If you have been lucky enough to catch Canton's Christmas tree lighting celebration in recent years, chances are you heard his voice before you ever saw his face. Joe Gransden, Atlanta's own jazz trumpeter, vocalist, and Big Band leader, has a genuine gift for making any crowd feel like family. He has performed coast to coast, shared stages with Kenny G, and even played live at the White House. But the story that has lately captured hearts far beyond the Atlanta music scene has absolutely nothing to do with the stage.
It started in Buffalo, New York, in 1988. Joe was seventeen and completely taken with a 1979 black Trans Am Y84 Special Edition, the same sleek machine made famous by Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. He worked two summers to save the money. When he finally got behind the wheel, the car became his identity. He raced it, showed it at local shows, drove it to gigs, and spent long evenings cruising with his dad. In 1993, with college costs mounting, Joe made the hardest call of his life. He sold the car for tuition and bought a practical Toyota Corolla. "I missed it all the time, constantly," he would later recall. He tried filling the void with other Pontiacs over the years. None came close.
Then, in 2005, something far more serious occurred. Joe was diagnosed with cancer and spent eight months fighting through two surgeries and eleven rounds of chemotherapy. During these trials, he made himself a promise: if he survived, he would treat himself to two things. The trumpet of his dreams: a handmade 24-karat gold Monette Prana Bb horn. And his childhood Trans Am. He got the horn. The car would take much longer. With no VIN and no paperwork, the search felt nearly impossible. Joe reached out to Rick Deiters of Trans Am Specialties of Florida, who posted photos of the car online. Within a few months, the man who had originally bought the car from Joe saw the post and reached out. He had kept the VIN. That number traced the car to Alabama, where the registration had gone dark in 2002.
Joe hired a private investigator. After months of searching, they found her under a tree in the Alabama hills, untouched for nearly two decades. Joe knew her immediately by a buff mark on the right front fender that he had put there in 1988. He stood there in tears.
After months of negotiation with the family of the car's late owner, Joe bought her back in April 2019. Trans Am Specialties of Florida handled the full restoration, with pandemic delays and a shop fire stretching the timeline by a few years. She arrived at his Atlanta home in the summer of 2024, and when his son Joey watched her pull into the driveway, there were tears of joy all around.
She lives in Joe's garage now, carefully protected and ready to pass to the next generation. And when Joe takes the stage in Canton this holiday season, you will hear a little of that love story in every note he plays.