[1] Working with another pianist and composer Bob Ricketts, in 1926, Grainger wrote and published the book How to Play and Sing the Blues Like the Phonograph and Stage Artists.
[3] Though he would never really be known as an exceptional soloist in his own right,[2] Grainger thrived as an accompanist, working with singers such as Fannie May Goosby,[4] Viola McCoy, Clara Smith, and Victoria Spivey.
[1] Other female blues singers for whom he wrote songs included Gladys Bryant, Dolly Ross, Ada Brown, and his own wife, Ethel Finnie.
Four of these sides, made with his ensemble the Get Happy Band, featured performances by Sidney Bechet (soprano saxophone), Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton (trombone) (Duke Ellington sidemen), and Elmer Snowden (banjo).
A death certificate for him, misfiled under the name "Granger Porter", shows that he died on October 30, 1948, at the age of 57, at home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a result of accidentally choking on his dentures.