Ron Franklin is an enigmatic young musician whose music is, at once, raw and polished. He’s a self-taught multi-instrumentalist and the songs he writes original songs can be evocative, plaintive and rocking. In short, Ron Franklin is one of a kind. Folk, blues, country, old timey are labels he could easily wear but chooses not to.He began his musical wanderings at the age of four when he picked up the harmonica found himself playing Leadbelly songs and Irish reels, later trying his hand at the fiddle and, later, a gut string guitar. He heard records by Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley and The Spaniels and his grandparents’ collection of Malaco, Chess and country records had a profound influence.
As a child, he never lived in one place very long, he deadpans, “I was raised mostly in a U-Haul.”
While City Lights, his debut album for Memphis International, was recorded in that city, he continues to make his home on the road, having shown up in North Carolina, East Texas, Louisiana and Chicago over the past few years. Along the way, he’s met or played with Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes, Magic Slim, Junior Wells, James Cotton, Yank Rachell, Fred Ford and numerous others who inspired him. He’s played in numerous bands, fronting The Entertainers and achieving some notoriety in the garage scene with The Natural Kicks as well as Mouserocket, South Filthy, The Tearjerkers, The Memphis Roadmasters and, briefly, Love with the late Arthur Lee. He wrote, performed and produced the score the award winning feature length documentary film Nobody and, himself, directed a documentary entitled The Man Who Loved Couch Dancing, a film about garage rock guru Monsieur Jeffrey Evans for which he also produced the soundtrack.
The album was produced by Ron (under the sly pseudonym Leroy Starr and Flapper, an homage to blues legends Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell) and recorded in Memphis at Willie Mitchell’s Royal Recording Studios with a variety of Memphis musicians and friends assisting. Ron credits the legendary Mitchell, producer of Al Green, Ann Peebles and many other greats and whom Ron calls “Pops,” for mentoring him in a sonic sense. He also learned his way around the console with help from Willie Brown, formerly a member of Stax Records act The Mad Lads and, later, a recording engineer of high repute.
The new album includes twelve tracks, nine of which were written by Ron. The other three include Chuck Berry’s “Thirty Days,” Blind Blake’s “That’ll Never Happen No More” and traditional folk/hillbilly tune called “Lula Wall.” Both as a songwriter and song picker, Ron is uniquely ecumenical.
Despite this, Ron’s music couldn’t really be called roots or blues, per se, and his appeal seems to transcend generations. At any give time his audience might include folks in their 60’s as well as those he describes as “people with all kinds of different colored hair and piercings in remarkable places.” Ron Franklin is better experience than described. City Lights should provide all one needs to draw whatever conclusions there might be to be drawn.
