Tom Grant -

Tom Grant (born Feb. 22, 1946) is an American jazz-funk pianist, keyboardist, vocalist, and composer from Portland, Ore. He recorded and toured with Jim Pepper, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Charles Lloyd, and Tony Williams across the Seventies, while the 1976 Mystified opened his leader catalog. The 1981 album You Hardly Know Me yielded the Billboard R&B entry “Heaven Is Waiting”; Grant followed with a long run of crossover-jazz albums on Verve, Shanachie, Windham Hill, and his Nu-Wrinkle label.

Background

Tom Grant was born Feb. 22, 1946, in Portland, Ore. His father, Al Grant, played piano and toured as a tap dancer. Al Grant also operated Madrona Records, a Portland jazz and R&B shop. Grant began piano and drum lessons at age four under his father and absorbed jazz through the store inventory. His older brother Mike Grant, a jazz pianist, introduced him to saxophonist Jim Pepper while Grant attended Grant High School.

Grant graduated from Grant High School in 1964 and majored in political science at the University of Oregon. Grant joined Eugene folk-rock band the Small Crowd late in his senior year with singer Kathy Smith, bassist Patrick Ahern, drummer Mike Phillips, and guitarists Frank Nachtman and Gene Garrett. The group played fraternity parties and took an amateur-night slot at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, where manager William E. McEuen saw the band.

McEuen signed the group to management and arranged an exclusive World Pacific Records contract through label head Dick Bock. The group relocated to Los Angeles and adopted the name Mercy by December 1968. Mercy worked the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, where the band regularly opened for Spirit and shared bills with touring folk and rock acts. Grant wrote his first original composition, “The Death Song,” for Mercy.

Singer Kathy Smith (not the later KGW news anchor) left Mercy and signed with Stormy Forest for the 1970/71 albums Some Songs I’ve Savedand Kathy Smith 2. Guitarist Gene Garrett also departed, leaving Grant, Ahern, Phillips, and Nachtman as a quartet. The musicians adopted Rare Junk after the unrelated Florida group Mercy scored the 1969 hit “Love (Can Make You Happy).” Rare Junk held a several-night-a-week engagement for most of the next year at the Inn Crowd in Anaheim. Grant then returned to Eugene to finish school.

Grant completed his University of Oregon studies and earned a master’s degree. He taught high-school social studies in Eugene and Mill City while playing weekend jobs in Portland. Pepper took Grant to New York for the Jan. 7, 1971 session that produced Pepper’s Pow Wow. Grant played piano, shaker, and vocals alongside guitarist Larry Coryell, bassists Jerry Jemmott and Chuck Rainey, and drummers Billy Cobham and Spider Rice.

Drummer Ron Steen recruited Grant for a Portland Rose Garden concert with bassist David Friesen. Grant continued weekend work in Portland with Steen and Friesen while teaching in Mill City, then returned to Portland full-time. Grant joined Steen and Friesen in the trio Emanon and resumed local work with Pepper.

Trumpeter Woody Shaw sat in with Grant and Steen at a Portland after-hours club in 1973, then hired both musicians for an engagement in Vancouver, British Columbia. Shaw recommended Grant and Steen to saxophonist Joe Henderson, who hired them for a touring band. Grant joined Henderson at the Students’ Union Theatre in Edmonton on Oct. 27, 1974.

Henderson retained Grant for a November engagement at the University Theatre in Calgary and a March 16, 1976 date at the Pioneer Banque in Seattle with bassist David Friesen and drummer Ron Steen. Grant subsequently toured Europe with Henderson. Grant entered Dureco Studio in Weesp, Holland, on Dec. 10, 1976, with Henderson, bassist Rick Laird, and Steen for the sessions that became Mystified.

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