While in Europe, he met bandleader Johnny Hamp who signed him as a violinist and vocalist for Hamp’s Kentucky Serenaders Orchestra during the band’s 1930 England tour. Not long after, Graub began singing and playing with the Henry Busse Orchestra. Busse was the bandleader at the Chez Paree Night Club in Chicago owned by notorious gangster boss Al Capone. At Chez Paree, Graub met a singer named Georgia Madelon Baker and they married in Chicago in June, 1933.
Around this time, Graub began billing himself professionally as Carl Grayson, while his new wife billed herself as Madelon Grayson. One night in June 1936, Grayson was spotted by Columbia Studio Chief Harry Cohn singing “Is It True What They Say About Dixie”. Cohn offered Grayson a job on the spot, reported the next day by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as “the quickest contract in film history”. Grayson moved to Hollywood the same year. At Columbia, Cohn visioned Grayson as a replacement for Roy Rogers who wanted out of his Columbia contract to work for Republic Pictures. Columbia billed him as Donald Grayson for several pictures, beginning with Dodge City Trail (1936) and Outlaws of the Prairie (1937) with Donald Grayson singing with the Sons of the Pioneers. Next came The Old Wyoming Trail (1937), Cattle Raiders (1938), and Call of the Rockies (1938). Bob Nolan replaced Grayson as the Sons lead singer, and about as quick as he had been signed, his three-year contact with Columbia was not renewed.
In the meantime, Madelon Grayson appeared in Girls of the Road (1940) and soon thereafter, filed for divorce against her husband, with the Los Angeles Times reporting the couple’s contentious allegations as front page news on March 16, 1940.
Free to return to musical opportunities, Grayson answered the calling from Spike Jones who was actively pursuing unique and talented musicians willing to play and perform his brand of zany musical comedy. The band signed a long-term engagement as the house band for the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles, billing itself the Donald Grayson and His Jonathan Club Dance Band. When Jones recruited clarinetist Del Porter, he brought in members of his band, the Feather Merchants, and the growing new orchestra emerged as Spike Jones and the City Slickers, the name a derivative from an early 1940’s Cindy Walker song called “Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down”.
Jones quickly incorporated Grayson’s vocal talents into songs and routines that included his unique and cartoonish vocal ability of his that became known as “glugging”. The earliest City Slicker recording of this style of vocalization was used in the song Siam (recorded July/August 1942). More famously, Grayson reemployed “gluggling” in “Cocktails For Two” (1945), and the routine was immortalized through a Soundies film version that can be enjoyed on YouTube. His last “gluggling” effort was recorded in “Hawaiian War Chant” released in October 1946.
It was no secret that early member of the City Slickers were heavy drinkers, and when Jones gave up drinking himself, he quickly became intolerant of alcohol abuse among the musicians he employed in his band. As popularity of the City Slickers soared after the release of “Der Fuhrer’s Face”, Grayson was among several members who made a mass exodus in the transition where Jones soon found himself in a better position to pick talent for his band from a broader pool of expert musicians, skillful comedians and multi-talented performers, rather than rely on the comparatively frat house party culture that pervaded among the band’s earlier ranks. Grayson’s alcoholism had become problematic, and he was replaced by clarinet player and equally-competent “gluggist” Mickey Katz in 1946. He played with Eddy Brandt and the Hollywood Hicks, but faded into obscurity, most likely due to pervasive drinking that too often becomes its own fulltime and all-consuming job.
He died in obscurity in April 1958 at age 49 without fanfare or an obituary. The cause of death was said to be liver cirrhosis and cancer. Only a handful of people who remembered him were said to have attended his funeral or memorial service, but there is no published record known. Disposition of his remains may have been assigned through indigent means: a sad ending for this once-talented and promising star whose light faded far too early on this earth...
It was no secret that early member of the City Slickers were heavy drinkers, and when Jones gave up drinking himself, he quickly became intolerant of alcohol abuse among the musicians he employed in his band. As popularity of the City Slickers soared after the release of “Der Fuhrer’s Face”, Grayson was among several members who made a mass exodus in the transition where Jones soon found himself in a better position to pick talent for his band from a broader pool of expert musicians, skillful comedians and multi-talented performers, rather than rely on the comparatively frat house party culture that pervaded among the band’s earlier ranks. Grayson’s alcoholism had become problematic, and he was replaced by clarinet player and equally-competent “gluggist” Mickey Katz in 1946. He played with Eddy Brandt and the Hollywood Hicks, but faded into obscurity, most likely due to pervasive drinking that too often becomes its own fulltime and all-consuming job.
He died in obscurity in April 1958 at age 49 without fanfare or an obituary. The cause of death was said to be liver cirrhosis and cancer. Only a handful of people who remembered him were said to have attended his funeral or memorial service, but there is no published record known. Disposition of his remains may have been assigned through indigent means: a sad ending for this once-talented and promising star whose light faded far too early on this earth...
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