Josh Graves (September 27, 1927

Tellico Plains Tellico Plains is a town in Monroe County, Tennessee, Monroe County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 859 at the 2000 census and 880 at the 2010 census. History The area along the Tellico River was inhabited for thousands of years by ...

, Monroe County,

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

– September 30, 2006), born Burkett Howard Graves, was an American

bluegrass music Bluegrass music is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the United States. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Like mainstream country music, it la ...

ian. Also known by the nicknames "Buck," and "Uncle Josh," he is credited with introducing the

resonator guitar A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator gui ...

(commonly known under the trade name of Dobro) into bluegrass music shortly after joining Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1955. He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

. He joined producers Randall Franks and Alan Autry for the In the Heat of the Night cast CD “Christmas Time’s A Comin’” performing "Christmas Time's A Comin'" with the cast on the CD released on Sonlite and MGM/UA for one of the most popular Christmas releases of 1991 and 1992 with Southern retailers.

Career

* 1942 Joined the Pierce Brothers playing in Gatlinburg * Played with Esco Hankins and

Mac Wiseman Malcolm Bell Wiseman (May 23, 1925 – February 24, 2019) was an American bluegrass and country singer. Early life He was born on May 23, 1925, in Crimora, Virginia. He attended school in New Hope, Virginia, and graduated from high school the ...

* Joined

Wheeling, West Virginia Wheeling is a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Located almost entirely in Ohio County, of which it is the county seat, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and also contains a tiny portion extendin ...

's WWVA Jamboree with Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper * 1955-1969 Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys * 1969-1971

Lester Flatt Lester Raymond Flatt (June 19, 1914 – May 11, 1979) was an American bluegrass guitarist and mandolinist, best known for his collaboration with banjo picker Earl Scruggs in the duo Flatt and Scruggs. Flatt's career spanned multiple decades ...

Nashville Grass The Nashville Grass was a bluegrass band founded by Lester Flatt in 1969, after the end of his partnership with Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. Flatt hired most of the Foggy Mountain Boys for his new band. Over the years, as with most ...

. * 1971-1974

Earl Scruggs Earl Eugene Scruggs (January 6, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was an American musician noted for popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style, now called " Scruggs style", which is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. His three-fing ...

Revue. * 1974 started solo career. * 1984-2006 performed and recorded with Kenny Baker and also with the Masters including Baker, Jesse McReynolds and Eddie Adcock.

Musical style

Graves originally joined the Foggy Mountain Boys as a

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

player but collaborated with bandmate Earl Scruggs to develop a new style of dobro-picking based on Scruggs' three-finger syncopated

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

style. Graves switched to the dobro; his way of playing helped propel the instrument into becoming one of the defining features of the bluegrass sound. Graves adoption of hammer-ons and pull-offs to combine open strings and fretted notes in rapid scalar passages elevated the Dobro to the level of holding its own with the fiddle and banjo. Graves played fast and loud but also created extremely sensitive melodic backing to bluesy ballads and slower

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

numbers. Josh Graves is credited as being a major influence on many leading resophonic guitar players, including

Jerry Douglas Gerald Calvin "Jerry" Douglas (born May 28, 1956) is an American Dobro and lap steel guitar player and record producer. Career In addition to his fourteen solo recordings, Douglas has played on more than 1,600 albums. As a sideman, he h ...

Mike Auldridge Mike Auldridge (December 30, 1938 – December 29, 2012) was an American Dobro player and a founding member of the bluegrass group The Seldom Scene. The ''New York Times'' described Auldridge as "one of the most distinctive dobro players in th ...

, and Phil Leadbetter among them.

References

''Discography of Blue Grass Sound Recordings, 1942-'', Ibiblio catalog, accessed October 22, 2020, https://www.ibiblio.org/catalog/items/show/3583. Goldsmith, Thomas. ''The Bluegrass Reader''. 2006. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Graves, J., Bartenstein, F., & Rosenberg, N. (2012). ''Bluegrass Bluesman: A Memoir (Music in American Life)'' (1st ed.). University of Illinois Press. Rosenberg, Neil V. ''Bluegrass: A History''. 2005. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

External links

OMS Records - Josh Graves

*

Selected Discography

Albums

{{DEFAULTSORT:Graves, Josh 1927 births 2006 deaths People from Tellico Plains, Tennessee Bluegrass musicians from Tennessee Slide guitarists 20th-century American guitarists Guitarists from Tennessee Country musicians from Tennessee Nashville Grass members Foggy Mountain Boys members