Mike Franklin sang tenor for the Melody Boys Quartet from 1987-2004 and at several other points since. He offers first-hand insight into the personalities and work ethic that ensured his era of the group preserved its legendary status for a new generation.
Show Notes
Gerald Williams’ autobiography: Mighty Lot of Singin’
Melody Boys at Memphis Quartet Show 2018
Transcript
Lightly edited for clarity.
Daniel J. Mount
Welcome to Southern Gospel Journal. My name is Daniel Mount, and this morning I have the privilege of talking with Mike Franklin. How are you this morning?
Mike Franklin
I’m tickled to be here, Daniel. Thank you for having me.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you. Thank you so much. I would love to start this call, if you would, by talking about your background, both your testimony of how you became a Christian and how you came to have an interest in Southern Gospel music.
Mike Franklin
Well, I became a Christian at the age of ten, and it could be a very comical story. I grew up in a very, very rural setting in central Mississippi. In fact, when my wife started dating me, they kidded her about dating a Rankin County redneck.
My mother sewed most of the clothes that my sisters and I wore, and even my dad. And so when I was ten, my mother bought me a seersucker suit from Sears. It was specifically bought to wear on Easter Sunday morning.
Daniel J. Mount
Mm-hmm.
Mike Franklin
And I was so proud of that suit, and I wanted to wear it again on Sunday night. She did not want me to because she knew Sunday nights were a little less casual, and I promised her we wouldn’t be doing any kind of horseplay or anything like that.
Well, all the boys were outside in the yard before church started, and the preacher’s son came up behind me running, hit me on the shoulder, and said, “Tag, you’re it.” Well, you know, of course I had to chase him. I mean, I was tagged. I was it. And I had on my slick Sunday shoes and I had almost caught him. I could almost tag him. And he turned, and I tried to turn, and I had on my slick shoes and stuff, and I went down and got grass stains all over my brand-new seersucker suit from Sears.
And man, I was too scared to go and sit up with my family that Sunday night in church. We usually sat about, I don’t know, four or five rows from the front. This is a small country church. But I waited till just before they closed the door, and I slipped in and sat on the back row.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah.
Mike Franklin
And I was raised in a Christian home. We had devotions every night. We studied our Sunday school lessons. We did Bible drills. We were there for every service. But at 10, up until then, I didn’t pay attention to much in the service. I was counting ceiling tiles, things like that.
But that night, just due to the fact that I was not sitting with my family and I was scared out of my wits, I was listening to the preacher. I was listening to that sermon.
And everything that I had ever learned, every Bible school lesson, every Sunday school lesson, everything about the blood, the cross, forgiveness, my sinful state, which I was very aware of that evening, all came together. It fit together like a puzzle. And I realized that I needed Christ in my life.
And I gave my heart and life to Christ that evening. So Easter Sunday is always very special to me. But that is how I became a Christian. Nothing like a little disobedience to bring you to Christ! But my mother was a musician and a singer. She was an alto singer and played the piano. And she was quite serious that her son and her daughter were going to be musicians and singers, whether we wanted to or not.
Well, I had always loved music. I had grown up sitting beside my mother in choir. So my ear just naturally went to that alto or male tenor in a quartet part. Thankfully I had the voice for it.
I grew up learning to play a little of this and a little of that. My sister also learned to sing some parts. My mother would volunteer us to sing specials. It would be a trio, my mother, my sister, and I. And if anything had a grand opening anywhere, she would show up and we would sing. I would play the guitar, my sister would play the tambourine, and we would sing. So she had us performing when we didn’t, and she would sew our outfits. So that’s the background of music.
But we would have local groups come, and when I was a young teenager, my mom took me to see my first professional group, and it was the Thrasher Brothers. Man, was that ever controlled chaos in that auditorium, downtown Jackson, Mississippi, at the municipal auditorium. I could not even keep my eyes on everything going on on that stage, if you are familiar with what the Thrasher Brothers did. I mean, some of them, to open the concert, would come up the aisle from the back, and then they would come in from both sides.
Anyway, from then on I wanted to be in a gospel quartet. The Air Force moved me to Arkansas. I kept inquiring about music groups, and somebody said, “Well, we have the Melody Boys.” And I’d never heard of the Melody Boys. Somebody gave me the phone number to Gerald Williams. And I called that number, and I hear this, “Hello.”
Anyway, Gerald was just very, he is the epitome of a gentleman, a Southern gentleman. We set up an interview.
He didn’t need a tenor singer right then. He said, “But chances are I’ll need one before too long.” And he did.
In the meantime, I had joined a trio with Jonathan Sawrie. It was Jonathan Sawrie, Chris Bennett, and myself.
Daniel J. Mount
Homeward Bound? Yeah.
Mike Franklin
Gerald knew Jonathan already because Jonathan had sung with his family band, a family music group. Jonathan’s just a very talented young man.
But eventually Jonathan and I went to sing with the Melody Boys at the same time.
Daniel J. Mount
Did you make any recordings with Homeward Bound, that trio?
Mike Franklin
No. No, we never did.
Daniel J. Mount
Okay. So I couldn’t find anything recorded or video. Probably there’s not much people could track down from those days, I suppose, to hear.
So had there been a bit of a hiatus in the Melody Boys and then it kind of came back when Homeward Bound and you joined with what Gerald was doing and kind of turned that into the Melody Boys? Is that kinda how all that played out, or did it go really straight from there was an earlier lineup of the Melody Boys and then you and Jonathan joined at the same time?
Mike Franklin
I’m not real sure what had happened.
There may have been. That’s been a long time ago, Daniel. But I really don’t remember all the details in that. But he completely reformed the group. He was the only member that was left at that moment when he reformed.
Daniel J. Mount
No problem. No problem.
And then Doug Kramer joined before too long, and then you, Jonathan, Doug, and Gerald sing together as the same lineup for a good long stretch, for like over a decade, if I’m not mistaken.
Mike Franklin
Yes, for twelve years.
Daniel J. Mount
Twelve years. So I think this would be good, if you don’t mind, to kind of take a little detour in your story and talk about just the general overview of the history of the Melody Boys, their eighty-year run, just some of the high points you remember off the top of your head. You don’t need to go in great detail. I would encourage anybody who wants to go into more detail, Gerald Williams has an autobiography called Mighty Lot of Singin’.
And it’s still in print. You can go on Amazon and get it. There’s even a Kindle version if you’re into reading it on your Kindle. So there’s definitely where people can go a lot more deep on this. But if you don’t mind sharing just a little of the general, what you remember of the highlights of the general history of the group.
Mike Franklin
Well, Jonathan and I were both still in our… Well, Jonathan is seven years younger than I am, so even though his experience level was deeper than mine, even though he was much younger…
That first recording we did after Gerald reformed, if I’m remembering correctly, was with Eddie Crook, or maybe with Johnny Minick. I can’t remember now, but it was a great experience. I had recorded three recordings with some quartet that I had been with in Mississippi, but had not been on a level in a studio in Nashville. And we were just kind of overwhelmed. So that was a highlight, the first recording that we made after the Melody Boys reformed. And I think we were not expecting the welcome that we received from folks, because we did. The acceptance, I guess.
We had a very strong rehearsal routine.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. Makes a difference.
Mike Franklin
It was a very strong rehearsal routine, and even after we were full-time, we kept up a strong rehearsal routine. And it did make a difference.
And I would attribute that to Jonathan.
You know, I hear that old adage ringing in my head right now. You don’t practice till you get it right, you practice till you can’t get it wrong. That was what we wanted.
And Gerald always reminded us what Joe Roper had told him. He said, “It may be four parts, but it needs to sound like it’s coming out of one mouth.” And so those were our goals.
Okay, so other highlights. I guess, you know, when we stopped getting invited to be warm-up groups and we started getting invited to be a main group, when we started appearing again on the main stage. Yeah, of course those are expected highlights.
But we did an annual appearance here in Arkansas that was very well attended, and to me that was where I was most grateful for the attendance of a home crowd. I don’t know, the most complimentary is your home crowd when they continue to support.
There are nights… when I say highlights are different things… We sang on the main stage one Saturday night, and on Sunday afternoon we sang at an outdoor event to seven people because of a storm. There was a huge, it was wind and lightning and a pour. It just poured down. So seven people stayed under umbrellas and tarpaulins.
And the promoter said, “Nope, you’ve been paid, you’re gonna sing.” So we sang a program in the midst of the storm to seven people. That was a highlight. It is. There’s some lowlights always as well. Bus breakdowns.
We’ve had a few reunions over the years that are always a highlight.
Daniel J. Mount
There was one at the 2018 Memphis Quartet Show that was filmed and is on YouTube.
And there’s definitely some great footage in the lower-resolution cameras from the older days. But that’s high definition, and I’d encourage anybody who is new to the Melody Boys music or hasn’t heard you all in a while to check that video out because it’s nice, crisp, current camera quality and all that. That’s one I watched in preparation for this.
Mike Franklin
Yeah. I will say our first West Coast tour that we ever took, that was a highlight because we were not expecting the welcome. We sold everything that we had on the bus and had to have products shipped out to us on that very first tour out west. And we were just not prepared for that. So I don’t think we were prepared that our music had, by radio or music store, reached that far yet, but evidently it had. And so we did a West Coast tour for the next fifteen years, and the last few years we were doing two a year. And I have some great memories out there.
Daniel J. Mount
You mentioned Jonathan loving to practice, and I don’t know if I ever talked to him about it. Everything I can tell, it seems like he loved the Statesmen era and loved the Statesmen. And I wonder if he was inspired a little with a Statesmen work ethic because they practiced as much as anybody in the fifties and sixties. Hovie really had them practicing a lot, and it made a difference in their sound too.
Mike Franklin
I think that probably was a model for him, as well as the old Melody Boys, who also followed that same model of practice. And of course they practiced in a much tighter form of transportation, and so practice could happen going down the road all the time as well.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah, that’s true.
So there are different formats for interviews. There’s a print magazine article and a text piece and that kind of thing. Within the podcast format, one thing that I think is a strength that works better here than it does in some others is, I would love, if you wouldn’t mind, to talk for a few minutes just so you can share the personalities and favorite memories, that kind of thing, of several of the longtime members of the group. You know, we talked about that long-running lineup with you, Jonathan, Doug Kramer, and Gerald Williams. And then Doug left and Jeremy Raines was there for a good while. If you wouldn’t mind, if you can give the listeners just a sense of feeling of what the different members in the group in that era were like.
Mike Franklin
Well, so first and foremost, let me say that I always felt surrounded by talented men and was constantly challenged to do better musically by their talent.
So Gerald, being older and wiser than the rest of us, and having experienced most of the things the rest of us were starting to experience for the first time, he had already had those experiences. And I think he enjoyed seeing all these things come about again and seeing the rest of us. I think he just enjoyed watching that come about again from a different perspective.
Patience. Gerald, he could be very… For instance, we had a fender bender in Phoenix one time. He was standing up washing his dishes at the sink there, and somebody yelled out, “Hold on,” fixing to hit this car, and he just stopped, grabbed the sink, we had the fender bender, and he went right back to washing his dishes.
Daniel J. Mount
Wow.
Mike Franklin
And if you were even-keeled with him, he was even-keeled with you.
Jonathan? When I say he could speak five languages, he could speak… You know, he’d play by ear, he could play any piece you put in front of him. He could play shape notes. He could just hear arrangements. He was a great arranger for our pieces. And that’s why I enjoyed, I think personally, I enjoyed rehearsal more than performance, because it was so much more creative than the performance.
But then he could also, when we would get to the studio, converse with the studio musicians as a peer. So I was always very impressed with him. And then he developed into a great emcee as well.
Doug was so low-profile. He was just soft-spoken. It’s like, if you wanted to have something done on the bus, he’d say, “You want to get that done? Okay.” The next time you’d come, it’d be done. And then if you mentioned it, he’d say, “Well, I thought you’d like that.” You know. He was just very low-key, low-profile, and just in the background, but you missed him when he wasn’t there.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. I can just see from your description of the personalities, it makes sense that you all, that lineup, would be able to get along and stay together for over a decade.
Mike Franklin
I, on the other hand, stirred the pot all the time! I was a burr under the saddle for… I just had not learned to leave well enough alone most of the time. And so, you know, that came later.
There’s always one. And if you don’t know who it is, it’s usually you!
Daniel J. Mount
Yep! Yeah.
How Jeremy Raines, who you sang with for a few years there also?
Mike Franklin
Jeremy came to us the week after he graduated college, and he looked like a kid. He didn’t look like he had graduated college. He looked like he’d graduated high school. But what a talent he was. He read music. I think he had a minor in vocal from college.
Great range, just in awe of all of it. Wanted to please. You know, became the baby on the bus. But we all liked Jeremy. I don’t think anybody had any… He made us laugh, and on stage everybody liked him because he was the baby.
So Jeremy and I still probably converse the most. I talked with Jonathan last week. In fact, I talked with Doug two weeks ago. I’ll see Gerald again in July. So we all still are in touch with each other, but not as much as we should be.
Daniel J. Mount
That happens to almost everybody eventually. Life gets busy.
Mike Franklin
Yeah.
Daniel J. Mount
One other name I wanted to mention, just a couple years after that, not that he was with the Melody Boys that long, but a very familiar name in Southern Gospel since, is when Ryan Seaton joined and sang with you all for a bit. Of course, most people listening to this will be very familiar with the run he had with Ernie Haase and Signature Sound right after that, where they really tore things up and were one of the most exciting live shows to see for a good number of years there. What are your recollections of him joining the group? And then, you know, it wasn’t probably less than a year maybe he got the call, got the invitation to join Signature Sound.
Mike Franklin
Yeah. Ryan came, and we all loved him. He was… I don’t know how close in age Jeremy and Ryan are, but very close. So that was a good dynamic in the group, a good age spread in the group. And Ryan, very talented young man.
We enjoyed having him on the bus. And he had a lot of good family support. I was always amazed at where his mom and dad would show up for concerts, where we would be, and how far they would drive to show up and support Ryan. That was good, and boy…At one of the Grand Old Gospel Reunions, he was sick as a pup, but he still struggled to get up there and sing. And we were actually filming a video during that time, and he was still up there giving it his very best. He was really sick during that time, but he didn’t try and lay out because of it. He gave it his best. And we recorded one with Ryan, and unfortunately he was invited to go sing with Ernie right after that. So our recording came out, and then he was gone.
Daniel J. Mount
Mm-hmm.
Mike Franklin
But he did a great job on the recording, and we missed him.
Daniel J. Mount
Okay, so this might be a little bit out of order. On the recording side of things, I just thought while we were talking about the people, I’d just continue to talk about people for a couple of minutes. On the recording side of things, you all signed with Zion Records in nineteen ninety six and recorded several albums with them, and I really liked, I don’t know if it was a different set of studio musicians, but I really like those recordings. I felt like they brought a strong studio team. Those recordings just sound good and hold up well today as really good recordings. And then signing with Homeland in two thousand, and at that point Homeland was one of the biggest record companies out there, that also sounded great. Do you have any strong memories of joining on those different labels or any of those recordings, particular memories?
Mike Franklin
Well, Kevin McManus was so great to work with in the studio.
Daniel J. Mount
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Mike Franklin
I don’t know that I could say enough good things about Kevin. He was almost like he just let us go. The first recording that we came in and did with him, we came in so prepared, so rehearsed, and knocked it out, knocked the whole recording out I think in two days. So the follow-up recording, he had sent us much more material ahead of time and got much more involved in the pre-recording process. And it was so much more enjoyable for the second recording with Kevin.
So that first one was a learning process between Kevin and the Melody Boys. The second recording was a growing experience with him.
But they were both great recordings, and I don’t know, the best thing I learned was all the stories that Kevin had to share that had nothing to do with the Melody Boys.
Daniel J. Mount
Mm-hmm. He’d been around for a few years and had recorded a lot of groups.
Mike Franklin
Very talented man.
Daniel J. Mount
Did the Melody Boys, in making recordings, have a particular approach, like you wanted to do half classics, half new songs? Or how did you think about that? Was it just a particular song somebody wanted to sing, whether it was old, whether it was new? Or was there a methodology in the songs from the older eras that you wanted to keep alive? Because to this day, when I think of the Melody Boys, some of the first songs I think about are your versions of older songs. You had some good new songs too. I’m just curious how you thought about your mixture of older and newer songs.
Mike Franklin
Well, I think we thought we had it figured out until Right Music introduced us to Vic Clay.
Daniel J. Mount
Okay. He recorded the Cathedrals in the sixties and seventies, engineered their music.
Mike Franklin
I know, I know. And Vic, I think Vic wound up being involved with three, maybe. I think three. But the first one he did was Faith in My Savior.
Daniel J. Mount
Yes.
Mike Franklin
He just kind of blew our minds, the way that recording was done. It was 100 percent completely different than the rest of our recordings. And at first he had to kind of pull us into it.
But after we caught his vision, yeah, I’m kind of grooving on this. I’m with you, Vic. But to work with Vic and Toni…
Daniel J. Mount
Mm-hmm.
Toni being his wife, right? Yes.
Mike Franklin
Yes, yes.
Some of the sweetest memories that I have still with me in working in gospel.
Daniel J. Mount
Hm. That’s neat. There was actually one song on that recording that I wanted to ask about in particular, and that’s a song called “That’s What Grace Is For” that you were featured on. And it’s interesting. Twenty years ago, when I started collecting recordings, for whatever reason that was one I didn’t find then. So it wasn’t until more recently that I realized this song that I had known as Scott Howard’s signature song with Legacy Five, that he sang every night for twenty-something years, that you were actually the first to record it. And I didn’t know that till fairly recently. How did you come across that song and end up featured on it?
Mike Franklin
Well, I mean, Toni brought it into the recording process while we were working on that album.
And I think she brought it to me for consideration, which I was just knocked out by the song, first off, and so honored that she asked me to consider it. So, we did it night after night after night.
But I think the most impact that I ever saw the song make on one person was, we were doing Spirit Fest right after Jerry Goff’s wife had passed away. And we sang the song. Jerry was sitting right in the front row, right in front of me. He was the emvee that year for Spirit Fest, and he was sitting right on the front row, right in front of me, and he just broke down during that song. I almost couldn’t get through the song.
It is a great song. I still sing it when I have opportunity to sing a special at church, or I bring it up from time to time still.
Daniel J. Mount
Very neat. I actually pulled up the song credits as we were talking, and it looks like Vic and Toni Clay were two of the co-writers on that song. Very neat.
Did you consider throwing your name in the hat for openings with some of the big national groups? Or were you just content in what you’re doing with the Melody Boys to the point that it didn’t even occur to you, or you thought about it and decided that you wouldn’t?
Mike Franklin
No, I was perfectly content to sing with the Melody Boys. I thought I was singing with some of the greatest singers in gospel music and thought it a privilege to be a part of it.
Daniel J. Mount
And you were. You were.
Fascinating. And I think that attitude, and I’m gonna guess Jonathan must have had a similar attitude to some extent, because that kind of attitude with all the talent you all had surely played a role in how your lineups stayed together for so long.
Mike Franklin
Yeah, and Jonathan’s a homebody as well. And I don’t think anybody could have enticed him to move. So that could have been a part of it as well. But yeah, I think everybody was just happy to be where they were.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat. Now, in later years, when the Melody Boys weren’t as active, you sang with a few other groups, one of which was Southern Sound. And I did an episode with Randy Shaw, recorded it a few weeks ago, and actually I just posted it this morning as of when we were recording. And he talked about when you joined Southern Sound, so maybe we could talk about that group for a couple minutes.
Mike Franklin
Yeah. Well, of course the Melody Boys and Southern Sound had sung together, mostly at the Grand Old Gospel Reunion, for years and were great admirers of each other’s music, because they were very similar. Did a cruise or two together.
And I guess personnel issues are always something to deal with in gospel music, but I was contacted by Ben and just asked, if you’re not doing anything. And I wasn’t. And we didn’t know it would lead to anything, and I don’t guess it was a real long time, but I knew the level and the type of music that I would be singing with. And so it would be another challenge for me, and I’m always looking for a challenge, to learn and tweak something here and learn something I wasn’t doing before. And so that was a very enjoyable time to spend with Ben and Randy and Alan and meet their audience and the venues that they had been going to over and over and over again. And I didn’t get a chance to record anything with them, but it was a great experience. I hope it was for them, because it really was for me.
Daniel J. Mount
I know Randy enjoyed it. He was telling me about that. And then after Southern Sound, I believe you had your own group for a few years called United Voice. Is that, do I have that correct?
Mike Franklin
Well, I wouldn’t call it my own group, but Chris Bennett and I had been living fairly close to one another, the one we were in Homeward Bound together, and I wasn’t singing and he wasn’t singing. And so I called him and asked, “Would you think we could get something up?”
He contacted another great lead singer who also was in the middle of not singing, Jeremy Ballinger. He had just come off of being with the Old Time Preachers Quartet or something like that.
Daniel J. Mount
Les Butler and Mike Holcomb’s group.
Mike Franklin
Yeah, yeah, he had been with them. And so all that worked out great. And the three of us sang together for seven years and did four different recordings. That was the second trio I guess I’d been with. Nobody wanted to do anything full-time. Everybody had done that before and wasn’t reaching out to radio, wasn’t… it was just for great fun. And it was.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. And of late, well, of late you’ve been in pastoral work, but why don’t we actually go back a little further to your work off the road? I’d love to talk about that through the years. Were you in the Air Force full-time prior to singing in Southern Gospel? And then did you continue with the Air Force or in the Air Force Reserve or something after that?
Mike Franklin
Well, I was stationed in Little Rock twice, and both of those times I sang with the Melody Boys.
Daniel J. Mount
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Mike Franklin
You know, it’s amazing how far you can go on a bus when you don’t have to stop and still be at work on Monday morning. But in ’96, when we signed with Zion, that’s when I retired from the Air Force and we went back full-time.
Daniel J. Mount
Okay. What did you do in the Air Force?
Mike Franklin
Well, for sixteen years I was in recruiting service.
Daniel J. Mount
Okay. Neat.
Mike Franklin
And that’s the last part of… so that’s how the Melody Boys knew me, as in recruiting service.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat. So was that you work in an office some of the time, and then do you go to like Thunderbirds or other demonstration events and do events for the Air Force, that kind of thing?
Mike Franklin
All kinds of things. A lot of… yeah, I traveled a lot during the week for the Air Force and a lot on the weekend with the Melody Boys.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat. Did you do other side jobs or other careers before you got into church ministry?
Mike Franklin
Well, for ten years I did solo work after I left the Melody Boys.
Daniel J. Mount
Okay.
Mike Franklin
Which, I think, prepared me for going into pastoral work. And I didn’t realize it. Still amazed for what God is allowing me to do now. But yes, I did that.
Daniel J. Mount
And then I guess I’m near wrapping up, but I’m curious as to what you’re doing now. How did God lead your path to ending up doing pastoral work at this point in your life? How did that come about?
Mike Franklin
Well, I had done a solo program over at a particular church, and as I was packing up I was talking to the pastor, and he said, “I want you to consider becoming our interim senior adult pastor.”
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah.
Mike Franklin
And I looked at him and thought he was crazy. He said, “Just think about it. Pray about it.”
And I hardly gave it a thought at that point. And for the next several weeks it just kept hitting me, and the Lord kept saying, “You haven’t even told Tina about it,” my wife.
And so I kept arguing with the Lord about why mention it to her. I’m a singer. And so I told her about it. She said, “You’d be great at that.” And that surprised me.
So something like six weeks had gone by since the day he mentioned it.
So I called him back and I said, “Well, it’s been six weeks. You probably have somebody, but if not, if you would still like for me to come in and, you know, interview me about that…” He said, “I never talked to anybody else because I knew you were gonna call me back.”
Daniel J. Mount
Wow. Wow. That seems almost out of left field, ’cause as you mentioned it’s not anything you’ve done before.
Mike Franklin
That’s right. And I did that as the interim senior adult pastor for seven months. And the Lord prepared me for a position at my home church, as our pastor was struggling with cancer. He was becoming physically weaker and weaker and wanted to continue to preach but could not do the other pastoral duties.
And so our church… I had heard through the grapevine while I was still senior adult pastor, I had heard that our church was about to advertise for a position at my home church.
And so we had already been, we knew that they were about to hire a full-time and my position was gonna end, and I had liberty to seek other employment. So I called the personnel committee team leader and asked him about it and said, “Well, I would like to apply for that,” and didn’t think, since I’d been a member of that church since 1986, that anything would really come from it. And bam, they hired me.
Since then our pastor has passed, and of course, you know, things… you grow a lot into.
Daniel J. Mount
Mmm-hmm. Sorry to hear that.
Mike Franklin
We’ve had a great interim since then, and we’re still looking for a pastor. But you just learn more and more when opportunity presents itself.
Daniel J. Mount
It’s really interesting how throughout so much of your life, God opened the door for you to be involved in ministry of one sort or another, part-time for some of that, full-time ministry for a lot of that, but also not just ministering in that moment, but how your time in trios and quartets prepared you to be a soloist, and your time as a soloist set you up for the work you’re doing now. It’s really cool to see his leading and preparation from one step to the next.
Mike Franklin
Amazing is the word. Amazing. He is amazing.
Daniel J. Mount
Amen. So I would love to tell your story as well as I can, but I might not always know the right questions to ask. Are there aspects of your life that I might not have asked about that you’d like to mention, your life or your ministry, that would be worth touching on before we wrap up for today?
Mike Franklin
I would like to say, Daniel, that I have not always been the easiest person in a trio or quartet to work with. I have not always been the easiest husband to be around, but I have always had great Christian co-workers and a wonderful Christian wife that have allowed me the patience and the time for God to continue to work on me, and a wonderful church family to allow me to grow. And I’m grateful for the mercy and grace that he shows me.
Daniel J. Mount
Praise God.
Very neat. I was just thinking, I think you mentioned the church where you’re serving now and where you had been a member. I think you mentioned you joined in 1986, which, this is 2026, so I think that means you’ve been forty years at the same church. Which is very neat. Not everybody can say that. That’s very neat.
Mike Franklin
Yeah.
Daniel J. Mount
All right, well thank you so much for your time, coming on for this interview. I really enjoyed talking with you and getting to hear and then share your story.
Mike Franklin
It’s been a pleasure. It’s been a pleasure. And I thank you for doing this podcast, not just with me, but for sharing the stories of each individual that you get a chance to interview and keeping this music and the people alive.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you.
Thank you. I actually blogged about Southern Gospel back in the years two thousand six through twenty fourteen. I posted daily blog posts, because blogs were the thing back in those days. And I’d taken some time off. But this year I started to think about all the people I knew, or in your case, wanted to know. And I was like, you know what? I think if I do podcasting, it’ll be a good excuse to catch up with some old friends, make some new ones, and share some stories that need to be shared. So it’s been a blessing for me as well. Thank you.
Mike Franklin
Thank you. All right.
Daniel J. Mount
And to the listener, I’d say thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. You can keep up with the latest episodes on YouTube, Facebook, your favorite podcast platform, or on SouthernGospelJournal.com. Thank you for listening.