HF: Yeah, I see it happening again. Yeah. Because if you look out on the lines of people that were there for George Floyd and all the others, it’s not an all-Black crowd. Everybody’s there. 

AG: I think it’s different because now just about everybody’s got a video camera in their pocket with their cell phones. If there were people that were unaware before, or didn’t want to see it, you couldn’t miss it now. A lot of people have been exposed to what’s been going on for hundreds of years. 

HF: Exactly. Before you could get beat up, spit on, or knocked in the head, and there were no cameras, so it was your word against theirs, even though you’re all bloody and stuff, they’re still gonna take their word for it. Now that there are cameras, you know, it’s a little better anyway. 

AG: Going back to the music, I guess that “Grazing in the Grass” was just the year after Monterey, so, that must have been quite a ride. Did that change things? Things must have already been pretty good, but even better after that single? 

HF: Oh, yeah, man. Like the expression says, moving on up. We moved on up. They put us from coach to first class on everything. From having a cab pick us up and our equipment at the airport, it was two limousines, one for the guys and one for the instruments. Moving on up to better hotels and stuff. And we did better gigs, more concerts. We did Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall. It was a wonderful ride. And then about a year after (laughs) it took about a year because it was big for a long time - then we went back to coach and back to cabs again. Because we never did get that second hit. You gotta have that second hit to stay up there, you know? I was 25, 26, 27,… on top of the world, man. I know I was. Amazing, you know. 

AG: So, that’s getting into the late 60s and you still have those clubs like Memory Lane, the Purple Orchid, and the It Club is there, right? 

HF: Yes. Along with a gang of other ones. 

AG: And then it must have not been too long before you met Doug Carn and Michael Carvin. 

HF: I met them in ’70. Separately. Can’t remember how I met Michael. But we became friends right away, and started doing a few gigs around town together and then he moved into my house. He needed a place to stay, so he moved into my place, so we really became great friends and practiced every day together and played together. Then I got a call to go with Hampton Hawes, and Hamp needed a drummer, so of course I recommended Michael and we went on from there. 

Doug was sometime between meeting Michael and going to Europe with Hamp. 

AG: I heard a little bit about that trip with Hampton Hawes because I know it had quite an effect on Carvin, maybe both of you - you’re talking about wanting to play your music and play jazz; I know that’s what it did for Carvin. 

HF: Oh, yeah. Same with me. 

AG: Now you get to really play, right? 

HF: Oh, yeah. Hamp was very loose, he wanted us to express ourselves, and he wanted the band to be loose, and that’s what it was. He picked the right guys. That was my first time in Europe and I think Michael’s too. So, that was very intriguing, you know, ‘cause we worked over there for three months. 

We went to the Montreux Jazz Festival, we recorded an album there. We went to Denmark and recorded an album at the Monmarte - I think two albums came out of that one. 

AG: Is that where you recorded with Dexter Gordon? 

HF: Yes. And playing with Hamp was very prestigious because Hamp was the man, you know? He knew all the musicians and all the musicians loved him and appreciated him so we got to meet a lot of guys through Hamp. 

AG: You got to go in somebody’s place, right? Was it Leroy Vinnegar? 

HF: Leroy called me and asked me if I wanted to go. He didn’t want to be gone for three months, and Leroy didn’t want to be on those trains, going back and forth from country to country, either. But I’m a young Buck, I said, “sure, I wanna go.” So that’s how I met Hamp. 

AG: So, then, was Doug your introduction to the Black Jazz label? 

HF: No, I was playing with Gene Russell. We had a trio, or, Gene had a trio. I’d known Gene before Doug or Michael. 

AG: Who played drums in the trio? Was it Carl Burnett? 

HF: No, his name was Steve Clover. He now lives in Belgium. That’s Gene Russell’s original trio. 

AG: How exactly did The Skipper album come about? 

HF: I kept telling Gene I wanted to record my band, because I had a band at that time and we were working around LA quite a bit, as a matter of fact. So, Gene said, “Sure!” So, that’s how it came about. I got my favorite guys that I’d been working with for a year or so. 

AG: Your buddy Bill Henderson going all the way back to high school ,right? 

HF: We go back before that. We went to church together. (Laughs)  

AG: Your whole life! 

HF: Yup. We sure miss him too. 

AG: It was on The Skipper record too that you guys adopted your other names? Or were you already using Nyimbo and Thabo? 

HF: Yeah, we’d been using them. That’s probably the first record that we could put them on. That was the first record I was on - except for Masekela’s stuff and Gene’s record. It was fashionable at that time too. 

AG: Where did the names come from? 

HF: Well, I know where mine came from. Mine came from Ron Karenga. I studied Swahili in one of his classes and he asked me what did I do. I told him I was a bass player. He said, “Nyimbo 

That means “low music.” That’s your name. I said, “okay, thank you very much.”  

AG: Cool. And on the album, Bill’s got a long name… 

HF: [Umoya] Kemang Sunduza? 

AG: Yeah. 

HF: Yeah, he got that from Masekela. Masekela gave him that name. 

AG: You got him in there with Masekela? 

HF: Yes, I did. 

AG: Man, I gotta just say, I love that record The Skipper. I know a lot of people do. I think I got it, actually, off a blog, like, twenty years ago. You know, they had these blogs where people would talk about different music and they would put up some kind of illegal upload, however they did it, and I just wanted to hear it. I was definitely aware of Carvin at that time, though it was before I met him. I knew Bill Henderson from some Pharoah Sanders work, and I was ware of Oscar Brashear. But then the first thing that made me keep listening to it was that all the pieces change it up; it’s not in one vein or whatever. And then my favorite, actually, was always Al Hall, Jr’s piece, “Theme for Jojo.” For me, it was really evocative of, as a native New Yorker, the city, kind of after hours. [It’s late, there’s still things happening, but not too many people on the street.] I just love that vibe. 

HF: Yeah, that was beautiful. That was a great tune. Yes. 

AG: When did you start working with Gene Harris and The Three Sounds? Maybe ’69 or so? 

HF: No, I started about ’73. Yeah, that was around ’73. 

AG: So, how did that come about? You spent a few years with him, right? 

HF: Well, Andy Simpkins left Gene, and Bill Dowdy, you know, his original trio. Bill Dowdy was replaced by Carl Burnett. So Carl got me on the gig. 

AG: I’m sure you played all kinds of places, but I know you played the It Club. I’m kind of curious about that scene, because I hear about these clusters of clubs and all these opportunities and it’s like more of that fairy tale world before I was born. The It Club just has this vibe that’s still resonating today. 

HF: Oh, yeah. It Club was a great, great club. A great jazz club. It was owned by John T. McClain. He was a very well-to-do man - maybe dubious means, or who knows - but he was cool. He had the top music. I saw Coltrane there, Monk there, Horace Silver.  Everybody came through there. That was my regular stop. It was in the neighborhood. Right on Washington Boulevard. 

AG: Oh, close to home. 

HF: Five minutes away. 

AG: Were you seeing those kinds of people before you went to New York? Was that the spot all through the 60s for you? 

HF: Oh, let’s see…. Yes. And down the street, the Purple Orchid, there was another one. That was 200 yards down the street. And another 200 yards the other way was the Parisian Room, which is a very famous club for jazz. And in between those two was another club called… Earl Bostic’s. He had a club. And if you go over, down to Adams Boulevard, which is about half a mile, there’ll be the Intermission Club and there would be Dynamite Jackson’s. And across the street from that was the Le Grande Theater. So, there’s six, seven - plus there was another theater right across from the It Club that had jazz from 2 to 6 in the morning on weekends. I can’t remember the name of that one. That was the Le Grand Theater. We had a lot of after hours clubs too. 

AG: Did you play at after hours places after the gig? 

HF: Sure, if I wasn’t working. I would go in and play a couple tunes, you know, everybody would do that. 

AG: Yeah. And then, when you weren’t working, did you go to these places to see other people anyway? Were you just out all week? 

HF: Yeah, but I was always working six nights a week anyway. Curtis Amy liked to work a lot, so we worked quite a bit with Curtis. But we’d always find time to go hear, you know, who’s in town. Sure. 

... the interview continues and this site will be updated with its entirety