Franklin Used to Mean Gospel, Not Brisket, in East Austin

First Family of sacred music led by brothers in the '30s and carried on by "The Mailman" and Lady Claudia

E.M. Franklin, holding Bible and A.C. Franklin far left were two of 17 children of a porter and his wife from Pilot Knob who created a standard in sacred music.

The night before East Austin’s legendary gospel announcer and promoter Bill “The Mailman” Martin was laid to rest in 2014 at age 81, there was a musical memorial at the St. James Missionary Baptist Church, pastored by his father-in-law E.M. Franklin from 1953 –1981. Bill Martin was an actual mailman in East Austin for three decades before he took over for his mentor Elmer Akins as the face and voice of Black gospel music in Austin, so the songs were mournful, the speeches reverent, for the church deacon who delivered good news.

But gospel music does nothing if not lift you up when you’re down. In the midst of the musical tribute to Brother Bill was a Elgin preacher named Luchus McShann who got the crowd on its feet, urging him on, as he sang in a haunting falsetto. Hands were shaking in the air, as the huge auditorium overflowed with the spirit.

It was like the moments that changed the life of Bill Martin, who married into Austin music royalty and was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame on his own in 2009.

He had grown up wanting to be a sax player like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young and moved to New York City after graduating from high school in Asheville, North Carolina. Martin passed an audition at Julliard, but he didn’t have the money, so he joined the Air Force during the Korean War with plans to attend Julliard on the G.I. Bill.

While stationed in 1953 at Bergstrom Air Force Base, where the Austin airport is now, he met a Huston-Tillotson student named Evelyn Franklin at her grocery store checkout job in East Austin and asked her out. “You gotta talk to my daddy first,” said Evelyn, who everyone called “Tutter.”

Can’t imagine there are too many things in life more intimidating than facing powerful East Austin preacher E.M. Franklin and asking him to entrust his daughter to your care for an evening. The old man asked the airman what church he belonged to and when Martin said he wasn’t a member of any church, the audition was over. But Bill was in the front pew at St. James the next Sunday, and served the church with enthusiastic dedication for almost 60 years. Bill and Evelyn married in 1955 and stayed that way for 50 years, until she passed away in 2005.

Born in 1910, one of 17 children of porter Ananias and Callie Franklin in the Pilot Knob community nine miles southeast of Austin, Ermant M. Franklin was the family’s lightning rod. He grew up in the church and co-founded Austin’s first recorded gospel group, the Paramount Singers, with his younger brother A.C. in 1936.

Named after the theater on Congress Avenue which they couldn’t enter during segregation, the Paramounts had a radio show on KTBC for five years and were recorded by John Henry Faulk for the Library of Congress in 1941.

World War II broke up the a capella group when the other co-founding brothers, Kermit and Geno Terrell, were drafted. Upon returning from the war, the Terrells settled in Oakland and restarted the Paramount Singers with the fifth original member James Haywood Medlock. The Franklins decided to remain pastors of their churches — A.C. in Los Angeles and E.M. in Austin. Everybody in Austin knew A.C., who preached alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at Victory Baptist Church in Los Angeles in 1968, as “Uncle Koot.”

The Chariettes 1952. Evelyn Franklin Martin is top row center.

Evelyn Franklin and her sister Dorothy were members of Austin’s first girl group, the Chariettes, who released a 45 in 1953 on Houston’s Duke/Peacock label with “Step By Step.” Since some of the members were still in high school, they couldn’t hit the Gospel Highway, so Duke’s Don Robey dropped the group after the single didn’t sizzle. They were managed by Lavada Durst, KVET’s jive-talking “Dr. Hepcat,” whose 1951 composition “Let’s Talk About Jesus” by Austin’s Bells of Joy sold almost a million copies on Peacock.

Rev. E.M. Franklin wanted to keep his young daughters near him, so years later, when daughter Barbara Franklin went on the road with Ray Charles as a Raelette, it didn’t sit well with the devout preacher, according to Evelyn. But Barbara married a preacher when she got off tour.

“We could’ve been the next Caravans,” Evelyn told me in 2000, when the Chariettes reunited for a 50th anniversary concert. (They were joined by an 82-year-old Rosie Lee “Miss Kitty” Alexander, one of the hottest piano players in town in the ‘40s and ‘50s.) “But there are no regrets.”

Junior Franklin on top played guitar and harmonized for the original Mighty Clouds of Joy. Back in Austin he managed the Golden Echoes.

The ‘60s were a great time for Evelyn’s older brother Junior, who to moved to L.A. in the late ‘50s with brother Elmo and started a new version of their Austin group Sensational Wonders. They played the same circuit as a teenage holy ghost shouter from Alabama named Willie Joe Ligon, who matched the intensity of June Cheeks and Archie Brownlee, the two greatest hard gospel voices of the era. What set the Wonders apart was a full band backing, with electric bass, drums, guitar and organ, almost unheard of in gospel at the time. Together, these forces became the Mighty Clouds of Joy, a group that revolutionized gospel music. They were called “The Temptations of Gospel” for their soul and choreography. But even more significantly was the funk bass lines they brought to religious music.

As much a Texas group as one from L.A., the Clouds made their first record in 1960 for Peacock, having a hit right away with “Ain’t Got Long Here” (renamed “Stealing Away To Jesus” on some reissues). Though the Clouds, who had a disco hit in 1975 with “Mighty High,” were frowned upon by religious purists, they brought church to the charts while never losing the sanctifying conviction.

Elmer Akins.

Junior Franklin, the oldest of seven, moved back to Austin in ’79 to see after his ailing mother Alla, and organized a female group, the Golden Echoes. Featuring the Bonner sisters of McCallum High, the Echoes were the first Black gospel group many of the white rock crowd had ever heard, playing Soap Creek and SXSW. Franklin fathered a child by the oldest sister, who still sings gospel as Jacqueline Bonner-Calhoun.

In the ‘70s, Bill delivered mail all over East Austin, then he’d get together with Elmer Akins, a man he met on his route. Also originally from Pilot Knob, Akins had the “Gospel Train” radio show on KVET from 1947 until his passing in ’98 and also promoted gospel concerts, usually at Doris Miller Auditorium. They’d attach a loudspeaker to the top of Akins’ car and Martin would drive while Akins promoted. “The Soul Stirrers, with Austin boy James Medlock, are playing this Saturday night! With Shirley Caesar from the Caravans! Come to the program! It’s a joyful noise!” Martin would pull over at the corner of 12th and Chicon, where Akins, 21 years his senior, played records by upcoming acts over the loudspeaker.

Akins had friendly competition from Junior Franklin, who promoted gospel shows by acts, such as the Mighty Clouds, he was personally connected with. Junior wanted to do his own posters, so he went into the printing business, guided by a instructional book he checked out of the library. The Franklin–Stewart Printing company was shut down by the Dept. of Treasury in 1985 over counterfeiting claims, though charges were eventually dropped. Since Junior’s posters were of loud dayglo, one local artist produced a $100 bill in that style as a joke.

Junior Franklin became a minister in 1991 and died of a stroke in 1996 at age 64. In 2001, Bill Martin credited his brother-in-law with encouraging him to stick with radio DJing in 1980 after a first show disaster.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to turn off the mike when the records played, so they heard me talking on the phone over the music,” Martin said, shaking his head. “I was so embarrassed; I tried to hide from everybody. But Junior kept telling me I could make a difference in gospel music if I stayed on the radio.” Martin went back to KIXL the next Sunday and kept going back for 34 years, even after KIXL became KGLO.

The dynamic and expressive Claudia Williams has been leading the choir at St. James for 45 years, and she’s only 61!

Just as Junior Franklin and Bill “the Mailman” Martin took over for E.M. Franklin and Elmer Akins, gospel music is a tradition to be passed on. The Franklin legacy is today firmly in the hands of the remarkable Claudia Williams, who has been choir director at St. James since she was 16. Claudia was handpicked by E.M. Franklin after she led a bicentennial choir at the church in 1976. That was 45 years ago and in that time Williams, whose frantic motions and facial contortions resemble Mick Jagger as much as anyone in gospel, has become nationally known in mass choir circles.

Also, she’d been a mail carrier for over three decades before a recent retirement. The mailbag was also passed, along with the torch!

The Father of Austin Gospel, E.M. Franklin died in 1992. A.C. Franklin, the last of the 17 siblings living, made it to 2000. Martin remembered Uncle Koot as a preacher who could “wreck a house” with just his sermon, then bring out tears when he sang “Yes, God Is Real,” his signature tune.

“It was just something about the way he moved when he preached,” Martin recalled. “He’d give you that little dip for emphasis.”

Evelyn Martin said there was one thing her uncle told every act he met. “He’d tell ’em, ‘You can sing all the gospel songs you want, but it doesn’t mean a thing unless you’re a member of somebody’s church.’” That was the Franklin rule.

As founding members of the Paramount Singers, E.M. and A.C. loved to look up at the Paramount Theater marquee on Congress Avenue to see their group’s name. “But after a few minutes a policeman would come by with a billy club and tell us to move along to the Ritz,” Austin’s “colored” theater of the time, A.C. said in a 1987 interview. When the Paramounts sang “I have a right to the tree of life” in 1941, the year two co-founders were drafted to fight in the war, they had many experiences in “liberal” Austin to draw from.