Born in Bowling Green’s Shake Rag district in 1891, Porter Grainger (also called “Harold Gray”) was a Blues and Jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. While not for certain when he started learning to play piano and compose, it was likely during his time living in Bowling Green. By 1912, Porter was living in Louisville, KY working as a waiter. During the early stages of his career as a professional musician, starting around 1916, he lived in Chicago, Illinois. At the time, Chicago was beginning to be exposed to both jazz and blues music which likely helped shape the trajectory of Porter’s career as a cutting-edge blues and jazz composer, bandleader, musician, and piano accompaniment player. However, the peak of his personal recording success occurred while living in New York City when he played piano with Blues legend and pioneer Bessie Smith. Between the years of 1923 and 1928, Porter and Bessie recorded over a dozen sides for Columbia records (just a few years after the first blues song was recorded in 1920 by Mamie Smith). Throughout his career, Porter was an accompaniment to other early female Blues legends including Viola McCoy, Clara Smith, Mamie Smith (the first recorded blues artist), and Victoria Spivey.
While Porter did perform on many recordings, perhaps the most prominent archival traces and tangible evidence of his influence are credits on songs he composed; a few of his compositions became standards in blues, jazz, and other musical genres. One of the most famous Blues/Jazz standards “‘Taint Nobody’s Bizness if I Do,’ ‘ was arranged and composed by Porter and Everett Robins in 1922. The song became a standard that defied music genre lines as it was performed by Billie Holliday, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Ike and Tina Turner, Dianna Ross, Sam Cooke, and The Ink Spots to name a few. Even jazz luminary and American music pioneer Duke Ellington recorded four different compositions of Porter in some of his earliest recordings around 1927/1928.