T. Graham Brown arrived in Nashville a little over four decades ago, coming from a Southern soul background that fit right in with the changes going on in Music City at that time. Working as a jingle singer before releasing his first album, I Tell It Like It Used to Be, he became a familiar voice on country radio with hits like “Don’t Go to Strangers:” and “Wine into Water.”
“I’m from Georgia and I grew up in soul music,” he said, “and my first band was a soul band. I did a country rock thing in the mid ‘70s, and then I put another soul band together. I came right out of a straight soul band when I moved to Nashville, so yeah, I got a lot of R&B in me.”
Brown is still on the radio, and in a different capacity than might be expected, as the host of a show on Sirius satellite radio, Live Wire. Recorded at Sirius’ studios in Nashville’s AT&T building (the “Batman” building), the show finds Brown on the mic as he plays music by some of his best friends of the past four decades and others. “It’s called Live Wire,” he said, “and I play live cuts from artists’ live albums, that’s what the whole concept is. It’s like going from concert to concert, and I usually do one a month and Sirius airs it 10 times, and then it goes on their app and people can access a big old back catalog of these shows and listen whenever they want. It’s played on this channel called Prime Country, its format is country music from 1980 to 2000. So I pick six artists per show and play some of their live music.”
Brown recently received an Emmy award at the 39th Annual Nashville/Midsouth Emmy Awards for his performance of “Tennessee Whiskey” in “Still Playin’ Possum: Music & Memories of George Jones,”the PBS special celebrating the life of George Jones with singers like Brown, Travis Tritt, Dierks Bentley, Jelly Roll and others. But he has yet to find a place to display the award, as well as other awards he’s won, in his home.
“Yeah, winning that Emmy was pretty crazy, a real honor,” he said. “I got so many things (awards) that I just never have put up, I just I keep saying, Well, one day we’ll make this room into a trophy room or whatever you want to call it. I’ve always kind of felt self-conscious about putting something up on the wall. But you know, I had a friend that came over and said Man, you need to put this up, not for you but for the people that visit you. They want to see this kind of stuff. So maybe I’ll go with that idea.”
Brown is hitting the road soon again for summer dates as he usually does, and in addition to his Nashville hits will probably be performing music from his latest album, the soul-tinged duet record From Memphis to Muscle Shoals. “I was wanting to do a soul music tribute album,” he said, “so I went down to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. I cut fourteen 1960s soul songs, all these songs were either originally cut in Memphis or originally cut in Muscle Shoals. It didn’t start out to be a duets album but I called the late great Sam Moore. Sammy Hagar, Eddie Floyd, got Delbert McClinton singing Mustang Sally, Little Anthony from Little Anthony and the Imperials…so it turned into this thing. It debuted at number one on the blues album charts so I felt pretty good.”
While a lot of Brown’s peers have left the music business, if not this world, he is still going strong. “I’m 70 years old now,” he said. “The Grand Ole Opry made me a member last May after going out there for 40 years, and then we have success with this record, so I’m kind of feeling rejuvenated. I still got a band and a bus and all that hillbilly stuff. I do a little bit of everything.”
You can keep track of Brown at tgrahambrown.com, and on his socials like Facebook and X.
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