Henry Franklin

Henry “Skipper” Franklin (born Henry Carl Franklin on October 1, 1940) is an American jazz double bassist.

Franklin played on Hugh Masekela’s 1968 number one single “Grazing in the Grass,” as well as with Masekela’s band at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. In addition, Franklin played and recorded with Gene Harris and the Three Sounds, Hampton Hawes, Freddie Hubbard, Bobbi Humphrey, Willie Bobo, Archie Shepp, O.C. Smith, Count Basie, Stevie Wonder, Al Jarreau, Curtis Amy, Teddy Edwards, and Sonny Criss. Franklin’s recording “Soft Spirit,” composed by Sanifu Al Hall Jr., was featured on the breakbeat compilation Tribe Vibes after being sampled by the group A Tribe Called Quest.

Encouraged by his father, Sammy Franklin, a jazz trumpeter and bandleader, he studied with Al McKibbon and George Morrow while listening closely to Paul Chambers and Doug Watkins.

While attending Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, he played with his first professional band, the Roy Ayers Latin Jazz Quintet. Around that time, Franklin also worked with Harold Land and Hampton Hawes. Years later, he toured Europe with Hawes and recorded five albums with him. In Los Angeles, Franklin also performed with Don Cherry and Billy Higgins.

In 1968, after a year-long East Coast tour with Willie Bobo and additional performances with Archie Shepp, Lamont Johnson, Beaver Harris, and Roswell Rudd, Hugh Masekela heard Franklin perform and invited him to join his group. Three and a half years later, the two collaborated on “Grazing in the Grass.” In 1972, Franklin released his debut album The Skipper through Black Jazz Records. Critic Tom Hull described the album as “adventurous postbop.”

Franklin continued touring internationally over the following years, working with O.C. Smith, The Three Sounds, Freddie Hubbard, and Count Basie. He also earned a gold record for his work with Stevie Wonder on Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants. Collaborating with John Carter and Bobby Bradford, Franklin produced the albums Self-Determination Music and Secrets. He also performed on five albums with Dennis Gonzales, John Purcell, and William Richardson, and played extensively with Pharoah Sanders, Joe Williams, Sonny Rollins, Bobby Hutcherson, Sonny Fortune, and Milt Jackson.

For more than a decade, until 2011, Franklin performed five nights a week at The Mission Inn in Riverside, California. In 2009, La Sierra University partnered with Franklin to present summer jazz concerts on campus. The series later expanded into the ongoing “Pierce Street Jazz” concert series, which continues to feature local and national jazz musicians performing alongside Franklin and the house trio.

Franklin has also been a regular performer at the Friday night jazz series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and at Jazz in the Pines, the annual summer festival in Idyllwild, California.

Franklin’s album Henry Franklin: JID014 was released in September 2022 as part of the Jazz Is Dead label curated by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The album received critical acclaim and won the 54th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album – Instrumental in 2023.

He also published a jazz bass method book titled Bassically Yours. Originally released in 1975 in print form, it is now available as a digital PDF. The book contains 225 tunes with melody lines and chords, including works by Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard, Cole Porter, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, McCoy Tyner, and others, along with Franklin’s own compositions.