Biography
Bob Graf exemplified the jazz musician who attained local-hero stature within his native city yet never achieved broader national recognition. A lifelong St. Louis resident, the tenor saxophonist maintained a close friendship with Clark Terry and appeared alongside the trumpeter in a Count Basie-led small ensemble during 1948. Although Lester Young shaped his approach, Graf produced a noticeably harder-edged sound; he made no recordings with Basie’s unit but stayed on the payroll until 1950, at which point Wardell Gray took his chair. Following sessions with Woody Herman’s orchestra in 1950-51, Graf appeared on selected big-band dates that Chet Baker cut for Pacific Jazz in 1956. Throughout 1959 and the early sixties he worked the St. Louis circuit in a unit featuring guitarist Grant Green, then joined Gerry Mulligan’s big band later in the decade. During the 1970s he continued performing on local club stages whenever he was not occupied repairing instruments at a neighborhood music shop. Graf was still in his fifties when he died in 1981, having issued almost nothing under his own name. A performance taped live at Westminster College in St. Louis in 1958 and later reissued by Delmark on compact disc in 1992 as Bob Graf at Westminster affords the only substantial opportunity to hear the saxophonist fronting his own group.
Albums