CHRIS GRAHAM
In a day and time where the average young gospel artist is seeking to make music to cross over to the radio stations spinning the latest beats by Chris Brown or Ciara, Philadelphia native Chris Graham is sticking with what he knows best: praise and worship styled gospel. His debut CD is a live recording featuring an array of worship songs peppered with elements of funk, jazz and heart-felt emotion.
"I'm ready to go minister to the nations," Graham testifies. "I'm a big fan of jazz and a lot of people are drawn by my vocal skills. I riff and run, scat and do all that and people are still blessed about it. I came up on Dianne Reeves, Jonathan Butler and Rachelle Ferrell on the jazz side. But, most of my influence is from gospel artists like the Clark Sisters and John P. Kee. The O'Neal Twins were awesome. They used to come to our church. They sounded so much alike and it was like they could read each other's minds. They did everything in harmony. One would be on the piano and on stand up singing. All of that gave me my foundations."
His mother also gave him a foundation. Born in 1978, Graham is the younger of two boys. "It was a lot of noise growing up," he laughs. His mom worked as a secretary and provided a middleclass income for the household. Still, "You don't get everything that other kids get. I pretty much wore my older brothers' clothes as hand-me-downs but we made it." Perhaps, the biggest absence in his youth was a steady relationship with his father. "A household with no father in it," he sighs. "You see other kids with both their parents and you see them be able to get what you can't have. I knew my father but he wasn't around. He wasn't really saved but I missed having that fatherly presence."
Graham's father died suddenly and was eulogized on the former's 20th birthday. "That was devastating," he says. His father died in his sleep. A heart attack at the age of 45. When asked if his father ever heard him sing, Graham quietly says the affirmative. "He was proud of that," he says.
No matter what happened in the Graham household, it was music that united them. He and his cousins were always singing at their grandmother's house and eventually had a group named Cousins that sang around the City of Brotherly Love. His mother traveled and sang with the Clara Ward Singer's soprano, Marion Williams, for years. They all attended the same church, B.M. Oakley Memorial Temple C.O.G.I.C, where Williams was a church mother and leader. "She would take me on the road and teach me things. She would have me and my cousin open for her sometimes," he recalls. "She would take me into the studio with her. I learned so much being around her. She called me her grandson."
