Born in 1935, Franklin grew up in the nearby settlement of Kopua, south of Takapau. The closest he got to cowboys and country music was the films and comics of Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry, and listening to Tex Morton, Wilf Carter and Slim Dusty on the radio. “We used to go to dances and the pictures on the back of a pony, park the pony in a paddock close to a hall and put a saddle under a tree. I used to live it to the full.”