Earl Grant
(Wikipedia Commons)
(Note to reader: This is a paper that I wrote for an identity class, in which I had to write a biography of an African American. I decided to write the bio on the pianist, singer and organist Earl Grant, who was popular in the 1950s and 60s. This will be part one of a three-part blog.)
Earl Grant was a prolific African American musician who was a popular pianist, organist and singer during the 1950s and 60s. He had a unique style of peppering some of his music with the sound of bird calls, imitated through the use of his organ technique. Grant broke the barriers of race by becoming a popular performer in the field of television and was one of the first African American performers to be showcased on many shows watched by white music audiences in the United States. This is an account of Earl Grant’s life, which analyzes his life and talent and shows that he was just as important as the many other African American musicians who broke the racial barriers during this period of musical history. His career was cut short in 1970 because of a car accident but he has still endured the test of time.
Earl Grant’s style of singing was unique to other performers, but he did meet his match with his singing style. The well-known singer Nat King Cole was compared to Grant and their styles of singing were so similar that many listeners confused the two vocalists. Some even believed that Grant and Cole were brothers. The warm style of Earl Grant and his singing compares differently to the style of Nat King Cole in that Grant adds his diverse style of performing on both the organ and piano, sometimes within the same recording. As a result, his talent is one step ahead of Cole, who was known for mainly his singing and piano playing, sometimes with the King Cole Trio.
There are several biographical treatments of prominent jazz musicians and pianists. When we think of these biographies, many come to mind, such as Robin Kelley’s biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Hazel Scott’s biography by Dwayne Mack called Hazel Scott, A Career Curtailed and James Lester’s biography of Art Tatum, called Too Marvelous for Words: The Life and Genius of Art Tatum. This analysis of Grant seeks to raise his profile and add to this literature by expanding on Earl Grant’s life and comparing him to other African American musicians during his lifetime. There is significance to his contribution to the musicians of his time period in how he lived his life and his style of performance.
I myself play and perform piano and have been doing so for forty years since I began learning the piano when I was seven years old. I am a classically based pianist and love to play jazz, ragtime and some of the old standards of yesteryear. As I worked through the thought processes of this project I thought of my similarities and differences between myself and Earl Grant. I even learned to play one of Grant’s most famous recordings, “The End.” It was a pleasant surprise to learn how to play some of Grant’s works and it makes my connection to Grant that much more sentimental.
Many of Grant’s recordings were covers of other songs performed and recorded before him. I have learned in the past to play songs he recorded such as Ebb Tide and Beyond the Reef. Once I had learned to play these pieces, I felt I was given a unique perspective of connecting with any recorded versions of these songs because I had learned to play them before and learned their musical structure. I love the song Ebb Tide and when I heard Grant’s version after I learned to play it myself, I found that Grant’s recording of this song was one of the best versions and helped me to connect with his style.
I first heard of Earl Grant when I was perusing my grandmother’s record collection when I was a young boy. His 1964 album Just for a Thrill was in her collection, and I took it out, put it on the nearby turntable, and played it for the first time, probably when I was about eight years old, which would have been in the late 1970s. I loved to learn about new music and found the cover of this album to be interesting. It shows a green background with Grant looking at the viewer, winking and holding up his left index finger, sporting a beautiful suit. I found it to be an attractive album cover which made me want to learn more and experience his music. As I began to listen to his music over time and learned to play piano myself, I found that Grant was one of my favorites because of his style. During the course of this project, I compared my life to his and found many similarities, but also differences.
My similarities to Earl Grant are that we were both musicians, specifically pianists. I can play an organ and can sing but Grant was more proficient at these two forms of musical interpretation. I have played and performed pop music, which Grant did as well, and I have occasionally sung with my performances. We are both rooted in classical music, which makes for a very well-trained musician. Being trained in the classics shows to fellow musicians and the listening public that the pianist is serious about their music and also that they have a solid foundation to perform other types of music because they understand music theory.
Grant was a wonderful singer, but I prefer his instrumental music to his singing because of his unique style of performing on the piano and organ. His instrumental style can be soft and mysterious sometimes, as heard on his albums Beyond the Reef or Trade Winds. The Hawaiian flavor of these two albums gives a soft romantic tone because of his instrumentals. When he sings it is almost as if the tracks are a totally different performer from his instrumental tracks. His singing brings out a smooth and velvety voice similar to Nat King Cole, but Grant’s voice seems to have more conviction. Grant seems to also have a less fluid style of vocal phrasing than Cole. If I were to compare their two styles to two dance giants, Cole would have the fluidity of Gene Kelly and Grant would have the earlier, squarish style of Fred Astaire. It is a sound comparison.
Concerning our differences, Grant died in 1970, around the time that my life was beginning, but he could have lived a full life and gave us so much more if he had not been killed in an automobile accident at the young age of 39. Also, he was an African American man, and I was white. He was a well-known performer during his time, in which I decided to become a teacher of music ultimately, which he did for a brief period of his life. I never did have the drive to become a full-time performer. The idea of traveling from one place to another and seeming to never have a permanent home never appealed to me. I would have much rather liked to spend time with my family and have a job close to home.
It makes one wonder how his African American background in the 1950s and 60s was different from mine as well. He would have had to deal with the brunt of racist African American slurs and probably wouldn’t have been treated in the same way financially as a white musician. Many African American musicians have been exploited throughout American history up to the present day. In fact, the music industry is today 95% white owned. It is rare to see a successful black music company along the lines of the success of Berry Gordy and Motown Records in the 1960s, but eventually they were bought out by MCA Inc. and Boston Ventures Limited Partnership in 1988.
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