Uncle Josh Graves

Uncle Josh Graves. Tennessee Music Pathways. , "Uncle Josh" Graves was renowned for playing with Flatt and Scruggs' Foggy Mountain Boys for nearly 15 years. His instrumental dexterity matched Scruggs' and helped repopularize the Dobro, or resonator guitar, placing it at the forefront of bluegrass music for decades to come. , Burkett Howard Graves was born in Tellico Plains on Sept. 27, 1927, and grew up 40 miles away in Alnwick, near Maryville, Tennessee. His father worked for the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) in Maryville and encouraged his son to play music. Graves was inspired to take up the resonator slide guitar (usually known by the brand name Dobro) after hearing Jimmie Rodgers and Cliff Carlist. Around 1939, Graves saw Carlisle play at the Alnwick schoolhouse, inspiring him to practice even more diligently. Although the resonator was superseded by the electric steel guitar, Graves persevered with it., In 1942, Graves began playing with the Pierce Brothers, who worked at Alcoa and had a radio show on WROL in Knoxville. Since Esco Hankins from Maynardville recruited Graves in 1943, and they worked together intermittently until 1950. Graves developed his comedic persona "Uncle Josh" and made his first recordings with Hankins. While working with Hankins in 1949 at WVLK in Lexington, Kentucky, Graves met banjo player Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, who had just left bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. Scruggs encouraged Graves to adapt his rolling three-finger banjo technique for the Dobro., Graves moved to Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1951 and then to Richmond, Virginia, with Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper. While still in Richmond, Graves began working with Mac Wiseman. In May 1955, when Wiseman could no longer afford to keep a band together, Graves joined Flatt and Scruggs as a upright bassist who played the Dobro occasionally in concert. After two weeks of working with the band, Flatt and Scruggs became so impressed with Graves prowess with the Dobro they offered him a choice: stay on as the band's bassist or switch to playing Dobro full time. Graves immediately chose the later option, becoming bluegrass music's pioneer Dobroist. The addition of Graves to the band meant Flatt and Scruggs signature sound was complete and included three virtuoso instrumentalists; Scruggs on banjo, Graves on Dobro, and Paul Warren on fiddle., Flatt and Scruggs popularized bluegrass music, scoring hits with "Foggy Mountain Breakdown", "The Ballad of Jed Clampett", and others. They played increasingly larger venues, including New York's Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Graves stayed with the band until Flatt and Scruggs broke up in 1969. He subsequently joined Lester Flatt's Nashville Grass, playing with him until early 1972 when he joined the Earl Scruggs Revue for two and a half years before striking out on his own in mid-1974., In 1974, Graves recorded Alone at Last, his first LP as a headliner. He began touring smaller venues and festivals in the United States and overseas, and in 1985, Graves and former Monroe fiddle player Kenny Baker formed a duet., Just as he had been inspired by Cliff Carlisle, Graves inspired new generations of Dobro players, including Jerry Douglas, Mike Auldrige, and Rob Ickes. In 1997, he was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor (now Hall of Fame)., Although he lost both legs to circulatory problems, Graves continue to play until his death in Nashville on Sept. 30, 2006., Captions , Top: Uncle Josh Graves in the recording studio in May of 1973. , Right: Taping The Martha White radio show at WSM, October 1960; left to right: "Uncle Josh" Graves, Paul Warren, Earl Scruggs, Cousin Jake Tullock, Curly Seckler, Lester Flatt, T. Tommy Cutrer (host).