Tom Graves (writer)


Thomas Alan Graves is an American journalist, nonfiction writer, and novelist. He is best known as the author of Crossroads, the biography of bluesman Robert Johnson. He is also known for his work as a Producer and Writer for the Emmy-winning film Best of Enemies. He is co-owner of the independent publishing company The Devault-Graves Agency and is a tenured Assistant Professor of English at LeMoyne–Owen College in Memphis.

Education and early career

In 1976, Graves graduated with a B.A. degree in Journalism from the University of Memphis and received the National Observer Award from the faculty as Journalism Student of the Year. He received a regional award in Feature Writing from the Sigma Delta Chi professional journalism society for a profile he wrote of local eccentric Prince Mongo. After graduation he held several positions as an advertising and public relations writer while also writing as a free-lancer for small literary magazines such as Fiction Texas, The Chouteau Review, Southern Exposure, and The New Leader.
Florida novelist Harry Crews was one of Graves’ biggest early influences, and after securing interest from The Paris Review, Graves travelled to Gainesville, Florida in 1979 to interview the gritty and often-alcoholic writer, and obtained one of the longest and most in-depth interviews the writer ever gave, which is now collected in the book Getting Naked With Harry Crews. The Paris Review passed the interview up its editorial chain until it reached George Plimpton, who was the executive editor and final word for the publication. Plimpton turned down the interview simply because he did not like Crews’ “rough” fiction. However, Plimpton thought Graves did an admirable job with the interview and asked Graves to interview Walker Percy, who rarely gave interviews. After several rejections from Percy, Graves gave up on the project and later claimed that it was probably for the best since he was not a great admirer of Percy's work.
After viewing silent film actress Louise Brooks in her film Pandora’s Box and learning more about her on a talk show with Kenneth Tynan who discussed his New Yorker profile of her, Graves felt she would be an excellent subject for a biography. Knowing that Brooks was a recluse who spent most of her time in bed, he nonetheless journeyed to her apartment in Rochester, New York in 1982, hoping to meet her. She reluctantly granted an interview and eventually warmed up to Graves. Brooks gave him authorization to write her biography but withdrew the authorization only weeks later, fearing Graves would expose some of her “secrets.” Graves shelved the work he had done on Brooks for many years, eventually publishing it in 2015 in his anthology Louise Brooks, Frank Zappa, & Other Charmers & Dreamers.
In the early 1980s, after the introduction of the compact disc, Graves was interested in the new digital medium and began to write articles and reviews on CDs for Digital Audio magazine, as well as Goldmine magazine and others. In 1987 he founded and published Rock & Roll Disc magazine, a small-circulation publication that reviewed and rated newly released compact discs. The magazine gained a small but dedicated following due to the quality of its critics and writing. Among many veteran music writers for the magazine were Dave Marsh, Ed Ward, Rich Kienzle, and Stanley Booth. Several writers got their starts writing for Rock & Roll Disc including Michael Azerrad, John Floyd, Dan Heilman, and Rick Clark.
Graves’ writing in Rock & Roll Disc greatly broadened his readership and he soon began to expand his reach to other prominent publications such as Rolling Stone. and The New York Times, and he enjoyed a long tenure with The Washington Post. He was asked to contribute an article to the Oxford American’s first all-music issue. At the same time, quite by accident, Graves had discovered the first entertainer to perform full-time as an Elvis impersonator, Bill Haney of West Memphis, Arkansas. He found Haney to be a fascinating personality and wrote the article “Natural Born Elvis” which was published in the Oxford American all-music issue. Later the article was anthologized in The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing. Graves is now credited with discovering the first Elvis impersonator.

Graduate degree and further career

Rock & Roll Disc magazine ceased publication in 1992. Reluctantly, Graves found employment again as a writer for public relations and communications firms. Quickly tiring of corporate writing despite the income it provided, Graves was urged to return to the University of Memphis to earn an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, which would allow him to teach at the college level. He entered the M.F.A. program in 1995 as the first student to specialize in Creative Nonfiction. In 1998 he published his first book, the novel Pullers, which surprised those readers and colleagues who thought of Graves as strictly a nonfiction writer. The novel was published by Hastings House of Connecticut, although the book was originally signed by a subsidiary of Hastings House, Rosset-Morgan Books, one of whose owners was the legendary publisher Barney Rosset of Grove Press fame. Pullers, although sales were relatively modest, received good reviews and blurbs from the likes of Harry Crews, Charles Gaines, and Dave Marsh. It remains a cult favorite for fans of tough Southern grit-lit.
Following his graduation in 1998 from the University of Memphis with the first M.F.A. degree in Creative Nonfiction in the Creative Writing program, Graves began to teach as an adjunct professor at the University of Memphis and at Mid-South Community College in West Memphis, Arkansas. He accepted an instructorship at a historically black college in Memphis, LeMoyne-Owen College, in 2007 teaching English, Humanities, and Journalism. He received tenure at the college in 2016 and retired from teaching in 2020.
In 2007 Graves published a biography of bluesman Robert Johnson, Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson with DeMers Books of Spokane, Washington. Now considered by many blues scholars the definitive book on the subject, Graves debunked many of the myths surrounding Johnson including the taken-as-gospel tale that Johnson was poisoned with strychnine by a jealous husband. He also corrected the legend of the crossroads and reiterated that the crossroads myth was intended for bluesman Tommy Johnson and not Robert Johnson. The book was hailed by numerous blues and music magazines, blues societies, and blues fans including a ringing endorsement from the notoriously negative Steve LaVere, who controlled the Robert Johnson estate. The book won the Blues Foundation’s prestigious Keeping the Blues Alive Award in Literature for 2010.

''Best of Enemies'' film and Emmy award

In 2010 Graves acquired a video set of the 12 acrimonious debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. that aired on television in 1968 as a part of the ABC network’s Presidential convention coverage. Graves had over several decades attempted to acquire the videos from ABC which consistently turned him down. Graves had wanted to write about the debates ever since he was a freshman in college and had never let the idea slip away. He learned that an associate of Vidal’s had wangled a set of the tapes from ABC, but they were to be exclusively for Vidal’s usage. Graves convinced Vidal’s associate of his good intentions and was allowed to duplicate the tapes. Once received, Graves was even more sure of the value of these now-forgotten debates. He approached the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art about a special screening of the videos, and was accepted. Hoping for at least 100 interested attendees, the show sold out and there was standing room only. Bloggers quickly reported the news that the debates still existed and that the screening had received an eager audience.
Graves’ long-time friend, fellow Memphian and writer/filmmaker Robert Gordon, contacted him about viewing the Buckley-Vidal videos. Gordon asked Graves if the debates might make a good documentary, Graves responded enthusiastically and teamed with Gordon to make the film. Gordon also enlisted his frequent filmmaking partner, Morgan Neville, and the three began interviewing subjects for the project. The film, which later was titled Best of Enemies, took five years to complete and premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in 2015 to laudatory reviews. It was purchased by Magnolia Films and had a successful theatrical run. The film was shown on the PBS show Independent Lens in 2016 and won a News and Documentary Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Historical Documentary in 2017. Graves was credited as Consulting Producer for the film, but, along with Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, was a writer for the film, but uncredited as a writer.

The Devault-Graves Agency and J.D. Salinger book of short stories

In 2012 Graves and his friend Darrin Devault, at the time a professor of Journalism at the University of Memphis, formed a partnership as an independent publishing company, The Devault-Graves Agency. They wanted to explore the emerging market for ebooks but soon became equally interested in publishing print books and audiobooks. In 2013 they debuted an annotated edition of one of Jack Kerouac’s most prominent novels, Big Sur, and followed with two more Kerouac novels Maggie Cassidy and Tristessa. A year later The Devault-Graves Agency made world literary news by publishing the first legitimate J.D. Salinger book in over 50 years, Three Early Stories. The book collected the first two short stories ever published by Salinger and a later one published during his World War II period. The agency discovered through research that those three Salinger stories, unbeknownst to the Salinger estate according to some reports, had fallen into the public domain. However, The Devault-Graves Agency applied for and received a copyright for the book as a unique anthology, thus protecting its Three Early Stories book from others publishing the three stories collectively.
Three Early Stories was also published in six foreign-language editions. The Devault-Graves Agency brought suit against the Salinger Trust for what they termed as interference with their foreign marketing of the book. The agency dropped the lawsuit when they felt that the Salinger Trust would no longer interfere with the book's marketing in those countries where the copyright of Three Early Stories was upheld. The agency also claimed they would not try to market the book in countries where the Salinger Trust still held copyright to the three stories in question. The copyright issues involved in the case have caused it to become an important case in the area of international copyright law.

Later works

The Devault-Graves Agency continues to publish a wide variety of books. In 2015, Graves published an anthology of his best articles and interviews, Louise Brooks, Frank Zappa, & Other Charmers & Dreamers. Also in 2015, Graves, with Darrin Devault, published a photography book, Graceland Too Revisited documenting the ill-fated roadside attraction Graceland Too in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
In another project, Graves adapted 25 of the best-known Aesop's Fables, updating them for contemporary audiences, and recruited Colin Hay, the former frontman for the Australian rock group Men At Work, to narrate the tales. Hay agreed to voice the audiobook and worked with Graves in a recording studio in Memphis. The result was Aesop’s Fables with Colin Hay, published in audiobook and ebook formats, in 2017.
In 2016 Graves began to take cooking lessons from a veteran African-American soul food cook, Larthy Washington. He turned the experience into a book, Cooking With Ms. Larthy, which he is currently completing.
Tom Graves' autobiography White Boy: A Memoir was published on June 1, 2019.

Personal life

Graves has been married twice. He married Denise Maimone, a fellow student at the University of Memphis, in 1977. They had a daughter, Allison, born in 1982, and in 2012 his granddaughter June was born. Graves and Denise divorced in 2000. Graves married a citizen of Senegal, Bintou Ndiaye, in 2004. They were divorced in 2012.
Graves is an avid musician and blues aficionado. He collects and restores vintage guitars.

Works