He plays his songbook of old-timey songs with the dexterity of an, erm, old-timer (he plays what he calls “stunt guitar” and what others have termed “extraordinary”). No longer “knee-high to a tootsie-wootsie” (as he would say), he’s officially grown into his geezer status. Some date Gramps’ beginnings on the Seattle music scene as far back as the early ’60s. “Before that, I was in Texas by way of Arkansas by way of Alabama,” he told Patrick Ferris in an interview reprinted on Gramps’ website. And though you might be inclined to file Gramps under roots—blues and folk in particular—he’s also found a niche among the rock crowd as a street performer and opening act. I recollect seeing him on every trip I’ve ever taken to Seattle that involved entering a nightclub. I asked my friend, Seattle-based author and journalist Charles R. Cross, for the hometown perspective on Baby Gramps: “He is a Seattle institution, along the lines of the Space Needle, Pioneer Square, and the Pike Place Market.”
Like his music, Gramps hasn’t changed much over the years (though his