Blue With Black Swirl Vinyl, Limited to 500 Copies

This is Real Gone Music's blue with black swirl pressing of The Skipper, catalog number RGM-1189, limited to 500 copies. Real Gone's own store lists it as the Blue with Black Swirl Vinyl variant next to the label's standard black LP. The disc carries a reproduction of the original tan Black Jazz Records label, with Real Gone's logo and a 1972, 2021 copyright line. The audio is the remaster Mike Milchner made at Sonic Vision, and the package includes liner notes by Pat Thomas.

The Skipper was Henry Franklin's debut as a leader, issued in 1972 as the seventh release on Black Jazz Records. Keyboardist Gene Russell founded Black Jazz with Dick Schory in 1969 and produced this session; the label put out twenty albums between 1971 and 1975. Franklin, a Los Angeles-born double bassist, had already played with Hugh Masekela's band at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and on Masekela's 1968 number-one single "Grazing in the Grass."

His band here pairs trumpeter and flugelhornist Oscar Brashear with tenor and soprano saxophonist Charles Owens, alongside Bill Henderson on electric piano, Michael Carvin on drums, Kenneth Climax on guitar, and Fred Lido and Tip Jones on percussion. Franklin wrote four of the six pieces; Al Hall Jr. contributed "Theme for JoJo" and Henderson the title track. Critic Tom Hull has called the record "adventurous postbop." Real Gone also reissued Franklin's 1974 follow-up, The Skipper at Home, in the same blue and black swirl.

Tracklist

Side One

1. Outbreak
2. Plastic Creek Stomp
3. Theme for JoJo

Side Two

1. Beauty and the Electric Tub
2. Little Miss Laurie
3. The Skipper

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Last updated: 2/6/26

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Last updated: 2/6/26