|
|
|
|
Hearing fiddler Larry Franklin tearing through "Boogie Back To Texas," or playing twin fiddle parts with western swing legend Johnny Gimble on the 1987 LP Asleep At The Wheel 10, one might assume that the 34-year-old had been honing the swing style for decades. In fact, swing is just the most recent step in his stylistic evolution. "My dad's a fiddle player, and he played hoedowns, breakdowns, rags, waltzes-contest fiddle," Larry recounts. "He's 64 years old now-still farming and he still plays when he can. All I did from about age nine to 16 was enter fiddle contests. He showed me just about everything I knew back then." Did Larry win any of the competitions? "I won a lot of them," he smiles, "a whole lot of them." Franklin's hometown in northeast Texas was within striking range of numerous contests in Texas and Oklahoma, and a few in Louisiana. The biggest Texas contest is in Crockett, which carries the distinction of World Championship. "My dad has won that seven times," Larry recalls, "and I won it once, when I was 16. I was playing guitar in a rock and roll band then, too. So my dad asked me if I was gonna go with him,and I said yeah. He said, 'You ain't gonna win nothin'. You ain't picked a fiddle up in two months.' And I went down and won it. I think it kind of made him mad, so he came back and won it the next year. Kind of put me back in my place." Austin, Texas' Asleep At The Wheel recruited Larry four years ago, just in time for him to appear on two cuts of their self-titled LP "That's Your Red Wagon" and "Deep Water." Franklin had moved to Austin in 1976, as an original member of the popular Cooder Browne Band. (He wrote almost half the material on the progressive country group's debut album.) When Cooder Browne disbanded in 1981, Larry got a call from Johnny Gimble, recommending him for a spot in Asleep At The Wheel. Larry remembers, "I had just started my own group, the Larry Franklin Band, so I turned down the job. After about four years with that band, a club burned down with all our equipment in it-no insurance." When the Wheel's leader Ray Benson called again, Larry says, "I was ready to go to work then." Being part of the Wheel's "horn section," playing riffs with saxophonist Mike Francis and pedal steel player John Ely, as well as improvising over jazz chord changes, is a far cry from Larry's early fiddle training. "Hoedowns are real traditional. if they're judging you, they don't want you to vary off the melody very much. I was 21 or 22 years old before I ever tried to improvise. When I started wanting to learn how, I listened mainly to three people: Johnny Gimble, Vassar Clements, and Stephane Grappelli. It drove me crazy-hearing all this stuff I'd never tried before." Larry stresses that Texas-style contest fiddling is not bluegrass. "It's a little different," he explains. "In Texas it's more of a slow, swinging kind of feel. Bluegrass is usually pretty upbeat. I'm somewhere in the middle; I've always liked to play fast -maybe too fast sometimes for contests." Like most contest fiddlers, Larry had a secret-weapon tune. "Everyone seemed to think I had the best version of 'Don't Let Your Deal Go Down,"' he says matter-of-factly. "That was a good tune of choice. You'd play a breakdown, a waltz, and a 'tune of choice', where you could maybe improvise and do some hot licks--whereas a breakdown had to be real traditional. I won a lot of money playing that song. I also had a pretty good "Billy In The Low Ground" and "Tom And Jerry". Did Larry ever go up against Mark O'Connor in the latter's adolescent fiddle phenom days? "Oh, yeah. The first time I met Mark was at the Grand Masters in Nashville. I got runner-up, and I think he got third. I was thinking, 'Boy, this kid's really good, for any age.' I remember him asking me if I was into jazz. That was about '76 or '77, so he was still a teenager." Larry admits that he hadn't had much exposure to jazz before joining the Wheel. Of his stylistic transition, he says, "It took a little practice, but it came to me fairly easily--except I didn't have much experience playing in the saxophone keys, like Bb, Eb and Db. On fiddle that means no open strings." Franklin's solo ideas come from a variety of sources. "I like saxophone music," he says. "I've got a lot of David Sanborn albums. Blues, too. Rock and roll and blues have a lot to do with the way I play. I learned to plat the fiddle country-style, and then I applied what I learned on the guitar from rock bands and playing blues. Those licks sound real good on the fiddle." In addition to his work with the Wheel and Cooder Browne, Larry's discography includes Louis And Larry, a keepsake album he and his father recorded (now unfortunately out of print), and an upcoming CBS album by singer/ songwriter Darden Smith, produced by Ray Benson, which Larry describes as "kind of a cross between Lyle Lovett and Cajun music." The Larry Franklin Band also made an album, for the leader's own Rascal Records, available by mail from Louis Franklin, Route 2, White Right, TX 75491, for $10.00, postage included. (His collaboration with Benson, "String Of Pars," from Asleep At The Wheel 10, won a Grammy this past March for Best Country instrumental.) Larry's onstage sound comes from a Barcus-Berry 5-string electric fiddle played through a Music Man HD amplifier [out of production] with one 12" Electro-Voice speaker. "I don't use a direct box; they mike my amp," he clarifies. "The violin has a pickup in the bridge and a 1/4" output, like a regular guitar chord, instead of those little dinky chords that used to come with the stick-on pickups. When I first tried them, they'd short out, or fall off the bridge while you were playing. I bought a FRAP-for $200.00-and it was the worst one I ever had. Then I met a guy who had a Barcus-Berry at a country music convention, and I tried it for a week. Finally they gave me two fiddles, a year and a half later. I've been playing them ever since---nine years. Haven't had a bit of trouble with them. The 5-string is a German-made copy of a Stradivarius, and the extra string is a low C, which is a viola string-so it's E, A, D, G, C, high to low. I don't use the fifth string that much, but I like it on slow songs. it's almost like a cello effect. I've got several bows handed down to me from my dad; I don't know what they are. A bow will last me two or three months, and that's playing a lot." Though he doesn't use them onstage, Franklin's collection also includes several acoustic fiddles. "I've got the first full-size fiddle I started playing, which was a German copy of a Stradivarius, made in 1920-a real good fiddle. Then I have a fiddle by Red Steeley, a Texas fiddle maker. And I have a Saozer fiddle, a French violin from the 1820s. I haven't had it very long, but I'm looking forward to recording with it. On the last album I miked the Barcus-Berry fiddle acoustically. It seemed to be real easy to EQ. "My approach is still acoustic fiddle," Larry asserts. "I think it sounds acoustic, too,if you have the right amp at the right setting. I attack a little bit more when I play electric. I try to get some of the overtones. That's my rock and roll background coming out. Play loud, play tough. |
