Biography
Established in 1924, the lineup featured Claude Grant on guitar and vocals, his sibling Jack Grant handling mandolin duties, and fiddler Jack Pierce, with occasional onstage support from blackface comedian Smokey Davis and banjo contributions from Claude Slagle limited to their studio work. During 1927 Jimmie Rodgers invited the musicians to serve as his regular accompanists; after an initial refusal they adopted the name Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers, performed alongside him on several engagements, and were slated to appear on his debut recording dates. Immediately before those sessions they withdrew from the arrangement, resumed their original identity, and launched an independent recording path. The musicians sustained regular radio broadcasts across multiple stations, sometimes billed as the Grant Brothers, until 1954. Their legacy centers on the track ‘The Longest Train’, and Puritan Records released the complete body of their recordings in 1972.