Here is a vocalist whose reputation is less than sterling, although it should be stressed that audiences found his work enjoyable at the time it was originally released.
for a half-dozen years and released an occasional single under his own name on labels such as Imperial. Much more impressive from the discographical perspective would be his
might want to hide behind this imposing tower of sides in order to dodge the bad reactions he gets from jazz listeners whose historic quests through the genre inevitably lead them to
. "Dan Gruesome" was a nickname the vocalist wound up with at the hands jazz purists who disliked vocal material even during the
heyday, while later critics may have been a trifle more tactful, if no less critical. A typical serving of such commentary includes these sorts of observations: ". . .one can do without the occasional
vocals. . .including some dreary vocal features for
. . .the dated vocals of
Actually,
Grissom represented a new type of jazz vocalist who came about more because of technological innovations than progressive musical thinking. Around 1933, microphones came into use, allowing singers such as
Grissom or the
Claude Hopkins frontman Orlando Robeson to carry on over the sound of a full band; neither man had the lungs to belt out lyrics over the top of the band the way pre-microphone "blues shouters" did. There was nothing loud about
Grissom's singing style, described in a survey of
Ellington vocalists as displaying "pinched-tones and heavy vibrato." Actually, he wasn't the only big-band singer in the
Grissom lineage. His uncle
Jimmy Grissom also sang with
Lunceford, and was just about as busy on records as his nephew, with somewhat less negative critical feedback.
Dan Grissom joined the
Lunceford band in 1935 and stayed on through the early '40s. The
Sy Oliver arrangement of "By the River Sainte Marie" was supposedly
Grissom's personal favorite amongst the stacks of songs he interpreted for
Lunceford, though that might not mean it is any less gruesome. It was roughly a decade later that
Grissom joined
Ellington, staying through 1957, and among other accomplishments, recording a version of
Ellington's tune "Love (My Everything)," also known as "My Heart, My Mind, My Everything." Vocal wonder boy
Johnny Mathis was reportedly influenced by
Grissom from this period. Under his own name,
Grissom pitied the "Poor Butterfly" in the mid-'40s with backing from the
Flennoy Trio, a combo led by
Lorenzo Flennoy on piano.
Dan Grissom & the Ebb Tones put out a single on Million in 1955 featuring the song "Recess in Heaven," and there is also a rare Imperial single featuring
Grissom's tribute to the "King of Fools."
–
Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi