George Grantham

Drummer/singer George Grantham is best known as one of the founding members of the band Poco. Born in Wardell, OK, in 1947, Grantham reached his teens long after the advent of the rock & roll era, and just as the 1960s were starting to happen. He discovered that he had abilities both as a singer and a drummer, his ability on the skins matched by an uncommonly good voice. That made him a fairly unusual commodity at the time, and in 1966, at age 19, he entered professional music by joining the Denver-based folk-rock band Boenzee Cryque, succeeding their original drummer, Tad Collier. He and guitarist Rusty Young became close friends as part of the group's second-generation lineup, which had a more psychedelic sound than the original band. The group released a single, "Sky Gone Grey" b/w "Still in Love with You Baby," that was a big enough regional hit to get picked up by the Los Angeles-based Uni label for national distribution -- and it did well enough to justify Uni issuing the band's follow-up, "Watch the Time." All of that activity led to the group's participation on the soundtrack of the movie Psych-Out (which also featured another Uni Records pickup act, Strawberry Alarm Clock), to the tune of one song, "Ashbury Wednesday." Unlike The Alarm Clock, however, who endured numerous personnel changes and lasted into the 1970s, Boenzee Cryque wasn't long for this world as a performing unit -- by the time the movie was out, Young had left the band and moved to Los Angeles, and Boenzee Cryque was history by the middle of 1968. Young fell in with Richie Furay and Jim Messina in working on the final recordings of Buffalo Springfield, out of which a new band -- initially called "Pogo" and later rechristened Poco -- was formed.

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