Services will be this Saturday, 11:am at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana.


The guys in the group called him "Cholly Boy".

He was a co-founder of The Ever Ready Gospel Singers over 60 years ago and was their music director, as well. He was the tenor voice on all those great recordings from Duke/Peacock and Sitting In With Records, not to mention Hollywood Records. I had the honor of working with him in the mid-90s on a project designed to document the music of The Ever Ready Gospel Singers.
Back when I worked in TV, Bro. Graves would sometimes drop by to visit with me. I always had a guitar in the corner of my office and I remember once, Bro. Graves picked it up and began playing some back porch slide on it. I was stunned.
He told me, that as a boy, his father took him to the Juneteenth picnic in Comanche, Texas, where he was hoisted on his dad's shoulders to see Blind Lemon Jefferson performing "Shaggy Dog Blues" on top of a picnic table.

I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago about coming out to meet with some folks at The Municipal Auditorium. He said he didn't think he could make it. I was unaware that he had been hospitalized weeks earlier with congestive heart failure.

The Ever Ready Gospel Singers were the first African/American group to perform on KWKH Radio and KTBS Television, as well as the stages of The Municipal Auditorium and The Louisiana State Fair. They seemed to be able to effortlessly cross over any hurdle placed before them.

Cholly Boy, looks like you've just crossed over another one.

Thanks for being a friend and for being a part of my life.