Here’s a couple of names for you… Kenny Baker and Randall Franks. Anyone who follows bluegrass knows of Kenny Baker, widely regarded as among the finest fiddlers to ever play the music, and certainly the chief exemplar of Bill Monroe’s sound. The Kentucky native spent a total of 25 years with Monroe, in a series of stints, and recorded both with Bill and on his own. Few epitomize bluegrass fiddle the way Kenny did, and he is studied and admired as much now as when he was alive and in his prime.
But how about Randall Franks – is that a familiar name? It should be. He’s been involved in bluegrass and fiddle music since he was in his teens. Randall became a Blue Grass Boy in 1984, during a time when Baker had stepped away from Monroe, and was close with both men who mentored him closely as a young fiddler. But most people know Franks from his acting career which followed, where he played Officer Randy Goode in the NBC/CBS TV series In The Heat of The Night, with Carroll O’Connor.
Randall has remained involved in fiddle music, appearing as MC each year at the Grand Master Fiddler Championship, and in a number of charitable and educational endeavors, in addition to his comedy, writing, performing, ministry, and motivational speaking.
Recently Franks has been sharing some of the material he has collected through his career online, including this latest, a telephone interview he did with Kenny Baker in 2006 for his syndicated newspaper column. Though it is, of course, only an audio recording, Randall has put together a variety of photos to accompany the wealth of information Kenny shared in their wide ranging discussion, about his life, career, and music, the various artists who had influenced him through the years, and how he approached playing the fiddle with Bill Monroe.
Since we lost Kenny Baker in 2011, it’s a voice we don’t hear much anymore, but thanks to Randall Franks, we can recall it again in this roughly 50 minute video.
Enjoy…
Many thanks to Randall Franks for sharing this publicly on video. It offers a wonderful look at a true bluegrass hero, and though the audio quality isn’t superb – recorded before digital phone technology reached today’s levels of fidelity and convenience – fans of the man will still want to listen.
Randall Franks has a good many videos of this sort online, which are available from his YouTube or Rumble page.
