Tuva, and art rock’s own Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart). In the liner notes to the Gramps disc Same Ol’ Timeously—Vocalisthenics and Stunt Guitar, the recording he resisted making for 35 years (“I did record on 78 RPM records, I even made cylinder recordings. I still have not made a commercial studio album,” he says), Baby Gramps champion Glenn Howard explains, “Gramps does amazing tricks with timing, timbre, tempo, and pitch that no one can hope to imitate, and reinvents himself nightly, never performing a song the same way twice.” Howard calls it jazz “because that’s what it is.”
But even after all of my listening, research, and probing, I can’t say I know what to call his style. Nor do I feel like I know that much more about the cagey-codger Baby Gramps than when I started, though I was definitely entertained and educated by his answers to my questions about the things that have inspired him as an artist. (Okay, so maybe I do know a little more than when I started.) The following is a transcript of an email