Josh Graves

• 1942 Joined the Pierce Brothers playing in Gatlinburg
• Played with Esco Hankins and Mac Wiseman
• Joined Wheeling, West Virginia's WWVA Jamboree with Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper
• 1955-1969 Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys
• 1969-1971 Lester Flatt's Nashville Grass.
• 1971-1974 Earl Scruggs 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.

Graves originally joined the Foggy Mountain Boys as a bass player but he got together with Earl Scruggs to develop a new style of dobro-picking based on Earl's three-finger syncopated banjo style. After only one month on bass, Graves switched to the dobro and it soon became a defining feature 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.[1]^:49 Additionally, Graves adopted a picking style using three fingers based on technique taught to him by banjoist, Scruggs Graves played fast and loud but also created extremely sensitive melodic backing to bluesy ballads and slower gospel numbers. Josh Graves is credited as being a major influence on many leading resophonic guitar players, including Jerry Douglas, Mike Auldridge, and Phil Leadbetter among them.

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.

• OMS Records - Josh Graves
• Brad's Page of Steel
• Josh Graves at Find a Grave