October 19, 2011
Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey

Where are we and who am I talking to?

We’re here at Rutgers University in Newark and you’re talking to Grachan Moncur III.

How did you get your first name, or how did your father get his first name? It’s an unusual name. Do you know?

Uh, there’s quite a history with that name and my family, but I’ll just go for the time being, we’ll start from the Bahamas. My father’s father was Bahamian. He was the first Grachan and then my father was the second, but he was mostly known as “Brother.” People hardly knew his name was “Grachan” until I started recording because all the musicians of his era knew him as “Brother,” Brother Moncur. They didn’t know he was Grachan until the third came out. That’s pretty much where it began.^[1]

And where did your mother’s people come from?

All of my people from my father’s side were from Florida and the Bahamas. The people from my mother’s side were from Newark, her mother and her mother’s mother. So my father came from Miami up here and met my mother.

When were they born and when did they die?

Let’s start from when they met and got married. They met in Newark. They got married. At the time when I was born, my father was working at the Savoy Ballroom and my mother happened to go up and visit him. So she came to New York from Newark to visit him one weekend and I guess those happy feet at the Savoy kind of urged me to want to come out, you know? I decided to come a couple of months early, so I was born a preemie in New York only because it was up to my mother. I was born in New York at Sydenham Hospital, which I’ve very proud to say. I told my mother that was the best things she ever did for me, that I could I say I was born in New York. I was very grateful about that. Although I was raised in Newark, I was born in Sydenham Hospital on Manhattan Avenue and 122nd Street.^[2]

I live on Manhattan Avenue, further down, near 119th Street.

So, anyway, that’s how I came. At an early age my mother… want to know a little history about my mother, something like that?

Sure… whatever you want to talk about.

It’s kind of interesting because my mother inherited a beauty salon at a very early age. I think she started working when she was about eleven years old in this beauty salon. And I think at the time it was called “Theatrical Beauty Salon” and she inherited that beauty parlor with that name and until she died she kept that name.