Biography
Born Melvin Andrew Grayson on 2 February 1929 in Columbus, Ohio, the performer who later recorded as Tibbs died on 5 May 1991 in Chicago, Illinois. Though scarcely remembered today, he played a key role in establishing Aristocrat Records, the company that evolved into both Chess and Checker. His father, Rev. S.A. Grayson, ranked among Chicago’s leading Baptist ministers, and the teenager performed in gospel choirs led by Mahalia Jackson and Ruth Jones, the latter of whom married his brother Robert and adopted the name Dinah Washington. Tibbs modeled his vocal approach on the styles of Roy Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter and Gatemouth Moore. Leonard Chess, then acquiring Aristocrat, first heard him at the Macomba Lounge. At eighteen he cut his debut single, ‘Bilbo Is Dead’ backed with ‘Union Man Blues’; the A-side drew fire for attacking the late Mississippi segregationist senator Theodore Bilbo, while Chicago teamster unions protested the flip. Six further Aristocrat sides followed, among them ‘Married Man Blues’, before he moved to Chess for ‘You Can’t Win’ and to Peacock for ‘Rock Savoy Rock’. An unissued Savoy session preceded a 1956 Atco single made with his brother Kenneth that marked King Curtis’s initial Atlantic date. Tibbs’s final release, ‘Stone Hearted Woman’, appeared on M-Pac! in 1965. He then left music and spent the remainder of his working life at West Electric.