Josh Graves (September 27, 1927 Tellico Plains, Monroe County,

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

– 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. Bluegrass has roots in African America ...

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

resonator guitar A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar (often generically called a " Dobro") 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' ...

(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 Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 1 ...

. 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 * Joined

Wheeling, West Virginia Wheeling is a city in Ohio County, West Virginia, Ohio and Marshall County, West Virginia, Marshall counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The county seat of Ohio County, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mo ...

'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 (music), bluegrass guitarist and mandolinist, best known for his collaboration with banjo picker Earl Scruggs in the duo Flatt and Scruggs. Flatt's career spanned ...

's Nashville Grass. * 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-finge ...

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 Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

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 in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

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 Christianity, Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century Anno domino, AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message w ...

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

Jerry Douglas Gerald Calvin Douglas (born May 28, 1956) is an American Dobro and lap steel guitar player and record producer. He is widely regarded as "perhaps the finest Dobro player in contemporary acoustic music, and certainly the most celebrated and prol ...

, Mike Auldridge, 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 American slide guitarists 20th-century American guitarists Guitarists from Tennessee Country musicians from Tennessee Nashville Grass members Foggy Mountain Boys members