Henry Franklin - Tribal Dance (2023 Real Gone Music Reissue Vinyl LP)

Henry Franklin - Tribal Dance | Vinyl LP - 2023 Real Gone Music Reissue (RGM-1535, gatefold, pressed at Gotta Groove Records)

• First ever vinyl reissue of Franklin’s rare 1977 Catalyst Records album, his third as a leader after the two cult Black Jazz releases, featuring many of the same LA players in a more spiritually-inclined setting.
• Recorded at Sage & Sound Studios in Hollywood, January 1977, with Sonship Theus on drums and percussion, Charles Owens on saxophones and flute, Dwight Dickerson on piano, and a front line of Jerry Rush and Al Hall Jr.
• Original gatefold artwork reproduced, pressed at Gotta Groove Records, the same plant that pressed Real Gone’s Black Jazz reissues.

Henry Franklin’s two Black Jazz albums, The Skipper and The Skipper at Home, are the records collectors know. They trade for real money and they’ve both been reissued. Tribal Dance is the one that comes next in the discography and the one almost nobody has heard. It was released in 1977 on Catalyst, a small label that also put out records by Frank Strazzeri and Irene Kral, and more or less disappeared on arrival. Originals are scarce. The music sits closer to the spiritual jazz coming out of Strata-East than to the funk of the Black Jazz sessions. Franklin’s bass is at the centre of everything, and the band around him is drawn from the same West Coast circle he’d been working with for years. Charles Owens, a Berklee graduate who started out with Buddy Rich and became one of LA’s busiest reed players, handles soprano and tenor saxophone, English horn and flute. Dwight Dickerson, a pianist influenced by Horace Silver and McCoy Tyner, provides the harmonic foundation. Jerry Rush plays trumpet and flugelhorn. Al Hall Jr. covers trombone, baritone horn and additional percussion.

The drummer is Sonship Theus, who named himself after Coltrane’s Sun Ship at sixteen and played with that kind of intensity for the rest of his life. His credits include long stints with Charles Lloyd, McCoy Tyner, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard and Pharoah Sanders. On Tribal Dance he plays drums, congas, gong and bells, and the title track gives a fair idea of what he brings: six minutes of driving rhythm that never drops below a simmer. “Eric’s Tune” stretches out over eight minutes. “Cosmos Dwellers” is the longest piece at nearly eleven and the most open, with Owens and Franklin trading space in a way that feels genuinely improvised rather than arranged. “For Penny” and “Spring Song” are gentler. “Prime Mover” closes Side B with something more uptempo. Real Gone’s 2023 reissue reproduces the original gatefold artwork and was pressed at Gotta Groove Records, the same plant they used for the Black Jazz catalogue.