Joe Grauso spent the first four decades of the 20th century playing in just about every concievable situation where drums or percussion might be allowed. Like the German percussionist Paul Lovens, Grauso had a background in accounting and book-keeping, a good talent to have in the penny-pinching music business and in Grauso's case an occupation he could fall back on from time to time if opportunities for his drumming talents fell off.

He began performing in 1914 alongside pianist Frank Signorelli and in the latter half of this decade was drumming under the big top of the circus, in roaming carnivals and with various brass bands. In 1918 Grauso formed his own group, the Happy Five Melody Boys, which spent a year performing at a Brooklyn cabaret.

Up until an illness in the late '30s, the drummer kept himself employed in vaudeville theatres, developing flashy paradiddles to suit dancers, comedians and jugglers. Accounting became a form of recuperation as well as employment, a break from carting drum cases and keeping the late night hours of a vaudeville revue. Musically he was back in action in the early '40s as an accompanist to the fine pianist Art Hodes. Grauso was also inspired to put his own group together to work a Forest Hills, New Jersey, club for several years. During the final years of the second World War he was one of the mainstay players at Nick's, a famous trad jazz venue, performing and recording with Miff Mole, Eddie Condon, Muggsy Spanier and others. In the late '40s he joined a group led by Billy Butterfield. His son Robert Grauso also plays drums. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi