My name is Franck Goldwasser. I've been playing the blues, and nothing but the blues since I was sixteen years old, growing up in Paris, France, where I was born in 1960. Ever since I first heard Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor and B.B. King, I knew deep within me that playing the blues was to be my calling.
Before coming to the United States in 1983, I attended art school in Paris and taught myself how to play guitar after having a couple of lessons with the late Marcel Dadi. My very first opportunity to play in front of an audience arrived when New York City harmonica ace Sugar Blue, then residing in Paris and on the verge of becoming a national star, invited me to jam at the Chapelle des Lombards. This is around the time that he was noticed by the Rolling Stones while playing in the Paris subway, who hired him to play on "Miss You" on the "Some Girls " album. My first chance to play professionally came when one of my idols, Sonny Rhodes travelled to Europe in 1980 and hired me to back him at a gig in Reims. Subsequently he suggested I moved to Oakland to work with him, which I did a couple of years later.
Within weeks of arriving in Oakland, I became the guitarist in one of the Bay Area's busiest working blues bands, the Troyce Key Big Blues Band, gigging mostly at Eli's Mile High Club every weekend. While in that band, I received my apprenticeship in the blues (I actually lived AT the club for almost three months, having no place else to stay), working with some of the biggest names in West Coast blues at the time, including Lowell Fulson, Big Mama Thornton, Pee Wee Crayton, Percy Mayfield, Charles Musselwhite and many others. It was also around that time that Troyce Key gave me the moniker "Paris Slim", which has stuck until now. Around that time I played a lot with local blues stalwarts such as Omar Sharriff (a.k.a. Dave Alexander), Cool Papa, Mark Hummel and the Blues Survivors, Maurice McKinnies and Jimmy McCracklin's, whose band I played with for three years straight.
I cut my first record ---- a 45rpm ---- in 1985. The record got a lot of jukebox play in the local clubs. Through the 80's I received plenty of exposure while playing with Charlie Musselwhite, Elvin Bishop, Mitch Woods and many other local heroes. I was called to play guitar in the houseband at Larry Blake's in Berkeley, when guitarist Tim Kaihatsu joined the Robert Cray band. This gig gave me a chance to play behind Linda Tillery, Tracy Nelson, Norton Buffalo and scores of other stars. Around that time, I began to play all the San Francisco joints, such as The Saloon, The Last Day Saloon, Lou's Pier 47, Major Ponds, etc. In 1986 or '7 I joined Mitch Woods and The Rocket '88's and did a national tour with him, which took us down to Antone's in Austin, TX, and Tipitina's in New Orleans. In 1989 I released my first album, "Blues For Esther", on the Belgian label Blue Sting. The record was nominated for a W.C. Handy award in the "Best Foreign Album of the Year" category. The same year I was invited by my friend Nick Gravenites to take the guitar player's chair in the Electric Flag reunion. The band played gigs at the Full Moon Saloon is S.F. and killed 'em at the twenty-year anniversary of Woodstock at Lancaster, California.
In the early 90's I played with Terry Hank and the Soul Rockers. I went back to Paris for six months and recorded the album "Couvert De Bleus" with my friend Benoît Blue Boy, who is the "godfather" of French blues. While continuing to front my own band and doing a lot a festivals, including the San Francisco Blues Festival, Oakland's Festival of the Arts, the Monterey Blues and Jazz Fest and several others, I backed up a lot of visiting Chicago Blues artists, including Sunnyland Slim, A.C. Reed, Phil Guy, Byther Smith and others at Bay Area venues including Slim's, J.J.'s and Lou's. In the late 90's I did a lot of touring with the Dynatones.
I recruited my old friend Joe Louis Walker to help me with the production of my next album, "Bleedin' Heart" which was released in 1998. Both Sonny Rhodes and Joe Louis guested on it. The CD was enthusistically received by the blues community and extremely positive reviews appeared in Blues Access, Soul Bag and Blues Review. The same year I moved to the Santa Barbara area and connected with Chris Millar of Fedora Records and blues promoter and talent scout Rand Chortkoff. Rand hired me to backup Billy Boy Arnold and Finis Tasby on the Bowlful of Blues at Ojai, which led to a long partnership, including the formation of the Mannish Boys, the award-winning, all-star blues band from Los Angeles, of which I remain a key member to this day. The Mannish Boys have appeared on festivals all over the world, including the artic circle and the Legendary Blues Cruise, and have released five albums.
With Chris Millar, I recorded a dozen albums with such down home blues artists such as Harmonica Slim, Hosea Leavy, Dadoo Wilson and even original O.G., American Pimp's Fillmore Slim. We toured Europe and appeared at Utrecht's Blues Estafette with Clay Hammond. Let's not forget that I recorded two albums for Fedora Records with one of my all-time heroes, Chicago blues icon Jimmy Dawkins. During my stay in Southern California, I worked with the Fabulous Thurnderbirds' Kim Wilson, Mr. Roy Gaines, Arthur Adams, the Pontiax's Mitch Kashmar and formed a band with R.J. Misho, the R.J. Misho Combo.
In the winter of 2000, I recorded an album in Santa Barbara with the Alastair Greene and his band. Early in 2001, I went back to Paris where the all-star French blues band F.B.I. (French Blues Initiative) was coming together, which I was to co-lead with my old and very close friend world music harmonica star Vincent Bucher. F.B.I. recorded a demo and appeared at numerous festivals in France. When I came back I started recording a new recording project. Eventually, the album "Bluju" came out in the U.S. as Delta Groove's first release, and eventually in Europe on the prestigious German label Crosscut.
With R.J. Mischo and guitarist Steve Freund I formed the group "Down Home Super Trio" and the band appeared at the Spring Blues Festival in Belgium in 2003. That same winter, the D.H.S.T. headlined the Lucerne Blues Festival (Switzerland) for a performance which recorded by Crosscut Records and shortly thereafter released as part of the "In The House" series.
I moved back to Paris for six months, then relocating to Portland, Oregon in 2005, where I stayed until the summer of 2011. In Stumptown, I worked steadily with Lloyd Jones, D.K. Stewart, Bil Rhoades and Jim Wallace. in 2010 I joined the Curtis Salgado Band with whom I toured extensively. In September 2011, I relocated to the Santa Barbara and started playing with my old friend Alastair Greene, as well as Cadillac Zack in the Los Angeles area.