PORT ST. LUCIE PEOPLE
The STEEL DRUM SINGER
Steel drum player James “Jimmy G” Graham also entertains audiences with his singing several nights a week at Conchy Joe’s in Jensen Beach. He performs
Caribbean standards and applies reggae renditions to popular tunes
BY GREG GARDNER
Seeing country singer Johnny Cash walking around
his small Jamaican village, James “Jimmy G” Graham
never dreamed he would sing the reggae version of
“Ring of Fire” for decades.
“People don’t know it, but we love country music in
Jamaica, and Johnny Cash is one of my favorites,” says
Graham, who has played the steel drum and crooned songs
for 28 years at Conchy Joe’s in Jensen Beach. “He used to
walk around my hometown of Falmouth. He sponsored an
orphanage in Rose Hall. I never met him, but I did see him. I
knew his music.”
When Graham was in high school, the government funded
all of the after-school centers in Jamaica with multiple steel
drums so students could take up the instrument. “I started
playing when I was 17 and I fell in love with it,” says the Port
St. Lucie resident. He is entirely self-taught and cannot read
sheet music. He knows the keys and the music scale but plays
GREG GARDNER
completely by ear — as do many steel drum musicians.
Thousands of steel drummers play reggae music around
the country, but very few are also singers. A much smaller
number can take difficult songs from many different music
styles and deliver them in unique reggae renditions.
“These are songs that I have always loved,” Graham says
of the dozen or so numbers he covers in his reggae versions.
He also plays Caribbean favorites such as the classic, “Shame
and Scandal in the Family.”
Graham plays three different songs from Disney movies. “I
try and make everybody happy, even the kids,” he says. “If
someone requests something like ‘Sweet Caroline,’ I go home,
research it and practice it.”
He plays solo on Mondays, and Thursday through Sunday
with his two bandmates — as Rainfall — who also play by
ear and easily pick up new songs, he says.
Graham says he generates about three new songs a month.
>>
Port St. Lucie Magazine 43