Grant began taking piano lessons at the age of ten, and the music that permeated the family home was as diversified as you can imagine. His mother Mildred was a huge fan of classical, symphonic music, Big Band Jazz and Broadway Show albums. So on any particular day, one might get a sound-track of Mozart, Strauss, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong and Rogers and Hammerstein. Grant’s father, Archie was as die-hard country music fan who loved Stompin’ Tom Connors, Jim Nabors, Charlie Rich and Jimmy Rogers. He also loved Nana Mouscuri, Anne Murray and Rita McNeil.
The Simpson children spanned a decade so the pop music was different depending on who was in charge of the record player. From the early folk groups like the Mama and the Papas or the Four Freshmen, Bob Dylan, Beatles, Carol King, Steve Goodman, Grateful Dead, Beach Boys, Leslie Gore, Gordon Lightfoot, Eagles, Boz Scaggs, Billy Joel.
Sunday dinners were spent together with both sets of grandparents at the dinner table and would always end with one of his grandmothers sitting down at the piano and regaling us all with songs from the pubs of Sheffield, or the other grandmother playing us songs from Tin Pan Alley. Music was always the heartbeat of the Simpson home and the cacophony of styles gave him an appetite for a wide variety of music.
