John Graves

John Graves started playing professionally in 1942 at the age 14. He toured the west and mid-west with two different combos, providing dance music and floor shows. He was pianist on The Betty White Show, a fifties daytime variety TV show, and pianist-performer-arranger for The Gloria Hart Show with Art Kassel and His Castles in the Air on KLAC-TV, Los Angeles. Singers and performers he has accompanied include: George Burns, Jimmy Durante, Redd Foxx, Rudy Vallee, Rosemary Clooney, Helen Forrest and June Christy.

He played private parties for Judy Garland, Groucho Marx, Danny Thomas, and John Wayne and was pianist with the Orrin Tucker and Art Kassel big bands, as well as Ray Linn's dixieland Chicago Stompers. Also, during his thirty five year career as a TV and film executive and producer, he worked with outstanding composers, conductors and arrangers such as Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, Lalo Schiffrin, John Scott Trotter, Robert Armbruster, and Nelson Riddle. (And even the Monkees!) During the same period, he played over three thousand private parties in the Los Angeles area as a single, leader, or sub-leader.

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