photo- Michael Stewart

Rick Franklin & Tom Mindte

reviews

CD-246

Rick Franklin &
Tom Mindte
Dancing With My Baby
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Rick Franklin and Tom Mindte  – a meeting of musical minds—exciting, electrifying (but not electric), and at times just plain elegant. Drawn from a shared repertoire of way-back laid-back blues, country, ragtime, and swing, Dancing With my Baby will pack your head with images both upbeat and lowdown, from the alehouse (“You Can’t Get That Stuff Anymore”) to the slammer (“He’s in the Jailhouse Now”) to the church (“I’ll Fly Away”) to the graveyard (“Two White Horses in a Line”). Franklin’s swinging guitar style and Mindte’s note-worthy mandolin moves, plus two big voices (Franklin’s mellow and mid-range, Mindte’s all-over-the-scales from high tenor to gravelly bass), can sound sweet and straight-up (“I’m a Good Man But a Poor Man,” “Half as Much,” “Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me,” “Goodnight Irene”) or growling and gritty (“Rocks Is My Pillow,” “No Hard Times,” “Crazy About Nancy Jane”). Their instrumental communication unfailingly combines a satisfying tune sense with an accurate, insistent beat, never finer than in their co-composed instrumental “Guitar and Mandolin Rag.” And what better windup than the timeless gospel duet, “The River of Jordan.”

Both members of this dynamic duo often perform around their home base, the Maryland/DC & Virginia area, and as far afield as the UK and Australia.
Mindte, who founded The Patuxent Partners in 1975, regularly travels to yearly festivals and conventions, keeping the honest bluegrass tradition alive with evident homage to Monroe and the Stanley Brothers. Franklin is a world-traveler who imbues his eclectic musical style with a righteous feeling for the "Piedmont" blues style associated with legendary players like Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller and William Moore. Both Franklin and Mindte are prodigious musical powerhouses, here demonstrating their instrumental and vocal talents in a spectrum from rousing and humorous to mad and melancholy, as perfectly blended as fine aged whiskey.

Barbara Bamberger Scott