A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Henry Grimes (1935-2020): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, producer, activist, music theorist, and teacher
After over three decades of being "lost," Henry Grimes
made a remarkable comeback. He was born and grew up in Philadelphia,
studying violin while in junior high school and also playing tuba a bit
in high school before settling permanently on bass. Grimes
moved to New York City in the early '50s, studied at Juilliard, and
began playing with major jazz musicians. He toured with the bands of Arnett Cobb and Willis Jackson, and spent time back in Philadelphia, where he worked with Bobby Timmons and Lee Morgan. Grimes worked with Anita O'Day and Sonny Rollins in 1957 and was a member of the Gerry Mulligan quartet in 1957-1958, during the period that Art Farmer was in the band. A very versatile bassist who could play with anyone, Grimes really stretched himself at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival when he performed quite capably with the Benny Goodman big band, Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonious Monk.
But then, in 1967 when he was just 31, Henry Grimes
disappeared completely from the jazz scene. Decades passed and he
became one of jazz's most prominent missing persons. He was long
presumed dead because no one in jazz heard a word from him. So in 2002,
it was a major surprise when Grimes
was discovered living in a hotel in South Central Los Angeles, where he
had resided for the past 20 years. After becoming frustrated with the
music world, Grimes had spontaneously driven to San Francisco with drummer Clarence Becton.
He hocked his bass, which had become weathered after being strapped to
the car roof and crossing the desert, and was essentially unaware of the
musical developments of the past 35 years. Grimes
was discovered by Marshall Marrotte, a social worker and writer, and
was soon interviewed by Sound to Noise magazine. Word went out that Grimes was alive, basically well but destitute, and desired to play bass again. William Parker sent him a bass in December 2002 and since then, Grimes
has regained his form and begun to play in public. He has played at
Billy Higgins' World Stage and the Jazz Bakery in addition to several
other clubs in the Los Angeles area, appeared at the Vision Festival in
New York, and began teaching an improvisation class at a local high
school. His comeback was one of the great jazz stories of 2003, an
unlikely case of a missing figure suddenly re-emerging on the jazz scene
after a 35-year "vacation." He began playing dates and festivals around
the world, released several new recordings, took up the violin, and
even published a volume of Signs Along the Road. Henry Grimes died on April 15, 2020 due to complications from the COVID-19 virus; he was 84 years old.
Master jazz musician (acoustic bass, violin, poetry) HENRY GRIMES has
played more than 600 concerts in 30 countries (including many
festivals) since 2OO3, when he made his astonishing return to the music
world after 35 years away. He was born and raised in Philadelphia and
attended the Mastbaum School and Juilliard. As a youngster in the '50s
and early '60s, he came up in the music playing and touring with Willis
“Gator Tail” Jackson, Arnett Cobb, “Bullmoose” Jackson, “Little” Willie
John, and a number of other great R&B / soul musicians; at Juilliard
he played classical music on bass with the opera orchestra and studied
with the great Fred Zimmermann, principal bassist of the New York
Philharmonic; but drawn to jazz, he went on to play, tour, and record
with many great jazz musicians of that era, including Albert Ayler, Don
Cherry, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Steve
Lacy, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny Rollins,
Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and Rev. Frank
Wright.
Sadly, a trip to the West Coast to work with Al Jarreau
and Jon Hendricks went awry, leaving Henry in Los Angeles at the end of
the '6O's with a broken bass he couldn't pay to repair, so he sold it
for a small sum and faded away from the music world. Many years passed
with nothing heard from him, as he lived in his tiny rented room in an
S.R.O. hotel in downtown Los Angeles, working as a manual laborer,
custodian, and maintenance man, and writing many volumes of handwritten
poetry.
He was discovered there by a Georgia social worker and fan
named Marshall Marrotte in 2002 and was given a bass by William Parker,
and after only a few weeks of ferocious woodshedding, Henry emerged from
his room to begin playing concerts around Los Angeles, and shortly
afterwards made a triumphant return to New York City in May, '03 to play
in the Vision Festival.
Since then, often working as a leader,
he has played, toured, and / or recorded with many of this era's music
heroes, such as Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn
Crispell, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Andrew
Lamb, Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Roscoe Mitchell, David Murray, Amina
Claudine Myers, William Parker, Marc Ribot, Wadada Leo Smith, and Cecil
Taylor. In the past few years, Henry has also held a number of
residencies and offered workshops and master classes on major campuses
(including Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, Hamilton
College of Performing Arts, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
CalArts, Mills College, the University of Gloucestershire at Cheltenham,
and several more). He can be heard on about a dozen new recordings,
made his professional debut on a second instrument (the violin) at
Lincoln Center at the age of 70 with Cecil Taylor, has seen the
publication of the first volume of his poetry, “Signs Along the Road,”
and creates illustrations to accompany his new recordings and
publications. He has received many honors in recent years, including
four Meet the Composer grants and the Lifetime Achievement Award from
Arts for Art / Vision Festival in 2016. He can be heard on 90+
recordings on various labels, including Atlantic, Ayler Records, Blue
Note, Columbia, ESP-Disk, ILK Music, Impulse!, JazzNewYork Productions,
Pi Recordings, Porter Records, Prestige, Riverside, and Verve.
Sadly, at age 83 in the year 2019, the great Henry Grimes is living in a
Harlem nursing home, where he is confined to bed and a wheelchair and
can no longer walk, speak clearly, think straight, hear or see well,
remember things clearly, or do much of anything else. Early signs of
Parkinson's Disease were first observed by Henry's medical team around
12 years ago, and the disease has gotten much worse over those years,
but he continued playing his bass and violin, and once on the bandstand,
his playing was mostly unimpaired up until the last couple of years
(there may have been some extra vibrato, but that's not necessarily a
bad thing with string instruments). But his health care in the nursing
homes (this one and the one he was in before) has not been all that it
should be, and by not walking Henry or letting us walk him or giving him
intensive physical therapy, they and the disease combined have
gradually crippled him. He stopped playing his bass and violin because
he could no longer play with the facility, accuracy, speed, and control
that he had before, and it became too frustrating for him, and it made
him angry and depressed, until finally he decided to stop playing, and
he sent his bass and violin back home. Recently, Henry has acquired a
blood clot (aneurysm) in his right leg and has also started exhibiting
respiratory problems, and he is receiving whatever treatments are
available for him.
Henry's friends, bandmates, and fans in the
NYC area can get to visit him quickly and easily with one or two subway
or bus rides (4, 5, and 6 trains stop right at the nursing home). His
wife Margaret visits him just about every evening and tries to make sure
he is doing well, is getting good care, and does not feel abandoned,
and she tries to get true friends to visit Henry as often as possible.
For information on visiting, contact grimestimes@earthlink.net or musicmargaret@gmail.com or call 212-841-0899 and receive a call-back. Henry's Web page is http://henrygrimes.com. Thank you!
Master jazz musician (acoustic bass, violin, poetry)
HENRY GRIMES has played more than 600 concerts in 30 countries
(including many festivals) since 2OO3, when he made his astonishing
return to the music world after 35 years away. He was born and raised in
Philadelphia and attended the Mastbaum School and Juilliard. As a
youngster in the '50s and early '60s, he came up in the music playing
and touring with Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, Arnett Cobb, "Bullmoose"
Jackson, "Little" Willie John, and a number of other great R&B /
soul musicians; at Juilliard he played classical music on bass with the
opera orchestra and studied with the great Fred Zimmermann, principal
bassist of the New York Philharmonic; but drawn to jazz, he went on to
play, tour, and record with many great jazz musicians of that era,
including Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy
Haynes, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny
Murray, Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor,
McCoy Tyner, and Rev. Frank Wright.
Philadelphia-born bassist Henry Grimes, revered for his
work alongside jazz titans, died April 15 at the age of 84, according to
a report
from WBGO. His death was attributed to complications from COVID-19.
Margaret Davis Grimes, his wife, confirmed the details to the Jazz
Foundation of America, which had been assisting with the bassist’s
medical care at the Northern Manhattan Rehabilitation and Nursing Center
in Harlem.
Onstage or in the studio, Grimes worked with Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Gerry Mulligan, Albert Ayler, McCoy Tyner, Lee Konitz,
Sonny Rollins and Pharoah Sanders, among others. Known primarily for
his bass work, the Juilliard-trained performer also played violin.
Grimes’ debut as a leader, The Call, was released in 1965.
But after a prolific period in New York early in the decade, Grimes
relocated to Los Angeles in 1968. Finding little work, he dropped out of
the music scene altogether and disappeared from public life.
In 2002, a social worker named Marshall Marrotte tracked down Grimes,
who didn’t own an instrument at the time. William Parker eventually
gifted him with a bass, setting in motion one of the most intriguing
comebacks in jazz history.
Grimes went on to play hundreds of concerts, and among his post-comeback albums were guitarist Marc Ribot’s 2014 album Live At The Village Vanguard, which also featured drummer Chad Taylor, and Spirits Aloft, a 2010 duo project recorded with drummer Rashied Ali.
In 2016, Grimes performed at and was the subject of tributes during the Vision Festival. Covering a June 7, 2016, concert
at Judson Church in New York for DownBeat, Ken Micallef wrote, “Every
number was infused by Grimes’ presence. Shifting from bass to violin,
his concentrated stare never changed, even as he was joined by different
musicians. His spirit was as strong and undeniable as his performance.”
DB
Henry Grimes at the Vision Collaborations Festival, 14th Street Y, March 3, 2010
Henry
Grimes met with a hero’s welcome, his first of many, when he lugged an
upright bass onstage at the eighth annual Vision Festival.
This
was May 24, 2003, and the feeling in the room, at Old St. Patrick's
Youth Center in SoHo, was momentously charged. It had been 35 years
since Grimes last played in New York, and for much of that time he’d
been a ghost — an unanswerable whatever-happened-to question, as far as
the jazz world was concerned. Some reference books had actually listed
him as deceased.
His performance that evening,
with fellow bassist William Parker and alto saxophonist Rob Brown,
served notice that Grimes was not only alive but still a vital force —
bowing his instrument with manic clarity, burrowing into the thorny
center of the sound.
It marked the start of a legendary comeback
that stretched more than 15 years, until his death on Wednesday at
Northern Manhattan Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Harlem. His
wife, Margaret Davis Grimes, confirmed the details to the Jazz Foundation of America, which had been assisting with his care. She said the cause was complications from the coronavirus.
Before his disappearing act — which invites comparison with saxophonist Giuseppi Logan, who also died this week, of
a similar cause — Grimes had been a bassist in high demand and even
higher promise. Known both for his versatility and the stout fullness of
his sound, he began to make a mark in the mid-to-late 1950s, on albums
by saxophonists Lee Konitz (yet another casualty of COVID-19 this week), Gerry Mulligan and Sonny Rollins.
Grimes played the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival with Rollins, and is captured in the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day with an ad hoc trio featuring Thelonious Monk and Roy Haynes.
In the ‘60s, Grimes began to branch into a burgeoning avant-garde: he appears on Haynes’ Out of the Afternoon and Gil Evans’ Into the Hot; he anchored the Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet on School Days and the McCoy Tyner Trio (again with Haynes) on Reaching Fourth. Then came a decisive pivot to free jazz, which had become an onrushing force by 1965, the year of Grimes’ first album, The Call.
Credit Francis Wolff
By that point, Grimes had already appeared on several albums by saxophone firebrand Albert Ayler, notably Spirits and Witches & Devils. In ‘65 he played on Ayler’s Spirits Rejoice — along with a handful of other avant-garde touchstones, like Don Cherry’s Complete Communion, Sunny Murray’s Sunny’s Time Now, and Frank Wright’s Frank Wright Trio.
Grimes was a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, which appeared on half of Into the Hot. Taylor’s
fluent yet spiky pianism, and his comfort with atonality, didn’t faze
him in the slightest; he subsequently appeared on Conquistador! and Unit Structures. Each is an essential album in the avant-garde canon, and each represents a high-water mark for early Taylor.
In
1968, Grimes headed for California, in search of sunshine and the
promise of work. Things didn’t work out that way. His bass was damaged
during the cross-country trip, and he sold it. Without an instrument,
gigs were hard to come by, so he did an assortment of construction and
custodial work. He rented a room in a single-occupancy hotel in the most
run-down part of Skid Row in Los Angeles.
Henry Grimes at the Abrons Arts Center,
June 10, 2011. Credit: Peter Gannushkin
/ downtownmusic.net
His
rediscovery came through the tenacious efforts of a social worker named
Marshall Marrotte, who studied court records and other documents in
order to find him in 2002. Grimes owned no instrument, so Margaret
Davis, an advocate for free jazz musicians in New York City, began a
campaign to get him one. This led to William Parker donating one of his
own, a bass he’d stained olive green and finished with coats of
polyurethane, dubbing it Olive Oil.
Grimes would go on to play hundreds of gigs with that instrument, in New York and around the world. Among them was a return to the Vision Festival
in 2004, when he performed in a trio with pianist Marilyn Crispell and
drummer Andrew Cyrille. He also rekindled his musical relationships with
Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon, and forged new ones with a wide range of
admirers, like guitarist Marc Ribot. He could often be seen in the
audience at performances in New York, typically wearing a trademark
headband, with Davis by his side.
Henry Grimes was born in
Philadelphia on Nov. 3, 1935. His first instrument was the violin, which
he picked up again in earnest after his return to performing. He
graduated from the Jules Mastbaum Vocational/Technical School in the
Kensington neighborhood of Philly, and went on to Juilliard in New York,
to study with Frederick Zimmermann, principal bassist for the New York
Philharmonic. (There was no jazz outlet at Juilliard then, and he left
after a year.)
Grimes led a prolific second act — enjoying his
avant-garde eminence, performing on many more Vision Festivals, and
holding the center of gravity in countless improvisational settings. One
of his most fruitful collaborations was with Ribot, who had revered his
work with Ayler. In 2005, Ribot released an Ayler tribute called Spiritual Unity, with Grimes, trumpeter Roy Campbell and drummer Chad Taylor.
In a 2012 interview with Brad Farberman for The Village Voice, Ribot reflected on what made Grimes such an ideal musical partner:
First
of all, he’s a great improviser. Full of ideas. One of the things that
you see in some beginning improvisers are that if you play a note they
have to play the same note just to show, “Hey. See, I heard you.”
[laughs] Henry manages to counterpoint whatever’s going on, but he
doesn’t have that insecure reaction at all. He counterpoints while
following his own trajectory, and it always works.
Marc Ribot, Chad Taylor and Henry Grimes
at The Village Vanguard. Credit John Rogers/ WBGO
Ribot, Grimes and Taylor played a week at The Village Vanguard that year. Reviewing the opening set for The New York Times, I
called it “a rough astonishment, restless and altogether riveting.”
(The first set of the second night was broadcast by WBGO.) Pi Recordings
released an album culled from the run.
Grimes published a book of poems he’d written during his time off the scene, calling it Signs Along the Road.
In a 2012 interview with For Bass Players Only, he reflected on his period of exile.
“I
never gave up on music, not for a minute,” he said. “You could say I
was absent for a long time, but I always believed I would be back one
day. I just couldn’t see the way to get there, but I knew it would
happen.”
This story is part of “Faces of the dead,” an ongoing series exploring the lives of Americans who have died from the novel coronavirus.
In
the 1950s and 1960s, Henry Grimes was one of the most versatile and
admired bass players in jazz. In a single weekend at the 1958 Newport
Jazz Festival, he worked with a who’s who of jazz history and musical
styles, from Benny Goodman to Sonny Rollins, Gerry Mulligan and
Thelonious Monk.
He
went on to become perhaps the leading bass player in the emerging free
jazz movement of the 1960s, anchoring ensembles led by pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist Albert Ayler and trumpeter Don Cherry. He appeared on more than 50 recordings.
After
moving to the West Coast in the 1960s, he simply dropped out of sight.
By the 1980s, some writers and reference books said he had died. But in
2002, a jazz-loving Georgia social worker tracked him down in Los
Angeles, where he lived in a single-room occupancy hotel and worked as a
janitor. He hadn’t played a note of music in more than 30 years.
Henry Grimes performs in New York in 2003. (Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images)
What
followed was one of the most triumphant rediscoveries in music history.
A fellow musician sent Mr. Grimes a bass as a gift, and he practiced
day and night before he slowly returned to form. He moved to New York in
2003, his musical energy and skills as strong as ever, and became a
revered figure in the jazz avant-garde. He performed all over the world,
made numerous recordings, taught at conservatories and was hailed as a
musical visionary whose time had finally come.
“I
never gave up on music, not for a minute,” he told the website For Bass
Players Only in 2012. “You could say I was absent for a long time, but I
always believed I would be back one day. I just couldn’t see the way to
get there, but I knew it would happen.”
Mr.
Grimes was 84 when he died April 15 at a nursing facility in New York
City’s Harlem neighborhood. He had complications related to the coronavirus, said his wife, Margaret Davis Grimes.
As
a student in the 1950s at New York’s elite Juilliard School, Mr. Grimes
studied classical music and played double bass in an opera orchestra.
But he left to concentrate on jazz and soon became one of the most
promising young musicians of his time.
He worked with singers Anita O’Day and Annie Ross. Mulligan, the foremost baritone saxophone player of the era, hired him for his band. He played with Rollins
and other tenor saxophone masters, including John Coltrane, Coleman
Hawkins and Arnett Cobb. He recorded with alto saxophone innovator Lee
Konitz, who also died this month of the coronavirus.
When
he was 22, Mr. Grimes appeared with no fewer than six groups at the
Newport Jazz Festival, including Mulligan, Rollins, eclectic clarinetist
Tony Scott
and Goodman, the biggest swing music star of the 1930s. Mr. Grimes —
his eyes focused in intense concentration — is briefly glimpsed during
his performance with Monk in “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” a celebrated documentary film about the Newport Jazz Festival.
“I
mean, he was phenomenal,” clarinetist Perry Robinson told NPR in 2003.
“He was playing with everybody you could think of, from every genre, you
know. It’s amazing.”
During
the 1960s, Mr. Grimes gravitated toward jazz’s more adventurous outer
edge. When composer and bassist Charles Mingus decided to add a second
bass to his group, he called on Mr. Grimes. He collaborated with drummer
Roy Haynes and with a fellow Philadelphian, pianist McCoy Tyner.
When
Ayler, Cherry and especially Taylor were breaking new ground in jazz,
Mr. Grimes was right beside them, inventing complementary lines to
balance their freestyle improvisations. His first album as a leader,
“The Call,” appeared in 1965.
In
the late 1960s, during a move to California with another musician, Mr.
Grimes’s wooden acoustic bass sustained damage from being strapped to
the roof of the car. He played several gigs with singers Jon Hendricks and Al Jarreau, but when he couldn’t afford to repair his instrument, he sold it.
Mr.
Grimes moved to Los Angeles, was homeless at times and received
treatment for bipolar disorder. He eventually found work in construction
and as a janitor, living in a subsidized hotel in a seedy part of the
city. He spent hours reading and writing poetry and left the world of
music behind.
“You just lived day to day,” he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2010. “There was just today; there was no yesterday.”
In
2002, a social worker from Georgia, Marshall Marrotte, painstakingly
tracked Mr. Grimes through public records. Bassist William Parker, whose
career was deeply influenced by Mr. Grimes, sent him one of his extra
basses, nicknamed “Olive Oil” because of its green finish.
Mr.
Grimes practiced until the calluses returned to his fingers, and slowly
began to appear in Los Angeles clubs and schools. When he reappeared in
New York in 2003, performing at a festival of the avant-garde, he was
hailed as a hero returned from the wilderness.
“It
was moderately difficult to come back into the music world,” Mr. Grimes
told the Jerusalem Post in 2012. “Not because somebody was making it
hard for me but because that’s just the way it is. If you’re
‘avant-garde’ and don’t just stick to the ordinary, some doors do slam
instead of opening. But I’ve had some great people helping me along the
way back.”
Henry
Alonzo Grimes was born Nov. 3, 1935, in Philadelphia. Both parents had
been musicians in their youth but worked in restaurants during Mr.
Grimes’s childhood.
His
first instrument was the violin, and he also learned the tuba, English
horn and percussion instruments before taking up the bass at Jules E.
Mastbaum High School, which has produced many outstanding musicians.
Mr.
Grimes worked with blues musicians and young Philadelphia jazz artists,
such as trumpeter Lee Morgan and pianist Bobby Timmons before studying
at the Juilliard School in New York, where he was mentored by a member
of the New York Philharmonic.
During
his 15-year comeback phase, Mr. Grimes performed in nearly 700 concerts
and led classes at colleges and jazz conservatories around the world.
He reunited with Taylor and worked with dozens of acclaimed musicians,
including saxophonists Joe Lovano, Fred Anderson and Roscoe Mitchell,
pianist Marilyn Crispell and trombonist Roswell Rudd.
“He’s
got a really deep sound, from the very bottom of the bass,” saxophonist
Jane Bunnett told the Toronto Star in 2010. “He swings like crazy, but
he’s also incredibly intense for a man of his age. His stamina is
incredible. After 35 years off the scene, he’s come back with incredible
vengeance and intensity, making up for lost time.”
At age 70, Mr. Grimes occasionally began to play his first instrument, the violin, in concerts and recite his poetry. He appeared on numerous recordings, including two with guitarist Marc Ribot, pianist Luis Perdomo’s “Awareness” (2006) and two duet albums with drummer Rashied Ali,
“Going to the Ritual” (2008) and “Spirits Aloft” (2010). He recorded
several albums as a leader, including “Solo” (2009), and published a
volume of poetry. He gave his final performance in 2018, when he was
beginning to suffer the effects of Parkinson’s disease.
Survivors include his wife since 2007, Margaret Davis Grimes, who was also his manager.
In
2003, when he was returning to music after three decades, Mr. Grimes
was asked to recall his memorable performances and recordings from years
past.
“It’s
a strange thing. Like an effect of battle,” he told the Los Angeles
Times. “Listening to these records I made with all these guys, I
couldn’t remember the place or how I got there playing. But I remember
every note of the music. I mean every note.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Matt
Schudel has been an obituary writer at The Washington Post since 2004.
He previously worked for publications in Washington, New York, North
Carolina and Florida. Follow
Henry Grimes (November 3, 1935 – April 15, 2020) was an American jazzdouble bassist and violinist.
After more than a decade of activity and performance, notably as a leading bassist in free jazz, Grimes completely disappeared from the music scene by 1970.[1] Grimes was often presumed to have died, but he was discovered in 2002 and returned to performing.[
Early life and performing career
Henry Grimes, John Tchicai and Kresten Osgood. (2006)
Gradually growing interested in the burgeoning free jazz movement, Grimes performed with most of the music's important names, including pianist Cecil Taylor, trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonists Steve Lacy, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and Albert Ayler. He released one album, The Call, as a trio leader for the ESP-Disk record label in 1965. The album features Perry Robinson on clarinet and drummer Tom Price and is considered to be representative of his career at that time.
Disappearance and later return
Henry Grimes
In the late 1960s, Grimes's career came to a halt after his move to California. It was commonly assumed Grimes had died; he was listed as such in several jazz reference works. Then Marshall Marrotte, a social worker
and jazz fan, set out to discover Grimes's fate once and for all. In
2002, he found Grimes alive but nearly destitute, without a bass to
play, renting a tiny apartment in Los Angeles, California, writing poetry and doing odd jobs to support himself. He had fallen out of touch with the jazz world and was unaware Albert Ayler had died in 1970, but was eager to perform again.[5] Word spread of Grimes's return, and some musicians and fans offered their help. Bassist William Parker donated a bass[6]
(nicknamed "Olive Oil" for its distinctive greenish color) and with
David Gage's help had it shipped from New York to Los Angeles, and
others assisted with travel expenses and arranging performances.
Grimes's return was featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio. A biography, Music to Silence to Music, was published by Northway Books in London in 2015.
Making up for lost time, Grimes performed at more than two dozen
music festivals or other appearances in 2003. He received a returning
hero's welcome at the free jazz-oriented Vision Festival, and began teaching lessons and workshops for bassists. His November 2003 appearance on trumpeter Dennis González' Nile River Suite was the bassist's second recording in more than 35 years,[7] the first being a JazzNewYork recording of a solo concert that Grimes played on the air from WKCR-FM's studios at Columbia University in New York within weeks of his return to New York. In 2004 he recorded as leader with David Murray and Hamid Drake; and in 2005 with guitarist Marc Ribot, who also wrote an introduction to Grimes' first book, Signs Along the Road, published in March 2007 by buddy's knife jazzedition in Cologne, Germany, a collection of Grimes' poetry
in which he presents his selection of entries from thousands of pages
of his writings during the long years he was not playing music. Also in
2007, Grimes recorded with drummer Rashied Ali, with whom he played a half-dozen duo concerts and a trio with Marilyn Crispell, and in 2008 with Paul Dunmall and Andrew Cyrille,
a co-leader trio called the Profound Sound Trio, among others.
Following his return in 2003, Grimes played at many venues around New
York City and on tour in the United States, Canada, and 30 countries in
Europe, the Far East, and Brazil; often working as a leader, Grimes had
been making music with Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Andrew Lamb, Joe Lovano, Roscoe Mitchell, William Parker, High Priest (from Anti-Pop Consortium), Wadada Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor (with whom Grimes resumed playing in October, 2006 after 40 years), John Tchicai, and many others.
In 2011, the Chelsea Art Museum hosted a re-creation of the performance Black Zero, a happening created in the 1960s by pioneering media artist Aldo Tambellini.
Tambellini performed the multi-media piece on several occasions between
1965 and 1968, often in collaboration with jazz musicians such as Bill
Dixon and Cecil McBee. The performance at the Chelsea Art Museum was produced by Swiss conceptual artist Christoph Draeger, who invited Grimes to join. Grimes played with Ben Morea, accompanying simultaneous slide and film projections by Aldo Tambellini and sound recordings of the late Calvin Hernton's radical poetry.[8]
In all, between Henry Grimes's return to the music world in 2003 and
his 80th year, 2016, he played more than 640 concerts, including many
festivals, in 30 countries.
On June 7, 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Arts for Art/Vision Festival on opening day at Judson Memorial Church in New York City. He stopped performing in 2018, with the relentless progression of the effects of Parkinson’s disease causing severe disabilities.[2]
Death
Henry Grimes died on April 15, 2020, at the age of 84 from complications of COVID-19.[2] The date of his death and its cause were confirmed by his wife, Margaret Davis-Grimes, to the Jazz Foundation of America.[9]
This is Margaret Grimes, heartbroken and devastated because my
beloved husband Henry Grimes has left this life due to a combination of
Parkinson’s Disease and Covid-19, the coronavirus. He was 84 years old
and had been living in a Harlem nursing home, Northern Manhattan
Rehabilitation and Nursing Care.
Henry was a great double-bassist, violinist, published poet, educator, and illustrator. In the late ’50s and throughout the ’60s,
after receiving his music education at the Mastbaum School in
Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in New York City, Henry Grimes
played acoustic bass with many master jazz musicians of that era,
including Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy
Haynes, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny
Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and McCoy Tyner.
Sadly, a trip to the West Coast to work with Jon Hendricks went awry,
leaving Henry in downtown Los Angeles at the end of the ’60s with a
broken bass he couldn’t pay to repair, so he sold it for a small sum and
faded away from the music world.
In Los Angeles without a bass, a vehicle, or a telephone, he was
truly lost. He survived by doing manual labor and redirected his
creative powers into writing poetry. Henry was discovered there in 2002
by Marshall Marrotte, a Georgia social worker and fan, and was given a
rare olive-green Kay bass by fellow bassist / multi-instrumentalist
William Parker, and after only a few weeks of ferocious woodshedding,
Henry emerged from his little room to begin playing concerts around Los
Angeles. He made a triumphant return to New York City in 2003 to play in
the Vision Festival.
Since then, Henry Grimes has played some 600 concerts (including
many festivals), touring in 30 countries throughout North America,
Canada, Europe, and Asia, playing and recording with many of this
decade’s music heroes, such as Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred
Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas,
Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Roscoe Mitchell, David Murray, Zim Ngqawana,
William Parker, Marc Ribot, Wadada Leo Smith, and again, Cecil Taylor.
Henry made his professional debut on a second instrument (the violin) at
the age of 70, published the first volume of his cosmic poetry, “Signs
Along the Road,” and created illustrations to accompany his recent
recordings and publications.
He has received many honors in recent years, including four Meet the
Composer grants and a grant from the Acadia Foundation. He also held a
number of recent residencies and offered workshops and master classes on
major campuses, including Berklee College of Music, CalArts, Hamilton
College, Mills College, New England Conservatory, the University of
Gloucestershire at Cheltenham, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
and several more. Henry Grimes can be heard on 85 recordings, including a
dozen recent ones, on various labels (Atlantic, Ayler Records, Blue
Note, Columbia, ESP-Disk, ILK Music, Impulse!, JazzNewYork Productions,
Pi Recordings, Porter Records, Prestige, Riverside, Verve). He had been a
permanent resident of New York City since 2003. He was and always will
be beloved and revered by fellow musicians, music lovers, bandmates,
family, friends, and fans everywhere, for all time.
Henry’s archives are presently being set up at the New York Library
for the Performing Arts on the Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan (NYC)
under curator Jonathan Hiam, and once the quarantines are over and it’s
safe to gather once again, everyone will be able to view, see, hear, and
appreciate the many brilliant artistic endeavors of Henry Grimes on
exhibit there. Thank you.
As of the beginning of 2016,
master jazz musician HENRY GRIMES (acoustic bass, violin, poetry,
illustrations) had played more than 615 concerts in 31 countries
(including many festivals) since 2003, when he made his astonishing
return to the music world after 35 years away. He was born and raised
in Philadelphia and attended the Mastbaum School (1949-52) and Juilliard
(1952-54). As a youngster in the ’50’s and early ’60’s, he came up in
the music playing and touring with Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson, Arnett
Cobb, “Bullmoose” Jackson, “Little” Willie John, King Curtis, and a
number of other great R&B / soul musicians; but drawn to jazz, he
went on to play, tour, and record with many great jazz musicians of that
era, including Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Benny Goodman, Coleman
Hawkins, Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus, Thelonious
Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders,
Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, and McCoy Tyner. Sadly, a trip to the West
Coast to work with Al Jarreau and Jon Hendricks went awry, leaving Henry
in Los Angeles at the end of the ’60’s with a broken bass he couldn’t
pay to repair, so he sold it for a small sum and faded away from the
music world. Many years passed with nothing heard from him, as he lived
in his tiny rented room in an S.R.O. hotel in downtown Los Angeles,
working as a manual laborer, custodian, and maintenance man, and writing
many volumes of handwritten poetry. He was discovered there by a
Georgia social worker in 2002 and was given a bass by William Parker,
and after only a few weeks of ferocious woodshedding, Henry emerged from
his room to begin playing concerts around Los Angeles and shortly
afterwards made a triumphant return to New York City in May, 2003 to
play in the Vision Festival. Since then, often working as a leader, he
has played, toured, and / or recorded with many of this era’s musical
and literary heroes, such as Chris Abani, Rashied Ali, Geri Allen,
Marshall Allen, Barry Altschul, Fred Anderson, Tatsu Aoki, Newman Taylor
Baker, Billy Bang, Harrison Bankhead, Amiri Baraka, Joey Baron, Hamiet
Bluiett, Dave Burrell, Roy Campbell Jr., Alex & Nels Cline,
Cooper-Moore, Marilyn Crispell, Connie Crothers, Ted Curson, Andrew
Cyrille, Thulani Davis, Toi Derricotte, Bill Dixon, Pierre Dorge, Hamid
Drake, Paul Dunmall, Cornelius Eady, Kahil El’Zabar, Douglas Ewart,
Bobby Few, Charles Gayle, Melvin Gibbs, Yoriyuki Harada, Craig Harris,
Graham Haynes, Karma Mayet Johnson, Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Andrew Lamb,
Nathaniel Mackey, Maria Mitchell, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell,
Elaine Mitchener, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Meredith Monk [recording only],
Jemeel Moondoc, Jason Moran, David Murray, Sunny Murray, Amina Claudine
Myers, Zim Ngqawana, Kresten Osgood, William Parker, HPrizm (High
Priest, Kyle Austin), Odean Pope, Avreeayl Ra, Tomeka Reid, Vernon Reid,
Marc Ribot, Matana Roberts, Orphy Robinson, Brandon Ross, Lee Mixashawn
Rozie, Mark Sanders, Rasul Siddik, Wadada Leo Smith, Warren Smith,
Tyshawn Sorey, Sekou Sundiata, Tani Tabbal, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Aldo
Tambellini, Greg Tate, Cecil Taylor (reunion), Chad Taylor, John
Tchicai, Pat Thomas, Henry Threadgill, Edwin Torres, Dwight Trible, Jeff
“Tain” Watts, Ed Wilkerson Jr., James Zollar, John Zorn, and too many
others to list here. In the past few years, Henry has also held a
number of residencies and offered workshops and master classes on major
campuses, including: Berklee College of Music (Boston); Buffalo Academy
for Visual & Performing Arts (upstate New York); CalArts, hosted by
Wadada Leo Smith (Valencia, California); the Carlucci School, with
Andrew Lamb and Newman Taylor Baker (Portugal); Hamilton College of
Performing Arts, with Rashied Ali (upstate New York); Humber College
(Toronto); JazzInstitut Darmstadt (Germany); Mills College, hosted by
Roscoe Mitchell (Oakland, California); New England Conservatory (Boston,
Massachusetts); Scuole Bruscio and Scuole Poschiavo (Switzerland); the
University of Gloucestershire at Cheltenham (U.K.); University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois; University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor; and several more. Henry can be heard on about a dozen new
recordings, made his professional debut on a second instrument (the
violin) at the age of 70 alongside Cecil Taylor at Lincoln Center, has
seen the publication of the first volume of his poetry, “Signs Along the
Road,” by a publisher in Cologne, and creates illustrations to
accompany his new recordings and publications. He has received many
honors in recent years, including four Meet the Composer grants. Mr.
Grimes can be heard on 90+ recordings on various labels, including
Atlantic, Ayler Records, Blue Note, Columbia, ESP-Disk, ILK Music,
Impulse!, JazzNewYork Productions, Pi Recordings, Porter Records,
Prestige, Riverside, and Verve. He is the subject of a new biography
published in London, “Music to Silence to Music: A Biography of Henry
Grimes” by Dr. Barbara Frenz, with a beautiful foreword by Sonny Rollins
(http://tinyurl.com/h9f8mo4).
And on July 7th, 2016, Henry received a Lifetime Achievement Award and
played a full evening of concerts with groups of his own choosing in the
Arts for Art / Vision Festival at Judson Memorial Church in New York
City , where he had also played and recorded with Albert Ayler’s group
back in the ’60s. Henry Grimes is now a permanent resident of New York
City and welcomes students here.
[This bio last updated Dec., 2016.]
FULL-LENGTH BIO
THE MIRACULOUS RETURN OF
THE GREAT HENRY GRIMES!
There’s a great new musician now living, working, and
teaching in New York City. He’s new, but he has tremendous musical
knowledge, unsurpassed credentials, and the highest levels of artistry
at his command.
Who can this be?
Master bassist Henry Grimes,
missing from the music world since the late ’60’s, has made an
unprecedented comeback after receiving the gift of a bass (a green one
called Olive Oil!) from fellow bassist William Parker in December, ’02
to replace the instrument Henry had given up some 30 years earlier.
Between the mid-’50’s and the mid-’60’s, the Juilliard-educated Henry
Grimes played brilliantly on some 50 albums with an enormous range of
musicians, including Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Benny Goodman, Coleman
Hawkins, Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus (yes,
Charles Mingus), Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny
Rollins, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor,
Charles Tyler, McCoy Tyner, Rev. Frank Wright, and many more … and then
one day in 1968, Henry Grimes left New York in a car driven by drummer
Clarence Becton and rode to San Francisco with his bass strapped to the
car roof to work with Jon Hendricks, Al Jarreau, and others. When these
gigs were over, and not finding enough work in San Francisco to survive,
Henry took his bass (by then developing cracks from having spent
several days baking on top of the car in the desert) to Los Angeles,
finding some music work at first while living in a house with pianist
Lamont Johnson and a group of musicians working with Lamont and all
following Scientology. Henry did not want to join Scientology, and the
group eventually closed the house and left town without him. Henry’s
bass was now no longer playable, so he took it to a repair man, who gave
him a high price for the necessary work, and since Henry was unable to
pay, the repairman gave him a small sum for the bass instead, Henry
apparently believing he’d be able to get it back after a while. Sadly,
this turned out not to be the case.
Many years passed with nothing
heard from the great Henry Grimes, as he lived in a tiny rented room in a
single-room occupancy hotel in downtown Los Angeles and sustained
himself with survival work not related to music (construction,
maintenance, janitorial, etc.), writing many handwritten books of
poetry, philosophy, and metaphysics, and studying yoga. Yet after only a
few short weeks with his new bass from William Parker, Henry Grimes
emerged from his tiny room to begin playing concerts with Nels and Alex
Cline, Joseph Jarman, and others at Billy Higgins’s World Stage, the
Howling Monk, the Jazz Bakery, and Schindler House in the Los Angeles
area in early ’03. On his triumphant return to New York City in May of
that year, Henry Grimes played as special guest on two nights of the
six-night Vision Festival, gave live concerts and lengthy interviews on
the air daily during a five-day WKCR Henry Grimes Radio Festival, and
offered a bass clinic before 50 New York-area bassists who haven’t
stopped talking about him since.
Henry
Grimes moved back to New York in July of ’03, and since then, in many
venues around New York and on tour in the U.S., Canada, the Far East,
and 20 countries in Europe, he has been making music with master
musicians of today such as Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson,
Marilyn Crispell, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas,
Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Andrew Lamb, Joe Lovano, Bennie Maupin, David
Murray, William Parker, Charli Persip, Marc Ribot, John Tchicai, Oluyemi
Thomas, Cecil Taylor, and many more. Since his return, he has held
residencies and / or taught workshops and master classes at David Gage’s
shop, Berklee College of Music, City College of New York, Bard College
(upstate New York), JazzInstitut Darmstadt (Germany), New England
Conservatory, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Scuole Brusio and
Scuole Poschiavo in Switzerland (Uncool Festival), second-grade
students at the Carlucci School in Sintra, Portugal (see some very dear
photos and commentary at caislisbon),
and the University of Gloucester at Cheltenham (U.K.), among others. At
the age of 70 at Lincoln Center with Cecil Taylor, Henry made his
professional debut on a second instrument, the violin, and at 71 he
became a published author for the first time with his book “Signs Along
the Road” (released in Cologne and available from Small Press
Distribution, spdbooks).
To the astonishment and joy of
all, Henry Grimes is playing at the very height of his artistic powers
(or indeed anyone’s), surpassing himself and all expectations! He is
still healthy and strong, and his gentle, humble bearing and courageous
life story have inspired all those privileged to know him, hear him,
play music with him.
Henry
Grimes was named “Musician of the Year” by “All About Jazz / New York”
in ’03; he’s received three prestigious Meet the Composer awards; he’s
twice been nominated for an “L.A. Weekly” Best Jazz Artist Award. Since
his return to the music, he has been featured in virtually every major
press outlet around the world, including National Public Radio, ABC-TV
News, the BBC, “The New York Times,” “All About Jazz,” “Downbeat,”
“JazzTimes,” “Signal to Noise,” “Time Out Chicago,” “Time Out New York,”
“The Village Voice,” and hundreds more throughout the world.
In addition, Henry’s trio with
Andrew Lamb and Newman Taylor Baker was named best jazz trio of the year
by “NYPress” in ’04; Jez Nelson of BBC Radio’s “Jazz on 3” chose the
Henry Grimes Quartet’s performance in Vision Festival ’05 one of the
year’s dozen best live broadcasts; the Jazz Journalists Association
nominated Henry Grimes for “Acoustic Bassist of the Year” (’06), the
other nominees in this category being Ron Carter, Charlie Haden, Dave
Holland, Christian McBride, and William Parker; Henry strolled onto the
“Downbeat” critics’ poll for bassists at #12 in 2006 (many of the others
having learned from Henry to begin with, as they’ll tell you themselves
if you ask them); and the Cecil Taylor Trio with Henry Grimes and
Pheeroan akLaff was designated a critic’s choice for one of the 10 best
concerts of the year by “All About Jazz” at the end of ’06 (thanks, Russ
Musto!), and another by the same trio by “Time Out New York” at the end
of ’07 (“Chalk it up to [Cecil Taylor’s] reunion with bass heavy Henry
Grimes and four-on-the-floor drummer Pheeroan akLaff”).
So fans, if you’re anywhere
within reach of a Henry Grimes concert … buy a ticket and be there!
Musicians, clubs, schools, festivals: When you’re looking for a great
teacher, master musician, powerful bandleader, eloquent poet, brilliant
improviser… please get in touch with Henry Grimes!
HENRY GRIMES: PAST & PRESENT
A story in TWO parts
Part 1
A Lost Giant Found
by Michael Fitzgerald
[An edited version of this essay
appeared in Signal To Noise magazine, Winter 2003 issue, accompanied by
a 2002 interview of Henry Grimes conducted by Marshall Marrotte.]
In an age when giants of jazz
depart from this life on a regular basis, a resurrection is unheard of.
Yet this is what has come to pass. Henry Grimes was rediscovered in
autumn 2002, over thirty years after he left the music world. He was
long the subject of rumor and speculation, and in 1986 Cadence Magazine
even reported Grimes as having died “in late 1984.” However, as Mark
Twain once said, these reports of his demise were “greatly exaggerated.”
Photo by Francis Wolff
For about a decade, Henry Grimes
was one of the most in-demand bassists on the jazz scene. Beginning in
1957, he worked extensively in the groups of baritone saxophonist Gerry
Mulligan and tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins. While continuing to
associate with more mainstream players, in 1961 Grimes performed on
pianist Cecil Taylor’s recording session for the Impulse label (issued
as Gil Evans: Into the Hot) and worked with clarinetist Perry Robinson.
In 1963 he renewed his relationship with Sonny Rollins, joining a group
that also included trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins, both
formerly with saxophonist Ornette Coleman’s quartet. This moved Grimes
more into the realm of the experimental and as the sixties progressed,
he played with the influential avant-garde tenor saxophonists Albert
Ayler, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders, as well as with Cherry and
Taylor. He also participated on numerous important recording sessions
for the ESP and Impulse labels. At the height of his activity and
without warning, he left New York for the west coast and the seemingly
final documented appearance of Grimes was in April 1969 in San Francisco
as part of saxophonist Archie Shepp’s ensemble which performed at the
Both/And club. Following that, he dropped off the jazz radar screen.
Until very recently, the curious death notice in Cadence closed the book
on a great creative musician.
Henry Grimes was a significant
player who stood out due to the strength of his sound and his
exceptional bowed work, developed through classical studies at the
Juilliard School of Music. He was born November 3, 1935 in Philadelphia,
home to an outstanding musical community. His twin brother Leon played
clarinet and tenor saxophone and their older sister owned a record
player, making her an important figure in their circle.
[ADDENDUM from Margaret Davis
Grimes: Henry Grimes grew up at 17th and Fitzwater / Christian /
Carpenter in south Philadelphia and attended Arthur Elementary School on
Catharine & South 2Oth St’s, then Barrett Junior High at 16th and
Wharton, then Mastbaum Technical High School at Frankford & East
Allegheny Ave., and then the Juilliard School in New York City. His
father, Leon James Grimes, Sr., played trumpet and his mother, Georgia
Elzie Grimes, played piano before Henry was born, and Henry believes
they both played professionally but that at some point they both decided
to stop playing music, for reasons they never explained, and he doesn’t
remember ever hearing them play. His maternal grandparents had a small
farm somewhere in New Jersey with chickens and a vegetable garden, and
he remembers them as old-fashioned people, and strict. He has no
memories of his father’s parents, other than one of his grandfathers
enjoyed making clocks, but he couldn’t make a living at it and didn’t
have much time to spend on it. In Henry’s childhood, both his parents
worked in Horn & Hardart Automats around 15th St. and 9th St. in
Philadelphia, his father as a cook and his mother cleaning. There was a
piano in the house, but the only person Henry remembers playing it
(other than himself) was the great pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali as a youngster
(later “the Legendary Hasaan”), who roamed from house to house playing
people’s pianos.]
Bebop was the music of the day,
and Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clifford Brown were favorites.
[ADDENDUM from Margaret: When Henry was a youngster, he attended his
older sister’s graduation from her all-girls’ high school (he was 12,
his sister 18), and the school orchestra played, and young Henry was
overwhelmed by the sound of the violins — as well as the beauty of all
those “older women” in their long formal gowns — and he began longing to
play a violin of his own and went home and told his mother he needed to
have one. His parents found a local violin teacher named Carl Whitman,
and Mr. Whitman came to the house carrying a “banged-up fiddle” for
Henry. To Henry’s memory, he studied violin with Mr. Whitman from about
age 12 to 16, and after that with a Hungarian violin teacher whose name
he remembers as Luba Hiawatha (!), up until he went to Juilliard and
devoted himself entirely to the bass.]
Henry began his musical career
at Barrett Junior High School in south Philadelphia, where he met
drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, pianist Bobby Timmons, and trumpeters Ted
Curson and Wilmer Wise. The bass had not yet entered the picture, and
Grimes was playing violin in both the school orchestra and in jazz
groups outside of school. Wise recalled one of the earliest of these
extracurricular units. “The first band I played in was a band called the
Barsity Boys, like ‘varsity’ but spelled with a B – why? I don’t know.
The personnel was… a fellow named Edward Gregg played on my trumpet
case, Henry, I think played the violin. He was a violinist when I first
met him. And Leon played clarinet. And it must have been a godawful
sounding group.”
Soon after this, Grimes was
performing with more professional ensembles. While Leon Grimes and
Wilmer Wise attended Bok Technical High School, Henry studied at
Mastbaum Technical High School in northeast Philadelphia, alongside
trumpeters Lee Morgan and Ted Curson. The school’s curriculum was very
demanding, on the level of college programs, and students studied
harmony, solfeggio, orchestration, and ear training. It was at Mastbaum
when he was around 15 that Grimes added the bass to his musical
arsenal. He had been playing a school bass and was sometimes permitted
to take it home, but he began wanting his own bass. He remembers his
parents taking him to a Wurlitzer store where there was one brand-new
Kay bass for sale, and his parents bought it for him. He was almost
immediately a first-class bassist and was selected for the all-city
orchestra, which performed challenging symphonic literature.
Ted Curson commented that while
Henry was somewhat introverted, his artistic abilities extended beyond
the musical sphere and made him a popular figure in high school. “He
wasn’t a really talkative guy. I don’t remember him maybe saying a
hundred words. But even through school, he did something that no one
else did. He had a comic strip. He was a great artist and had a good
sense of humor. He had all of us in this comic strip. And we’d be
waiting for the end of the week for it to come out. He had us like
hanging by our fingernails waiting to see what he was…. Henry definitely
had this comic strip all through Mastbaum and it was wild! A lot of
stuff you agreed with, a lot of this stuff made you angry. But that’s
the way it was! He was the only one I knew that had something like that.
He’d draw the pictures of you and put all the text in and it would be
passed all around school.” This appreciation of cartoons did not end
there, as Grimes titled his later compositions “Farmer Alfalfa” and “Son
of Alfalfa” after an animated character.
At Juilliard (1952-54), Grimes
played bass with the opera orchestra and studied with the great
classical bassist Fred Zimmermann of the New York Philharmonic. Henry
was also working jazz engagements with artists such as Anita O’Day and
it was while performing with her at the Red Hill Inn in Pennsauken, NJ
that Grimes was heard by Gerry Mulligan. Upon leaving Juilliard and
moving to New York City, the Mulligan quartet was the next big step for
Grimes. In the span of just a few weeks, they recorded several albums
for the Pacific Jazz label including meetings with trumpeter Chet Baker
and with vocalist Annie Ross.
From
the Gerry Mulligan quartet, Grimes joined another piano-less group,
this one led by Sonny Rollins, who was working in a trio format.
[ADDENDUM from Margaret: In April of 1958, due to a delay in Paul
Chambers’s arrival in Cleveland, Henry Grimes played a couple of dates
there at the Modern Jazz Room in a Miles Davis-led group that also
included John Coltrane, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Bill Evans, and
“Philly” Joe Jones.] Also that year, at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival,
Grimes played with no fewer than six groups: Benny Goodman, Lee Konitz,
Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, and Tony Scott. And
though Henry’s name never even appeared in the festival’s printed
program, “New York Times” critic Bosley Crowther took note of the
remarkable young bassist and listed him as one of the festival’s primary
players. (Henry can be seen in the film “Jazz on a Summer’s Day”
playing with Thelonious Monk and Roy Haynes, and the photo above is a
screen shot from that film.)
Gerry Mulligan
also performed that year, and Grimes’s replacement in the bass position,
Bill Crow, recalled Grimes working hard to keep up with the
saxophonist. “He sounded very good to me. He seemed rather shy and it
was not easy to draw him out or hang out with him because he didn’t have
much to say. He looked like he was suffering a little with Sonny
because Sonny had cut the group down. But I thought Henry was doing
yeoman work, hanging in there with Sonny. That was a hard combination.
It looked like he would have liked to have a piano player (laughs).”
Photo by Riccardo Schwamenthal / CTS Images
After Newport, Henry Grimes was
working extensively with Sonny Rollins. They recorded and then toured
both the USA and Europe. A number of broadcast recordings document their
time together. Grimes’s solid musical training allowed him to bridge
the span between very conservative forms of jazz and the cutting edge
free music. In this period, he worked in venues such as New York’s
Prelude Club and the Hickory House in piano trios led by Billy Taylor
and John Bunch. He appeared on classic albums for Impulse with Roy
Haynes and McCoy Tyner.
In 1963, Sonny Rollins took a
huge step away from the mainstream when he added Don Cherry to his
group. With this quartet Rollins again toured Europe, being broadcast on
the radio frequently. The influence of Ornette Coleman was strong and
Grimes fit perfectly in the freer setting. Upon returning to the United
States, the Rollins group played at the Newport Jazz Festival and made a
landmark recording for RCA Victor, both with the father of the tenor
saxophone, Coleman Hawkins.
When Albert Ayler made his first
recordings in America in 1964, Grimes was present and joined Ayler
again for the Spirits Rejoice album, recorded in 1965. On the latter,
Grimes worked as part of a two-bass team with Gary Peacock. Such a setup
became more frequent during this time and Grimes also performed in this
tandem configuration with Bill Folwell, Alan Silva, J-F Jenny-Clark,
and Charlie Haden. He was flexible in playing pizzicato or arco and
worked well no matter which was his partner’s strength.
The 1964 sessions by Ayler show
the saxophonist fully developed in his style and moving between original
compositions like “Witches and Devils” and “Saints” and traditional and
contemporary spirituals like “When the Saints Go Marching In” and
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Ayler’s intense personal sound and
conception made a huge impact on the musical community and as Bill
Folwell said recently, “I think people are still scratching their heads
trying to figure it out.”
Photo by Hans Harzheim
Perry Robinson had met Grimes in
the late 1950s at a New York jam session and had kept in touch with
him, visiting the bassist regularly after Grimes had moved to New York.
They had recorded Funk Dumpling for Savoy in 1962, which features their
compositions almost exclusively. A short time later the two worked
together at Birdland along with pianist Richard Wyands. Over the next
few years, there was much opportunity for discussion and Robinson
recalled Grimes analyzing his bass playing. “Henry said that when he
played he used to imagine himself walking on an endless conveyor belt,
just constantly moving forward at a regular pace. Because what is it to
swing? It’s a magic momentum that’s always moving; you’re walking, but
at the same time you’re being conveyed because the rhythm is carrying
you.” [from Perry Robinson: The Traveler by Perry Robinson and Florence
Wetzel]
Beginning in 1965, Grimes,
Robinson, and drummer Tom Price shared an apartment in the East Village
at 272 E. 3rd Street between Avenues C and D (with Slugs’ a block away
at 242 East 3rd St.). It was there that they developed their musical
concepts, jamming together almost every day. Price says, “So much so
that people began to complain after a while (laughs).” They were joined
by neighborhood friends such as trumpeter Marc Levin and saxophonists
Archie Shepp and Frank Wright. They also met the drummer Frank Clayton
and his wife, vocalist Jay Clayton. Grimes was working steadily with
clarinetist Tony Scott at The Dom, a nearby club, and the environment
was fertile for creative expression.
In 1965 Henry Grimes also played
at the Village Vanguard, New York’s great jazz basement, in a Cecil
Taylor-led trio with drummer Andrew Cyrille in July (as described in
“DOWN BEAT” Magazine of 8/26/65, page 16), and in a Tony Williams-led
trio with saxophonist Sam Rivers in September (DOWN BEAT, 11/4/65, page
14). According to Cyrille, what set Grimes apart was “his sound,
musical intelligence, creativity, and talent.”
Pharoah Sanders & Henry Grimes, photo by Ray Ross, Five Spot, mid-’60s
Pianist Burton Greene explained,
“Henry was in my first quartet that recorded for ESP with Marion Brown.
He was also on a legendary gig I’ll never forget that I did with Albert
Ayler, Rashied Ali, Marion, and Frank Smith on tenor sax at Slugs’
Saloon on the lower east side of New York back in ’65 or ’66. Henry
pulled the strings like a lion. He once showed me the calluses on his
fingers that must have been almost a half an inch thick! He had the
biggest sound in the business. Henry had a bigger sound in the days
before amplifiers than all the cats you hear today with amplification!
And he had the heart and the personality, too.”
As well as recording for ESP and
Impulse, Grimes participated in some of the most important avant-garde
recordings made by the Blue Note label and all of Cecil Taylor’s and Don
Cherry’s Blue Note recordings include Grimes. The autumn of 1966 was
exceptionally fruitful, with what are now considered to be essential
historical albums being recorded every week or so: Don Cherry’s Symphony
for Improvisers and Where is Brooklyn?, Cecil Taylor’s Conquistador,
all on Blue Note, and Pharoah Sanders’s Tauhid on Impulse. On each, he
adds to the power and beauty of the music. As Taylor once said, “Henry’s
a giant.”
In this period, Henry Grimes
also became involved in the civil-rights and Black Power movements and
spent dedicated time in the mid-’60s in the clubs and at Babatunde
Olatunji’s Center for African Culture on East 125th St., co-founded with
John Coltrane, where Cecil Taylor and Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)
convened many of the greatest minds in the Black Arts world to create /
join / lead the movement forward from civil rights into Black Power. The
musicians played fund-raising concerts and collaborated with poets and
writers at the Center and elsewhere, and some also participated in
political strategy meetings. Both Cecil Taylor and Amiri Baraka brought
Henry Grimes in. Two important documents from 1963 crediting him for
his civil-rights work are shown below.
Even with such great artistic
success in the ’60s, the financial realities were bleak, and Grimes was
coming to grips with long-term personal issues that would radically
change his life. He abruptly moved to California in 1967 and continued
playing for a short time in San Francisco, but gave up the bass entirely
when he relocated in Los Angeles about a year later, his bass having
been damaged in transit. In her masterpiece, As Serious As Your Life,
Valerie Wilmer wrote, “Henry Grimes, who was, with Charlie Haden, the
other great bass player of this era, went to California and became
involved in acting before he, too, disappeared,” and in the most recent
reprinting (1999), Wilmer’s preface reads: “And, although details have
never emerged, it is generally believed that Henry Grimes died in
California in the 1970s.” Communication with his colleagues ceased and
his whereabouts were unknown to those in the musical community. Rumors
spread over the next thirty years but were mostly silenced by the
cryptic announcements in the spring of 1986 that he was ‘reported’ to
have died in late 1984. The idea that Grimes might still be living in
Los Angeles circulated around early 1999, but there was no confirmation
immediately forthcoming. During all this time, his fellow musicians as
well as music fans all over the world frequently wondered what had
happened to him. Only now do we have the answer.
Those musicians who have learned
of Grimes’s rediscovery are elated and are happy to reminisce about
their past encounters. Burton Greene summed up the musical philosophy of
the time: “All of us that had the chance to play with Henry remember
how he could help kick a band out to the outer stratosphere and back,
which of course was just what the explosive sixties were about. We
weren’t there to be a slave to forms like so much banal, predictable,
yuppie ‘jazz’ of today, or to ‘recreate the museum,’ as Cecil Taylor
calls it. On the contrary, what we set up had the amazing energy and
creativity which blew those forms apart and perhaps created new forms to
be exploded again.”
Thanks to Bill Crow, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Folwell, Burton Greene, Marshall Marrotte, Florence Wetzel, Wilmer Wise.
Part 2
Henry Grimes & Olive Oil
(as of August, 2003)
by Margaret Davis [Grimes]
Photo by Jaci Downs
By now you’ve probably heard the
great news that master bassist HENRY GRIMES, who’d been missing from
the music world ever since the late ’60s, had been found in good health
(though pretty much destitute) living in a single-room occupancy hotel
in downtown Los Angeles. He’d been living in the same room for the last
20 years but had long ago sold his badly damaged bass and has since
contented himself with writing poetry, trying a bit of acting, doing odd
jobs, and surviving on Social Security income. The person who found
Henry Grimes is a social worker and writer named Marshall Marrotte, who
himself lives in Athens, Georgia.
When Marshall Marrotte found
Henry Grimes, Henry told him that he very much wished he had a bass so
he could start playing again. For me, a planet where the great Henry
Grimes does not have a bass is not a place I want to be, and being
unprepared for space travel, I decided to undertake a month-long
nationwide search for a bass for him. I wrote to, called, or otherwise
contacted about 5O of the musicians he played and/or recorded with
before he disappeared, as well as many bassists who would know him as a
music hero even if he was before their time. I put particular
concentration on the West Coast because shipping a bass is a big expense
in itself, I also thought the Western music community would want the
opportunity to gather around him, and I thought it would be easy
especially for those connected with academia or major cultural
institutions out West to hook him up with practice space and an
instrument to play, at the very least. So with Marshall Marrotte’s
approval, I put the word out far and wide, and then we waited for a bass
for Henry Grimes.
For quite a while, nobody moved.
Slowly a few people began to say
they’d be willing to do something — make a donation, hold or play in a
benefit concert, contribute a bow — kind, good offers, but not a bass
for Henry Grimes to play. A couple of afflicted souls responded
negatively, cynically, or even with hostility. Most just didn’t answer
at all.
Then, just when I was beginning
to despair, to question my lifelong belief in the term “music community”
as something more than a concept or an ideal, but as an actual living
entity that embraces and sustains its own, the great William Parker came
home to New York City from another of his tours, got around to reading
his accumulated Emails, and called me up to say he would send a bass and
a bow to Henry Grimes. William did this partly because when he was 12
years old and growing up in a Bronx housing project without any great
hopes for his future, he heard Henry playing bass in a Bronx bowling
alley [!] and discovered then and there what his glorious future would
be. But before sending the bass to Henry, first William wanted New
York’s great luthier David Gage to make a small repair, and then David’s
shop would build a shipping crate for the bass and arrange and pay for
the shipping. One of David Gage’s employees, a bassist called Sprocket,
even put up $100 of his own salary to help with shipping costs.
Henry Grimes received the bass
William Parker named Olive Oil (more, I think, due to the green tinge of
her finish than for Popeye’s girlfriend) on December 16th, 2002, was
ecstatic to have Olive Oil, and has been practicing hard ever since.
After only a couple of months with Olive Oil, he began to emerge from
his room, with sensitive, caring encouragement and assistance from a
young music student named Nick Rosen and classmates at the Oakwood
School, where the youngsters persuaded the staff to pay Henry to give
them improvisation lessons. Meanwhile, Henry practiced with quite a few
area musicians and played beautiful concerts at Billy Higgins’s World
Stage, the Howling Monk, and the Jazz Bakery in the Los Angeles area.
After having had his new bass
for only five months, Henry returned to New York to play as special
guest in New York City’s great Vision Festival on Memorial Day, May 26,
‘O3, in William Parker’s big band, as well as a surprise trio set with
Mr. Parker and Rob Brown. At that time, Henry also participated in a
five-day WKCR Henry Grimes Radio Festival (May 28 through June 1st),
speaking and playing on the air daily, and he offered a bass clinic at
David Gage’s shop on May 28th before nearly 5O New York-area bassists
who haven’t stopped talking about him since. Shortly thereafter, he
presented his own quintet for three nights at the Iridium Jazz Club in
New York City in July to universal acclaim.
Henry Grimes received a Lifetime
Achievement Award in jazz from Long Island Public Radio (WLIU) and a
Meet the Composer grant for one of his California performances. As of
August, ‘O3, Henry Grimes was happily living, working, and teaching in
New York City, he was designated “Musician of the Year” by “All About
Jazz”/ New York (Dec., ‘O3), and his stellar musical path continues into
the future. Let us give thanks!
Margaret Davis [later to become Margaret Grimes], 2003
For more current Henry Grimes news, please see the first two biographies (above), as well as the other pages on this site.
For high-resolution
photos, further information, or to purchase a recording or
book by the NEW Henry Grimes, please contact Margaret Davis Grimes: Email, voicemail 212-841-O899.
Press Quotes & Reviews
The Talk of the Town!
Henry Grimes designated “Musician of the Year” by “All About Jazz”/ New York, Dec., ‘O3; nominated “Jazz Artist of the Year” by “L.A. Weekly,” California, June ‘O3 and June ‘O4; Henry Grimes Trio featuring Andrew Lamb and Newman Taylor Baker designated “Best Jazz Trio of the Year” in ‘O4 by “NYPress” Best of Manhattan issue; Henry Grimes & Ted Curson duo concert June 2, ‘O5 chosen one of the year’s best concerts and Marc Ribot’s Spiritual Unity featuring Henry Grimes chosen one of the year’s best recordings by “All About Jazz”
/ New York, Best of 2OO5 issue; Henry Grimes’s Spaceship on the Highway
Quartet featuring Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, & Avreeayl Ra named one of the best concerts of ‘O5 by “Time Out / Chicago”; Henry Grimes nominated Bassist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, June, ‘O6; Henry Grimes listed among the top dozen acoustic bassists in the “Downbeat” critics’ poll, ‘O6; the Cecil Taylor Trio with Henry Grimes & Pheeroan akLaff at Iridium (1O/26/O6) named a critic’s choice for one of the 1O best concerts of the year by “All About Jazz” (thanks, Russ Musto!)….
PRESS QUOTES
Marion Brown, Henry Grimes, Grachan Moncur III, Sonny Murray, and Sun Ra: [capital letters as written]
THESE MUSICIANS ARE AMONG THE STRONGEST FORCES IN EMERGING BLACK
AMERICA. THEY ARE THE REPOSITORIES OF THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM AND
EXPRESSION IMBEDDED IN THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF BLACK PEOPLE. Sun Ra, the
spiritual prophet, understands the cosmic forces in music. He is
constantly moving his music to new planes of wonder and fulfillment.
Sonny Murray believes that it is movement-spirit. Marion Brown’s
playing probes deep into unexplored regions of the General Black
Psyche. Grachan Moncur is one of the most proficient trombonists on the
music scene. Henry Grimes’s playing exhibits a great range of mood and
feeling. Take a good look at them; they assume great importance as we
come to understand our spiritual selves and the world around us. — Text
by Amiri Baraka (then also known as LeRoi Jones) accompanying a photo
exhibit by Ray Gibson entitled “Spiritual Voices of Black America” in “Liberator” Magazine, 1966.
Henry has always been a serious,
intense, and fearless musician whose personal life reflected those
exceptional qualities. I admire him greatly. — Sonny Rollins, ‘O7
Henry Grimes is among the greatest improvisers living in the world today. His playing is exquisite. — Roscoe Mitchell, Mills College, 2010.
Henry Grimes is certainly one of the great bass players now playing. — Prof. George E. Lewis, Columbia University, 2012.
To Henry Grimes, the all-time maestro of the bass, in collegial admiration — Prof. George E. Lewis.
Henry Grimes’s recorded – and
unrecorded – history makes for a legend that would dwarf that of most
jazz musicians on the planet. He is the bass player who connects the
following list of great albums: Cecil Taylor’s Conquistador, Sonny
Rollins’s Brass/Trio, Roy Haynes’s Out Of The Afternoon, Albert Ayler’s
Live In Greenwich Village, Don Cherry’s Complete Communion, Gil Evans’s
Into The Hot, Sonny Murray’s Sonny’s Time Now, Marzette Watts’s Marzette
and Company, and Pharoah Sanders’s Tauhid… There is so much prime new
thing-era Impulse music in there that if you cut him open, surely he
would bleed orange and black. But lest we forget, he turned up very much
alive in a Californian apartment in 2OO2, not having played in 35
years. Indeed, he sold his broken bass in the late 60s to pay the bills.
His rehabilitation over the last decade has been one of the most
remarkable stories in all of music. New records, including a monumental
solo CD, showed that his creative fire was still blazing orange, and the
reports I’d heard of his recent live appearances were no cooler in
their summation of his current talents. At this Marc Ribot Trio concert
at Bishopsgate, it was increasingly the luminous Grimes that I found my
eyes and ears drawn to. There was a subtlety to his style which was
absolutely fascinating: His solos at times became smears of sound, his
bow traced soft lines up and down the strings as much as it did across
them. The sheer otherness of sound transformed an otherwise nondescript
walking blues track into something entirely alien via a compelling
violin solo, which sounded like Grimes had taken the theme from the
original and translated into another language and then back again – the
same underlying meaning was just about there, but the accents and
structure had been completely moved and rearranged. — Scott McMillan, “The Liminal” (London, 2011).0
Guitarist Marc Ribot’s Spiritual
Unity trio, featuring bassist/violinist Henry Grimes and drummer Chad
Taylor, brought down the house at the Bishopsgate Institute in London.
Near the beginning of a whirlwind European tour, the trio performed a
joyously eclectic selection of numbers that covered a pantheistic array
of musical disciplines, from the 1960s love cry of Albert Ayler to the
timeless, heartfelt patterns of country music and the untrammeled
immediacy of its rather distant cousin, the blues. To a packed sold out
hall, resplendent in an academic way, these fine gentlemen not only blew
the blues away, they blew the world’s current strife and woe away and
replaced them, for a stunning temporal moment, with the absolute
possibility of ecstasy and joy. Henry Grimes’s status as a master
bassist is undisputed and needs no further qualification at this point
in time, a fact which only someone of great ignorance would dispute.
Ribot is a powerhouse of dynamic range, demonstrating a thorough
understanding and execution of the entire canon. Taylor has advanced
massively in recent years. Grimes was profound, spirited, selfless, and
eternally youthful. — Daniel Graham, “All About Jazz” (2O11).
… As for Henry Grimes, who
played and recorded with Albert Ayler, he was at the centre of
everything the Marc Ribot Trio did. The simpatico Grimes (and it’s not
unfair to Ribot) carried the gig, presiding over every shift, subtle,
obvious, rhythmic, conceptual, or otherwise. Mobile, fast, impressive
ideas worn big and to fit, the years melted away, and a music was reborn
without sounding dated at all. — Stephen Graham, “Jazzwise” Magazine (London, 2011).
Henry plays in the past, present and future simultaneously. — drummer Chad Taylor, fellow Ribot Trio member.
The return of Henry Grimes was
remarkable because so many musicians fall by the wayside and are never
heard from again. The world needs these musicians. Yes, the world needs
every good creative spirit to make his or her contribution immediately.
The rest is history: friends, students, a bass, practice. Henry Grimes
returns, proceeds to jump back into this river of music, he is splashing
in it, rolling in the flow of sound, with a joy that is now! not
yesterday. The cry is I’m happy to be alive and I love music and I want
to play as much as I can. — William Parker
Henry has unbelievable ears and
what he plays will always relate to what’s going on in some completely
unpredictable and beautiful way. It’s tempting to write off the density
of his playing as just him going off the deep end, but when you listen
to it, you hear the melody of the tune you’re playing sped up,
counterpointed, harmonized, attacked, distorted, played backwards. He’s
really a Cecil Taylor of the bass. And he has his own version of playing
grooves related to some strain of sixties funky jazz that we think we
remember, but we don’t. When I play with Henry, it’s as if I’d only seen
synthetic fabrics my whole life, and I’m confronted with a hand-knitted
wool sweater with all its oddities and imperfections–different, yet
infinitely warmer. He’s the living embodiment of the difference between
groove and metronomic time, which we were all taught were the same
thing, right? Wrong. — Marc Ribot, from an article at allaboutjazz.com
Marc Ribot was onstage at the
Abrons Arts Center in duet with bassist and violinist Henry Grimes
during the 16th annual Vision Festival, this country’s essential
gathering of avant-garde improvising musicians. The two found communion
of the freest and highest order, and they extended a thrilling story of
musical revival that began with Grimes’s resurfacing at Vision’s 2OO3
edition, after decades off the scene. — Larry Blumenfeld, “The Village Voice,” 2O11.
Grimes, majestic, alert, picked
out note-perfect, resonant, melodic bass lines with dextrous
nimble-fingered assurance and applied arco with consummate authority.
There was an overpowering sense that he was liberating each note with a
profound deliberation. It really was a privilege to be present. — Geoff Winston, “London Jazz News,” 2O13.
A featured performer, and
phenom, at the Guelph Jazz Festival [of Sept., 2O1O] was Henry Grimes,
who almost inevitably becomes the center of attention when he plays,
partly because of his remarkable rebirth story. Grimes, who spent
three-plus decades away from music — hiding out in plain sight in Los
Angeles — has become the comeback story of the decade in the last few
years, and the veteran of early free jazz, a former collaborator with
Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and many others, really has come back,
playing with wisdom and fire and ensemble sensitivity in multiple
settings… He looks cool and imperturbable, bedecked in his own school of
cool fashion, but summons up a powerful sound and expressive sweep. In
this case, Grimes was the centerpiece of two very different, but equally
uncharted, trios. Late on Friday night, he played with fellow free
avatar Andrew Cyrille on drums and the relative youngster Jane Bunnett,
the Toronto-based reed player who acquitted herself beautifully and
flexibly in this setting. For the first half of the extended 1OO-minute
set, Grimes played with density and unrelenting ferocity, as if making
up for the lost time of his wilderness years in L.A. But deep into the
set, Grimes became more musical, showing more of a feel for dynamic
variation, celebrated spaces, and conversational poise amidst his urging
intensity. On Sunday morning, wrapping up the festival in a splendid
sonic way, Grimes offered the foundation and the historical authenticity
in a project led by guitarist Marc Ribot… — Josef Woodard, “JazzTimes”
Before bassist Henry Grimes’
triumphant return to music in 2002 after a 35-year absence, his only
recording as a leader was “The Call” in 1965. “Sublime Communication II:
Live at Edgefest,” recorded last October (‘O5) on the closing night of
that Ann Arbor festival, demonstrates that Grimes is playing better than
he ever has before. Such drastic improvements over the last three years
must certainly stem, in large part, from musically nurturing
associations like this one. The CD features veterans Andrew Lamb on
reeds and Newman Taylor Baker in the drum chair. Excellence was a
foregone conclusion, but it’s stunning to hear the collective vision
nonetheless, helmed with skill and fire by an obviously jubilant Grimes.
From note one, the disc crackles with an almost unbearable energy as
Sir Henry roars in with speed, power and precision; he’s almost
“shredding,” so to speak, combining the effortless tonal range of a
Derek Bailey with the visceralgia and wide timbral pallet of Sonny
Sharrock. His bandmates are no less impressive and, thankfully,
completely sensitive to Grimes’ vigorous new approach. Baker knows when
to lay back, supporting the leader’s exhortations with the most graceful
slithers, brush strokes and sizzles. When Lamb finally enters,
breathing a slowly repeated F on his saxophone, it’s with a most exalted
restraint. That doesn’t last, of course, and before long he’s exploring
a Japanese scale as Grimes and Baker emote alongside and underneath and
intensity builds to fever pitch. And that’s only the first 1O minutes
or so of a 35-minute improvisation. The disc’s second session is more
wistful and pensive, shrouding the celebration just below the surface.
When Lamb’s supple flute is eventually joined by Grimes and Baker, any
sobriety is quelled by the joy of spontaneity. Grimes patiently provides
a rhythmic backdrop for Lamb’s razor-sharp explorations — that is,
until it is time for another Grimes solo (it is his album, after all).
The disc is full of such interplay, and why one of the jazz labels busy
reissuing back catalog hasn’t snapped this up is beyond me. — Marc Medwin, “Dusted”
If only for the Ann Arbor debut
of the legendary and recently rediscovered bassist Henry Grimes, the
closing night of Edgefest [Oct., ‘O5] would be deemed an overwhelming
success. As if making up for the lost decades, Grimes, rarely playing at
less than an eighth-note pace, gently prodded reedman Andrew Lamb and
drummer Newman Taylor Baker through a handful of insistent yet
meditative suites that found plenty of room for all three players to
shine. That the trio rarely rose above a whisper didn’t take away from
its intensity; rather, with Grimes furnishing mantra-like foundations
both with his fingers and a bow, Baker and Lamb were able to overlay
their own invocations, creating an almost chamber-music-like vibe in the
intimate venue. Lamb, who switched between tenor saxophone, clarinet
and flute, was a worthy melodic foil for Grimes’ churning rhythms, while
Baker, tastefully restrained, relied on nuance and color in order not
to overshadow the leader. Grimes clearly was totally assured with his
instrument at his command, rewarding an adoring house that had waited
far too long to bask in the virtuosity of one of jazz’s truly legendary
figures. — Will Stewart, “Ann Arbor News”
I’m at the first night of the
1Oth Vision Festival (‘O5), New York’s most forward-looking jazz event…
Henry Grimes’s quartet features Sun Ra saxophonist Marshall Allen with
the science fiction-like electronic glissandi of his EWI (Electronic
Wind Instrument). Grimes sculpts tones from his bass with a sense of
time that continually subdivides the pulse into tributaries of
counter-comments. As the energy of the performance reaches a natural
cadence, Grimes pulls a funky riff from the air that relights
fire-crackers under the band. And with his final solo, Grimes’s fingers
scurry down the fingerboard in some seemingly abstractly choreographed
pattern, except that the musical sense of what he plays communicates
instantly. — Maggie Williams, Editor, “Double Bassist”
Henry Grimes’ huge sound and
inventiveness are the qualities that made him a bass player sought after
by both avant-garde and mainstream musicians–not that these
distinctions make any difference for such a deep musician. — Francesco Martinelli, jazz journalist and scholar
Henry Grimes took charge of
terra firma, shaking the floorboards with booming notes that segued
stealthily from jocular to foreboding — a sort of four-stringed analogue
to James Earl Jones on a wild oratorical ride. Grimes draws heavily
from the blues, but doesn’t bore his audience with simple retellings of
the genre’s stock stories. He stains them with his own blood, sweat and
tears, making his canvases among the music’s most poignant and
exhilarating. — David Sprague, “Variety”
A night of outstanding music [at
the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City] began with the Henry Grimes
Quartet. His beautiful green bass caught my eye from the moment I walked
in. His playing caught my ear from the moment he picked it up until he
stopped playing. The quartet started out the set with more experimental
compositions and moved to less dissonant material, closing with the
familiar Sonny Rollins set finale “Oleo.” More often than not, sets of
music usually flow in the opposite direction, becoming more experimental
as the night goes on. This presentation put the music in a different
context. One selection had a gorgeous melody and featured a wonderful
solo by clarinetist Perry Robinson. The quartet was rounded out by
Bennie Maupin on bass clarinet and soprano saxophones and Andrew Cyrille
on drums, both great soloists in their own right. Someone with such
rare artistry as Henry Grimes should be seen live as often as possible. —
Bryan Zoran, jazzreview.com
The revered bassist has been
dialing up all kinds of partners since he returned from the abyss last
year. There’s an ardor to his playing that feeds the spirit of his
work…. — Jim Macnie, “The Village Voice,” “Voice Choices” short list
Fully rejuvenated by his year
back in the performance spotlight, Henry Grimes, together with pianist
Marilyn Crispell and drummer Andrew Cyrille, delved into inner mysteries
and dark concepts on his emotional and inspired set. — Frank Rubolino
photo caption from the Vision Festival ‘04, “All About Jazz”
Bassist Henry Grimes’s amazing
return to the music scene was easily the jazz human-interest story of
2OO3. The buzz about his Rip van Winkle-like reappearance at the Vision
Festival, after some 33 years away from music, was eclipsed only by the
fact that his playing showed few signs of rust; the fest took place in
May (‘O3), and Grimes was leading his own band at Iridium by early July.
His skill — hardly unfathomable for a musician whose resume includes
recordings and gigs with people like Mose Allison, Albert Ayler,
Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and Cecil Taylor — puts the lie to the
old saw, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Grimes’s story this year,
however, is different. It’s not just about how eager he is to return to
the top of the jazz world; it’s about how quickly the word’s getting out
that he’s up to the challenge…. — Kelvin Leander Williams, “Time Out New York,” “Top Live Shows”
Grimes’ bass playing is supple
yet can go into mutiple directions at once, in constant variations in
tone and rythym. He was the backbone of the 6O’s free-jazz avant-garde
movement; he returns now when there is a rebirth in this musical legacy.
This is an opportunity to see a true hero. — Sounds for the People festival Web site, Montreal
If you haven’t heard the
fantastic news about HENRY GRIMES’ return to the jazz world, I don’t
know what stone you’ve been sleeping under! He’s been the talk of the
town, and I don’t just mean New York or Los Angeles, but the jazz
community at large has been celebrating his recent rediscovery from not
even having played for a good three decades. After a few fairly recent
gigs out West, he made his triumphant return to NYC at this year’s
Vision Festival and showed us all that he is back, and boy is he ever!
His arco and pizzicato playing is like a resurrection for bass players
the world over…. Welcome back, Mr. Grimes! — Laurence Donohue-Greene, Managing Editor, “All About Jazz”/ New York
The most inspiring story of this
year was the re-emergence of bassist Henry Grimes. He was once in
demand after having played with everyone from Benny Goodman to Albert
Ayler. After more than 3O years of being “disappeared,” Grimes made it
back into the world, and the jazz world, thanks to the [initial] help of
a diligent jazz fan/social worker, Marshall Marrotte [and many others
since then]. Grimes is once again active in music…. a remarkable
comeback, both musically and emotionally. Too often the jazz life offers
more victims than survivors, and Henry Grimes’ life is a rare story of
the latter. — “JazzTimes” industry survey
BEST JAZZ TRIO: THE HENRY GRIMES
TRIO WITH ANDREW LAMB AND NEWMAN TAYLOR BAKER Henry Grimes plays the
bass with absolute control, spinning tales without words, enriching the
room with the depth of his bass. Newman Taylor Baker can capture any
rhythm and will surprise you two or three times each show with how far
he can take percussion. And Andrew Lamb works his saxophone and flute,
paying close attention to the silence between the sounds, layering. They
played at the Vision Festival Concert Series, and most recently at
Zebulon in Williamsburg. When you see this collaboration [listed] … stop
what you’re doing. — Steven Psyllos, “NYPress,” “Best of Manhattan” issue
Henry Grimes is a very special
gift to this scene. He plays with so much dedication and gentleness in
his music. The group with Andrew Lamb and Newman Taylor-Baker under
Henry Grimes’ leadership is filled with freedom and zest and enthusiasm
and great music. You really can hear the special voice of each musician.
They give each other all the space and yet all the fullness of sound.
It is wonderful to hear. — Patricia Nicholson Parker, producer, Vision Club Series & Vision Festival
Henry Grimes at the Vision Fest
and his first NYC club appearance in 3O years at the Iridium in July:
The big jazz story of 2OO3 had to be the rediscovery of legendary
bassist Henry Grimes, who was living in a SRO in LA since his
disappearance from the scene nearly 30 years ago. Question was could he
still play. You could hear a pin drop when Henry took his first extended
solo during the Jeanne Lee Memorial Concert at the Vision Fest last
June. Just amazing. The man still had it, like he never stopped playing.
That appearance led to his first NYC club appearance at the Iridium in
July with Roy Campbell, Jr., trumpet, Rob Brown, alto saxophone; Andrew
Bemkey, piano, and Michael Thompson, drums. Welcome back, Henry! — Jim Eigo’s “Top 10 for 2003,” Jazz Promo Service
…. The great surprise was the
re-emergence of Henry Grimes, a bass player who vanished from the scene
in the late 1960s — after working with leaders including Benny Goodman,
Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Miles Davis, Albert Ayler, Coleman Hawkins
and Sonny Rollins. He was reported to have died in 1984. But last fall,
Marshall Marrotte, a jazz fan and social worker from Georgia, found
Grimes living in a single-room occupancy hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
He’d been living there for some 20 years, doing odd jobs and surviving
on Social Security. He’d sold his bass years ago to make ends meet. When
word got out that he was indeed alive and wanted to get back into
music, New York avant-garde bassist William Parker had one of his own
basses repaired and shipped to Grimes, who resumed practicing and soon
began performing in the Los Angeles area. As a support network
developed, Grimes returned to the New York jazz scene May 26 with a
special appearance at the Vision Festival. He’s been performing with
increased frequency…. — Ken Frankling, “2003: The Year in Jazz,” United Press International
Henry Grimes’s playing, technique, and sense of style are brilliant… supple and resolute. — Jukka Haaru reviewing the Henry Grimes Trio concert at Kerava, Finland for “Helsingen Sanomat,” Finland’s major print publication
Thanks to Henry and Perry and
Andrew for the joy and emotions you gave us. We are proud for the
opportunity you gave us to host such superb and affirmative
musicianship. Henry Grimes’ music is mysteriously profound, and we were
astounded by the deep, dark expressive power that hit us from his bass.
And we feel grateful also to the ever searching musicianship of Perry
Robinson and the phenomenal skills of Andrew Cyrille. We were witnesses
to a sound sculpture coming to birth. — Gianni Morelenbaum Gualberto, Artistic Director, “Aperitivo in Concerto” Festival, Teatro Manzoni, Milan
Henry Grimes, who went from
Sonny Rollins to Cecil Taylor to an absence of many decades, showed at
the Vision Festival that he’s lost none of the verve and technique that
established him as one of the key bassists of the late ‘5Os and ‘6Os. — Gary Giddins, “The Village Voice” Short List
His recent return and yeoman
schedule, after a 37-year sabbatical, have shown that the great bassist
with the encyclopedic résumé (from Willis Jackson and Benny Goodman to
Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler and many more) has retained not only his
technique—the rock-solid pitch, magisterial tone and harmonic
ingenuity—but also his indefatigable staying power. — Gary Giddins, “JazzTimes”
Grimes returned to a New York
stage for the first time at the Vision Festival in May, ‘O3, but it was
at Iridium, during a three-night double bill with David S. Ware’s
quintet [July, ‘03], that he was able to play for an extended period and
present himself to an eager public. Joining the enigmatic bassist were
Rob Brown on alto, Roy Campbell on trumpet, Andrew Bemkey on piano, and
Michael Thompson on drums. Grimes was in excellent form on bass – rough
around the edges, to be sure, but with a full, round tone and a very
clear sense of musical direction. The music was free yet extraordinarily
sensitive, with clearly delineated solo rotations and perfectly
intuited peaks and valleys. This was a quintet without a weak link. — David Adler, “All About Jazz”/New York
Grimes, cheek bent to bass neck,
seemed to be in another world, but his fingers were right there,
darting elegantly among the vines and thickets, or bowing deep, resiny
foundations, just as they were with Ayler and Taylor and Rollins and
Shepp. — Greg Burk, “Los Angeles Times”
Henry Grimes at World Stage,
March 21: The great avant-garde bassist poked his head out of 3O-year
obscurity and brought 1965 back, just like that. Now he’s split for New
York to recapture the torch. Blessings be upon him. — Greg Burk, “L.A. Weekly,” “The List 2OO3”
Grimes, whose supple,
borderless, yet precise contrabass work was featured on many landmark
‘6O’s recordings by the likes of Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and Sonny
Rollins, dropped out of music 3O years ago and was recently rediscovered
living in Los Angeles. Lured back to the bass, he surfaced in March for
the first of only a few shows. It was immediately clear that he had
lost nothing… All you can say is “wow.” — Greg Burk, “L.A. Weekly”
Grimes’ disappearance from jazz
in the late ’60s and subsequent rediscovery late last year by jazz fan
Marshall Marrotte have been well documented. But the question that
remained was whether Grimes could regain his extraordinary skills more
than three decades after he stopped playing. On Tuesday at the Jazz
Bakery, in one of the several performances he has been giving around the
Southland over the past few months, the answer was a definite yes.
Performing in a free-floating jazz setting… Grimes offered a focused
sound and fluid articulation that were the rallying point for a set of
improvisations that might otherwise have lost their way. — Don Heckman, “Los Angeles Times”
On a double bill with the David
S. Ware quartet, Grimes answered some obvious questions without ever
speaking into the microphone. His fingers moved fluidly about the bridge
of the bass (a loaner from a string studio in Soho). His rapport with
the musicians — trumpeter Roy Campbell, saxophonist Rob Brown, pianist
Andrew Bemkey, and drummer Michael Thompson — was confident as the band
charted a course through some decidedly flexible musical space. His
sound full and distinctive, Grimes reappears at a moment when the
musical ideals of the free-jazz movement seem of renewed relevance.
“Something happened,” Grimes told me after the gig…. “Everything that
I’ve strived for came true, with bigger implications for the future.” — Larry Blumenfeld, “The Village Voice”
The last three years must seem
to Henry Grimes as the busiest period in his career, almost equal to his
prolific output in the 196Os, when he contributed to such epochal
albums of the avant-garde as “Spirits Rejoice” (Albert Ayler), “Unit
Structures” and “Conquistador” (Cecil Taylor), and “Complete Communion”
(Don Cherry). On November 1O, Grimes performed in the 2OO6 London Jazz
Festival with guitarist Marc Ribot’s group Spiritual Unity, alongside
Roy Campbell on trumpet and Chad Taylor on drums… The band performed
with the kind of focused energy you’d expect from a group of musicians
paying tribute to an influential trailblazer like Ayler. Grimes was
superb throughout, demonstrating the same commanding technique and
large, authoritative tone that dominated his recorded work of the 196Os…
Later that night, Grimes, Chad Taylor and Roy Campbell were joined
onstage at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho by none other than
British Jazz Godfather Evan Parker for a brief 1O-minute performance
being recorded for the BBC. Parker played tenor with the group, and the
result, despite the fact that this was the first time these four men had
played together, was tantalizingly magical, pure gold, an experience
that was over so quickly, but one that will linger for a long time to
come. A brief conversation with Henry Grimes after the late-night gig
revealed his feelings about working with musicians such as Cecil Taylor:
that Taylor’s standard of musicianship is so high that playing with him
automatically lifted your own performance, and, as a consequence, that
of the entire group. Henry Grimes himself is now that man who inspires
greatness by example. — Daniel Graham, “All About Jazz”
It was beautiful. His playing
had a strongly implied swing, but one that seemed to go in multiple
directions at once. It was extremely supple, with constant variations of
tone and rhythm. He was also able to imply multiple melodies without
droning or limiting the melodic trajectory of his playing. It sounded
inquisitive, curious. He was simultaneously supporting, adding new
information and invigorating the overall sound field, and not one of
these multiple dynamics was dropped for very long. It’s as though he was
utilizing a system of musical multitasking, the sound of simultaneous
human modes – social, mental, emotional, physical…. — Drew Gardner, drewgardner.blogspot.com
One of the first things Mr.
Marrotte did when he found Mr. Grimes was to reintroduce him to his
music. “I was amazed,” Mr. Grimes recalled, “because I listened to some
CD’s of some of the Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler things, and some of my
music. At the time, I didn’t pay that much attention to them. But when I
listened to them again, it was amazing what I heard. There was more to
it than I ever realized.” Despite his lost years, Mr. Grimes said he had
no regrets: “I’m working on straightening things out now. But I’m back
for good.” — Neil Strauss, “The New York Times”
His comeback became one of the
great jazz stories of 2003, an unlikely case of a missing figure
suddenly re-emerging on the jazz scene after a 35-year “vacation.” — Scott Yanow, allmusic.com.
… Immediately apparent: his
refined focus, with virtually no extraneous body movement whatsoever….
Midway through, the group settled into a dirge-like interval, allowing
The Legend to play around with march-like cadences, often surprising us
with pregnant space and rhythmic ingenuity: a lesson in beauty from
simplicity. Then the vibe changed. Henry faced us and started a
medium-hard groove in 4, solo — statuesque, yet perspiring athletically,
channeling music through his spirit… Henry Grimes — defining swing
before our eyes, his hands gently, smoothly working in concert. What
beautifully relaxed, soft hands. Nothing forced, fudged, or groped. He’s
Back. The new Henry Grimes, a courageous work in rediscovery.
Unforgettable. — David Jeffrey, David.Jeffrey@mitchell.com.
I am so happy to hear that Henry
is playing again. He is one of the great individualists, and his
absence left a space that nobody else could fill. I welcome his return
to the music community and all that it will mean to us. I send love and
respect to him. — Dave Holland, via Email 5/28/O3.
And a great accolade from long
ago in the mid-’60s, in liner notes for Don Cherry’s “Symphony for
Improvisers”: Henry Grimes is thought by his contemporaries to be the
premier bassist of the day. He has been in the vanguard of jazz
bassists for ten years now, and every day has been a day of growth. His
intelligence, strength, and virtuosity sustain, from the first chord to
the last, the impeccable vitality of this record.” — A.B. Spellman.
REVIEWS — RECORDINGS
HENRY GRIMES SOLO, January 2009, double CD set on ILK Music (#151 CD), ilkmusic.com #151 CD.
Here’s a review from Bruce Lee Gallanter of Downtown Music Gallery:
Since moving back to New York in July of 2OO3, after a disappearance of
some thirty years, master bassist Henry Grimes continues to astound us
all with his leaps and strides. Since his grand return, he has jumped
into the fire and played with other giants like Cecil Taylor, David
Murray, Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Dave Douglas, Marc Ribot, Bill
Dixon and so many others. This fabulous two-disc set features an entire
unedited and uninterrupted solo bass and violin performance. Henry takes
his time and works his way through many layers and textures of plucked
and bowed double bass and violin, digging deep into his most creative
world of sounds. One would think that it is difficult to sustain
interest throughout a long solo bass performance, but not here. This
disc is superbly recorded and Henry’s bass sounds warm, strong and
life-affirming. I turned this disc up while listening to it at home and
in the store and let it wash over me like layers of warm molasses. It
sounds and feels so good to me and no doubt will work its magic over
you.
And writes professor and music journalist Marc Medwin of American University in Washington, D.C:
I just love to try to follow Henry’s mind as it jumps, whirls, whirls
back, jumps again, wraps around an idea, holds on for a moment or two,
or longer, parenthesizes, contrasts, goes contrapuntal, and then off
again … Thanks to Henry for this music!!!!
Marc Medwin also wrote this review for “Dusted” Magazine:
Finally, here is a beautifully recorded two-disc document capturing the
phenomenal improviser Henry Grimes in full flight. Ilk Music offers up
two-and-a-half hours of solo Grimes, on both bass and violin, in some of
the free-est music he’s committed to disc… Bill Dixon defines a soloist
as ‘the smallest orchestra possible’, and nothing could encapsulate
Grimes’ polyphonies more accurately. The entire pitch spectrum becomes
his plaything as he glides effortlessly through dense overtonal and
microtonal labyrinths of his own creation, switching between arco and
pizzicato, each reinforcing the other with pithy motivic fragments. At
key moments in these rich notestreams, Grimes introduces modal repose.
He may discover a rhythmic or melodic pattern, then transpose, repeat,
possibly augment. The tempo, relative as it is in late Coltrane, slows
considerably, and there is often a drone as Grimes weaves melodies above
or below it. Much of the intrigue of his playing comes from the
emergence of these movements in his mind. So unpredictable is each
motivic and timbral transformation that when Grimes trades bass for
violin, you’d never guess that a half-hour has already passed. His first
violin excursion is quite brief, lasting only a few minutes, followed
by a breathtaking display of pizzicato melodic invention on bass,
reminiscent of Charlie Haden’s pioneering improvisations with Ornette
Coleman… [Mr.] Grimes is singularly inventive here, ideas flowing more
smoothly and with the utmost variety of tempo and harmonic implication.
On violin, he rarely employs pizzicato, preferring bowed runs, leaps,
and falling cascades of double stops. Amidst these, we are treated to
drone-based passages where he’ll let one string ring as he interjects
the others with counterpoint. One memorable moment finds him in
uhr-blues mode as he caresses a swinging old-timey riff, conjuring his
own past. He takes off only to return a minute later, coaxing new life
from the dance-like rhythms … All the vigor and beauty one performer can
offer.
Mitch Myers wrote this review for “JazzTimes”:
Since 2OO3, ’6Os free-jazz bassist Henry Grimes has experienced a
resurgence on the performance scene that has been touching and
inspiring. His new two-CD set of solo improvisations emphasizes that
remarkable comeback, which can now be considered complete. With more
than two and a half hours of fairly continuous playing, Solo is a
dramatic tour de force. Alternating between long passages on the bass
and violin, Grimes plucks and bows with great clarity and imagination,
and a seemingly endless supply of bold musical ideas. Clearly, Grimes is
the medicine man in residence, playing bass equal to any of his ’6Os
contemporaries and evoking fond memories of the late Leroy Jenkins on
the fiddle. It’s the fearless confidence Grimes exudes on bass that is
most impressive, and his stream-of-consciousness solo work puts him
right up there in the pantheon of rare improvisers like his old boss
Cecil Taylor. Grimes’ technical mastery is sometimes overshadowed by his
amazing creativity, but his organic skill with string-driven-things
should serve as a clinic for devotees. There’s a lot of music to digest
here and it would be difficult to absorb the entire collection in one
sitting, but a brilliant thread of continuity runs through the
performances and the end result is never contrived… his unencumbered
process shows him gaining in all ways at the age of 7O, and he’s a true
model of self-realization through music.
Giuseppe Segala from “All About Jazz” / Italia:
On the surface of Grimes’s album is a monologue with a narrative pace:
the powerful sound, round and sharp, richness of rhythm with bowing
variations, with a consciousness of the flow of the piece, where the
rhythmic aspect and overtones speak loudly to the listener. A swinging
passage stretches in and leads us on through an irregular rhapsodic
journey. Pieces of familiar melodies emerge and quickly draw us into a
whirlwind of a fantastic history. Grimes masterfully controls the sound,
exploring the harmonies with the wisdom of a master painter who
suffuses whitewashes with tones. He enfolds the melodic designs with
infinite variations of tact and sensibility. Yet the sense of drama of
the narrative is always alive. In instances, he takes up the violin, an
instrument he had studied as a child, and darting through the piece are
arrows of sweet brightness.
And this from Mark Urness for “Bass World,” the publication of the International Society of Bassists:
“Solo” is a 2&1/2-hour improvisatory tour de force by Henry Grimes.
In this remarkable two-disc set, we hear up close and in thrilling
detail the variety and depth of timbres Henry creates on the bass and
violin. It is relentlessly energetic and all-inclusive. Grimes
consistently surprises with lightning-quick changes of material. The
music is at turns disjunct and conjunct, atonal and diatonic,
non-pitched and melodic, arhythmic and grooving; it is a study in
variety and timbral / rhythmic / melodic opportunity. Congratulations to
Henry Grimes for this fascinating and deeply moving recording. We look
forward to hearing many more.
PROFOUND SOUND TRIO: Opus de Life,
Andrew Cyrille (drums), Paul Dunmall (tenor saxophone, bagpipes), and
Henry Grimes (acoustic bass and violin), released June 2009, Porter Records (PRCD-4O32).
Wrote Derek Briggs, reporting from the ‘O9 Cheltenham Jazz Festival:
What’s free jazz? At its worst, it produced gut-wrenching noise, at its
rare best, massively memorable music, advancing improvisational and
rhythmic skills to new heights. And the Profound Sound Trio is the best,
with U.S. originators bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Andrew Cyrille,
and younger — but still a free veteran –- UK saxist Paul Dunmall. Grimes
kicked off with an intriguing extended solo bowing. Dunmall developed a
classic blues phrase into something phenomenal. Cyrille watched
silently, like an extinct volcano, but then erupted into a silver
shimmer of cymbals and driving drum lines. Forget about tunes: The trio
in full flight was awesome, pure telepathic improvisation. Free jazz is
back. All it needed was the virtuosity these players displayed in solo
spots. Images linger: Grimes’ mystical harmonics on violin, Dunmall’s
release to churning late-Coltrane exploration, Cyrille’s transformation
of a march beat into a drum symphony.
And Ed Hazell in the Fall ‘O9 issue (#55) of “Signal to Noise”:
This is the kind of set free improvisers and their fans always hope for
and rarely get. One expects music full of energy, subtlety, and
exploration from saxophonist Paul Dunmall, bassist Henry Grimes, and
drummer Andrew Cyrille, the players who make up the Profound Sound Trio;
it’s the kind of music they routinely make. But something happened on
this stifling hot night at last year’s Vision Festival that lifted all
three of these men at the same time to the peak of their capabilities.
This hour’s worth of music simply overflows with life and passion,
bursts explosively open into one sonically amazing area after another,
but never loses its focus along its twisting pathways. In its effortless
grace, musicality, wit, boundless ideas, and swing, Cyrille’s
performance is extraordinary in every way. His snare and bass drum
manage to sound like both a talking drum and Kenny Clarke; his
conversational approach to rhythms (swinging but not necessarily
anchored to a stated beat) and nuanced cymbal work are always perfectly
attuned to what’s going on in the music. Grimes sounds totally alert and
engaged on both bass and violin. He plucks out his lowest notes to form
a troubled bed for the music, with an urgency that keeps the music
moving without pushing it aggressively. His bowed work is celestial,
yearning, beautiful, and also fueled by a forward momentum that keeps
Cyrille and Dunmall at a boil. This is one of his best post-comeback
recordings. And Dunmall is a tenor gladiator, strong, cathartic, and
detailed in his improvising. His phrases build up ridiculous momentum
and tension, and then disintegrate into wails and rasps. He spirals
upward into his altissimo register in response to Grimes’ violin and
lodges himself deep in Cyrille’s rhythmic abstractions. It’s a
performance in which they just keep challenging one another, and the
challenge is met every time. — Ed Hazell.
John Sharpe, “All About Jazz,” August, ‘O8:
Having shared recent dates in England with lost but now found bassist
Henry Grimes, British saxophone colossus Paul Dunmall returned the
compliment here, with masterful drummer Andrew Cyrille, in one of the
Vision Festival’s highlights. Over the years Dunmall has forged and
tested his muscular playing in almost every conceivable situation, such
that he dealt authoritatively with whatever he faced, evidenced by one
dazzling passage which saw Grimes’ abstract violin playing instantly
echoed back at him by Dunmall’s tenor. As a trio they were incredibly
responsive, and their attention to detail ensured that their free-form
outing took on the structural coherence that sets the great apart from
the merely good.
Peter Bacon, “The Jazz Breakfast,” May, ‘O9:
This music not only has the elemental sound of human beings, the blood
pumping, the synapses snapping, but it has that astronomical scope too,
the crackle, shudder of space. All three make sounds that contain
multiple layers of timbre, tone and overtone, which on the surface might
sometimes feel like chaos, but if it is chaos, it contains all manner
of truths and beauties. … Together they make a fiercely original and
extraordinarily powerful music that gets to the very molten core of free
jazz.
Derek Briggs, Cheltenham Jazz Festival, “Crackerjack”:
What’s free jazz? At its worst, it produces gut-wrenching noise, at its
rare best, massively memorable music, advancing improvisational and
rhythmic skills to new heights. And the Profound Sound Trio is the best,
with U.S. originators bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Andrew Cyrille,
and younger — but still a free veteran — U.K. saxist Paul Dunmall.
Grimes kicked off with an intriguing extended solo bowing. Dunmall
developed a classic blues phrase into something phenomenal. Cyrille
watched silently, like an extinct volcano, but then erupted into a
silver shimmer of cymbals and driving drum lines. Forget about tunes:
The trio in full flight was awesome, pure telepathic improvisation. Free
jazz is back…
Glenn Astarita, “EJazz News”:
Henry Grimes and drummer Andrew Cyrille bring their legendary wares to
the proverbial table, in concert with powerhouse tenor saxophonist Paul
Dunmall. Sparks were flying during the concert amid Dunmall’s colossal
sound and pressure-cooker-like element, where the trio tackles the free
zone with a vengeance. Grimes’ authoritative single-note lines and
Cyrille’s inventive polyrhythmic fury offer Dunmall an unrestricted yet
fertile launching pad, contrasted by the artists’ open-ended dialogues.
The tenor saxophonist sojourns into tension-and-release statements while
injecting melodic hooks into the grand scheme of matters. It’s
improvisation that makes near-perfect sense, an element that should come
as no surprise, given the respective musicians’ credentials and
enviable feats within these expansive frameworks. The trio stimulates
your neural network with a myriad of highs, lows, and climactic opuses.
Cyrille’s whirlwind-style undercurrents help generate a vast plane along
with Grimes’ buoyant phrasings in concert with Dunmall’s plaintive
cries …
HENRY GRIMES TRIO – Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival, featuring David Murray & Hamid Drake, ‘O4 on Ayler Records (aylCD-028), the first label release by the NEW Henry Grimes.
Fred Jung, Editor in Chief, “All About Jazz / L.A.”:
Grimes’ first recorded document since his reappearance is a trio
session with titans David Murray and Hamid Drake. Murray’s familiar
tonal distortions distinguish him among the pantheon of tenors: John
Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Sam Rivers, and Albert Ayler. And Drake’s
boundless percussive vocabulary notes him on a flurry of recent projects
from the stateside Fred Anderson and Ken Vandermark to Euros Peter
Brötzmann and Misha Mengelberg. But it is Grimes’ beautifully sparse
bass solos (particularly arco), characterized by a logical clarity and
melodic mastery, that suggest his overwhelmingly rapid rediscovery.
Murray’s soulful vibrato often infuses with Drake’s boiling drumming and
Grimes’ melodic innocence. Grimes proves himself to be a bass
juggernaut, swinging in unhurried fashion, his agile improvisations
swelling in texture. Drake’s relentless funk, paired with Grimes’
vividly interesting quotes, promoted by Murray’s brawny tenor saxophone
flights, further the music’s unbridled enthusiasm. Never predictable,
the trio’s level of intensity and inspiration ranks this recording as
one of the finest in Ayler’s considerably important catalog. The journey
of Henry Grimes is an interesting one. The disappearance of Grimes is a
puzzling one. But the reemergence of Grimes is the best story to come
out of music in years. Grimes, who defines just what a true musician is,
never failing to live a musical life, even if the music is in silence,
has seemingly accepted the blessed circumstances of his new dawn, and we
are all better for it.
Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery, downtownmusicgallery.com:
There is no better fairy tale in the legends of free jazz than the
triumphant return of contrabassist supreme Henry Grimes, after his
thirty-year absence and rumors of his demise. This is only Henry’s
second date as a leader; his first was on ESP in the mid-sixties,
besides the hundreds of historic sessions he did with Albert Ayler, Don
Cherry, Cecil Taylor and Sonny Rollins. This is also his second record
date since his return; the first was Dennis Gonzalez’ ‘Nile River
Suite’. For this fabulous live date, recorded in Finland in June of last
year, Henry selected an incredible all-star trio – the mighty David
Murray on tenor sax & bass clarinet, and perhaps everyone’s favorite
drummer and percussion hero, Hamid Drake, each one a leader and an
incredible musician on his own. Both William Parker, another bass
legend, and Ben Young, jazz scholar & radio host, have contributed
some fine liner notes. This great trio toured Europe last year and this
date is/was the fruit of their labors. This is an immensely powerful and
intensely creative trio, so focused as one strong and liberating force;
the recording also is perfectly balanced, so that each member of this
grand trio is one equal part. Nice to hear David Murray playing with
that fierce and unquenchable spirit, digging deep and unleashing those
sheets of notes. Henry and Hamid are also locked together in rhythmic
flight, pumping, pushing and pulling, swinging hard yet free. Over an
hour and consistently splendid throughout. Welcome back Mr. Henry
Grimes, we love you and we missed you!
Dan Warburton, Editor-in-Chief, “Paris Transatlantic Magazine,” paristransatlantic.com:
This album is the first to appear under Henry Grimes’s name since his
phoenix-like return, and it’s a scorcher. He couldn’t have found better
company either, in the form of tenor saxophonist / bass clarinettist
David Murray and drummer Hamid Drake, who perhaps more than any other
horn player and percussionist have managed to do what Grimes did so
spectacularly on the bass before his disappearance back in 1967, i.e.
play with consummate virtuosity and astounding musicianship in all
styles, in and out from bop to free. Those who doubted whether Grimes,
the man who Denis Charles once said could make a bandstand shake (“I
thought the bass was going to explode”) could regain the strength, the
tough skin and sheer muscular coordination, let alone the awesomely
swift musical creativity, are invited to check this out at their
earliest convenience. Not only can the man still walk – nay, run – all
over the instrument, but the melodic inventiveness that drove Rollins’
“Our Man In Jazz” forward is as bright and alert as ever. He nails
Murray’s “Flowers for Albert,” spurring the saxophonist on to what I’m
tempted to describe as one of his most inspired performances of recent
times…
Tom Sekowski, vivo.pl:
At times, people disappear for a good reason, only to reappear down the
line with a renewed sense of purpose. Such was the case with bassist
Henry Grimes. He disappeared very mysteriously at the tail end of the
60’s, only to be found a couple of years back living in a motel in Los
Angeles. He was as far removed from music when he was found as one can
ever be. William Parker gave him a bass, and lo and behold, he’s back
playing to packed houses again. It feels almost as if he never
disappeared. “Live at The Kerava Jazz Festival” is Henry Grimes first
proper album as a leader since “The Call” (ESP) which dates back to mid-
60’s. What a return to form it is! The trio is a powerhouse, where
along with Grimes on bass (of course), he’s joined by David Murray on
tenor and bass clarinet, along with percussionist Hamid Drake. Henry’s
bass playing is absolutely earth-shattering. It’s true, he can make
building move and rumble. The deep plucking on “Spin” where he takes an
extended solo is mesmerizing. Hamid Drake acts as a very solid partner
to Henry’s lead. He concentrates on shimmering cymbal work and in effect
gives the trio a sense of forward-looking motion. In effect, David
Murray almost steals the spotlight away from the leader. His tenor work
is truly robust, as he works out to the extreme on every piece. His
version of “Flowers for Albert” nearly steals the show. In every sense
of the word, this is the finest work I’d heard David Murray do since
1979’s “3D Family” [hathut], where interestingly enough he was leading
an adventurous trio of his own. Depending on how you look at it, this is
a showcase for David Murray as well (and it’s good that he hasn’t
forgotten his Ayler roots!). It’s only January, and as much as I hate to
do this early on in the year, I’ll cast my vote now. I have just heard
the record of 2005.
Marc Medwin, bagatellen.com:
… Grimes, Hamid Drake and David Murray put on a hugely enjoyable, often
transcendent concert of improvised music. From the expectant hush that
opens “Spin”, punctuated by Drake’s brush strokes and Grimes’ glissing
harmonies, dynamics and energy levels have nowhere to go but up, and up
they go with an almost malevolent vigor; beyond all recall and
redemption. All three players, masters of that increasingly chameleon
art of reference and subreference once mislabeled “free” jazz, spend the
gig propelling each other to further and further-flung corners of the
stratosphere or down below the gutbucket into the expressionism of
uhr-blues. Just where lines are crossed, summits are reached, and homage
becomes whim is often difficult to gage, as the stirringly frenetic
rendition of the Murray classic “Flowers for Albert” will demonstrate.
Murray assimilates, sublimates and transcends Ayler, Drake thumps and
punches from moment to moment at the borders of jazz and rock, delicate
cymbalwork providing a gorgeously glistening backdrop, while Grimes
seems to hear and anticipate every harmonic nuance Murray can muster.
Murray is no less a rhetorician, as his funkily slapped bass clarinet
work on “Eighty Degrees” places him beyond any further comparison with
Dolphy, and that’s only one of his many and multifarious contributions
to this date. Despite fireworks of all colors and shapes from Drake and
Murray, however, Grimes softly steals the show with his bass solo on
“Spin”. I hope it will eventually be the subject of a thorough
analytical study; its conception and execution are so unified that it
might have been a free-standing “organic” composition. Its first half
bowed and the remainder plucked, it begins nebulously enough, like
Mahler’s first symphony, with strong hints of the pitch A amidst
clusters of rising harmonics. As melodic fragments gradually emerge,
they still hover around B-Flat, G, sometimes intimating G-sharp, but
often leaving A implicated if not achieved. The arco section exudes
white heat, but key moments of silence, especially in the plucked
passages, speak even further to Grimes’ compositional leanings as a
soloist and to his continued and re-invigorated power as a diversely
gifted improviser. His sound is leaner but more direct than on much of
his 1960’s work, but his energy and evident enthusiasm remains undimmed.
Despite all the buzz, please don’t miss such a transformative listening
experience.
Rex Butters, “All About Jazz”:
From his return to performing at LA’s World Stage to his triumphant
residency in New York, bassist Henry Grimes plays like he’s making up
for lost time. Captured here on his first recording in decades, Grimes
performs live in Finland with two of the best and hardest-working
musicians around, David Murray on reeds and Hamid Drake on drums.
Although a generation younger, Murray and Drake share with Grimes an
approach that incorporates virtuosity and daunting technical skill to
create an active onslaught of ideas. The program opens with Grimes’
“Spin,” the veteran prowling around his bass, Murray and Drake quickly
joining him in an easy, unstructured intro. Grimes snaps into a
viciously authentic hard bop drive, with Drake including the bass rhythm
in one of the many he deals. Murray takes his big tone for an endless
ride, as Drake and Grimes shapeshift the time. An a-cappella blast from
Grimes begins with shivers, chisels, and slides, followed by prodigious
pinpoint pizzicato. Next up, Murray hits his groove and the music pours
out of him in torrents. Murray plays an amiable bass clarinet in an
easy-going duo with Grimes on “Eighty Degrees.” By the time Drake hits
the sticks, the trio gallops with Murray launching skyward. The
multirhythmic master takes a majestic solo turn, followed by the trio
led by a protean workout by Murray, back on tenor. An interstellar bass
solo leads straight into the next composition. Murray’s “Flowers for
Albert” seems to reference Grimes’ old boss with playful melody
fragments that seem shorthand for Ayleresque melodies. The rhythm
section plays straight momentum behind Murray, who rolls around with the
tenor. Drake finds beats everywhere, and the band receives a heartfelt
ovation that results in the encore, Grimes’ “Blues for Savannah.” A
Monkish theme maps the cheerful jam that follows. There’s going to be a
tendency to underestimate Grimes’ achievement here, which is akin to a
star major league hitter dropping out for thirty years to return more
poised with the same power against younger pitchers. For fans unable to
catch Grimes, Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival holds the proof that this
jazz Orpheus has returned from the underworld a greater light.
Greg Kline:
Welcome back Henry! I’m in free jazz heaven listening to the new CD
“Henry Grimes Trio Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival.” Henry Grimes’
reappearance after more than three decades is a great story. I’ll tell
you an even greater one. The guy, at least from what I hear on this CD,
hasn’t lost a lick from when he played bass with Benny Goodman, Miles,
Monk, Sonny Rollins, Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, et al.
(Imagine that, a guy good enough, and flexible enough, to play with
Goodman AND Ayler.) If that weren’t enough, David Murray, saxophone god
(plus bass clarinet on part of this), and Hamid Drake, “widely regarded
as one of the best percussionists in improvised music” to quote
allmusic, round out the ensemble. It will be hard to beat for my album
of the year. I was actually sad when it ended. Thank goodness CDs are
supposed to last 50 years, which is probably longer than I will.
For more great reviews of the Henry Grimes Trio CD featuring David Murray and Hamid Drake, please go to: ayler.com!
REVIEWS — BOOKS
SIGNS ALONG THE ROAD, Henry Grimes’s first published book of poetry.
David Grundy, Cambridge University (U.K.); Editor, “Eartrip” Magazine:
“Signs Along the Road” seems to read itself aloud inside one’s head as
one reads. It’s a phenomenon that I don’t recall ever happening to me
with any other kind of poetry – the voice that plays itself out in my
head is not that of Henry Grimes, nor is it mine, and perhaps it is not
even fully a voice, but it does exist in some capacity. This sounds
fanciful, but one could describe it as the voice of the poem itself,
speaking independently of writer and reader but emerging only from the
enco
unter between them. Such philosophical considerations arise from the
conditions which it creates – it makes one think in this way. It forces
one’s experience to become enriched, with the gentlest and most
studious of touches… Such poetry is incredibly honest, and incredibly
generous; it is what is meant by being aware, awake, and alive.
Edwin Pouncey, “The Wire”:
“Signs Along the Road” is a selection of poems that Henry Grimes jotted
down in hundreds of notebooks between 1978-2OO5, some of which took
months, perhaps years, to fully complete. By becoming a poet, Grimes
rebirthed himself, sloughing off his old skin to take stock of himself
and find a new expression. Poems such as “Ortherama the King” and “Adama
and Pourquory” have their roots set in legend, religion, and history,
suggesting that the poet spent much of his time studying ancient tracts
or poring through dusty volumes in his public library. There is a sense
of scholarship here, together with a love of language: how it reads, how
it looks on the page, how it sounds when read out loud. Grimes’s sense
of rhythm was still strong during this seemingly fallow period in his
life, only he was working with a different instrument, and the music he
was composing and playing emerged as words.
Carol Pearce Bjorlie, “Bass World”:
If you’re looking for a quick read, a comfortable sofa of poetry, jump
back! Don’t touch this book. It’s hot! Henry Grimes’ poems bite. Henry
Grimes’ poems dig. Henry Grimes’ poems whirl. Henry Grimes’ poems twist.
Henry’s poetry takes work. If you are willing to fill in the blanks,
drown in words, listen to an improvisation come true, take this book and
read it. Henry’s making wordmusic. Words and music mingle in Henry
Grimes’ poetry in a confluence of sonority. If you are brave, curious,
ready to be seared, read these poems.
Barbara Frenz, Ph.D.:
Henry Grimes the musician commands an energy the drummer Denis Charles
described: “Henry could make the bandstand shake. I thought his bass was
going to explode.” And his poems have this energy too. This poetry
embodies the archaic that lies buried within us; it reminds us of the
unpredictable, the unknown, the mysterious in life; and in its own way,
it makes a political statement as well.”
Carina Prange, “Jazz Dimensions”:
Grimes’s poems are a document of numerous years: poems which rhyme, and
some that do not; metaphors, word creations, with an abundance of
ideas, and laden with genius. One can feel a tremendous sense of depth
and a confrontation with the nature of things. Content-wise, the words
evolve around everything that constitutes the human existence: everyday
life experiences, as well as contemplations about higher powers,
spirituality, politics, and the meaning of life itself.
David Francis, “Metaphysical Free”:
I recommend “Signs Along the Road” to anyone interested in jazz,
poetry, twentieth-century American history, or esoteric individualism.
This book should be more widely known. It is provocative, compelling,
soulful, and wonderful. Its publication should cause controversy in the
rarefied world of poetry and in the ampler and deeper and expanding
universe of the mind, to which it belongs.
The
multi-instrumentalist and poet who worked with Thelonious Monk, Benny
Goodman, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and countless others, died of
COVID-19 complications
Henry Grimes, November 2006 (Howard Denner/Photoshot/Getty Images)
Grimes’
decades-long career existed in two distinct phases. Its first iteration
goes back to 1957, when he was a highly sought-after jazz bassist
playing with some of the era’s biggest names. During this time Grimes
worked with Sonny Rollins, Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, and Cecil Taylor.
In the ’60s, he began to delve into the avant-garde, playing alongisde
the late McCoy Tyner, Albert Ayler, and many more.
But then, at
the end of the ’60s, a trip to Los Angeles resulted in financial trouble
for Grimes, causing him to have to pawn his instrument. Decades of
inactivity would follow, during which he fell on hard times. It wasn’t
until 2002, after he was tracked down by social worker Marshall Marrotte
and was gifted a bass by William Parker, that Grimes began to play once
more. He made a return to the stage in 2003, performing at the Vision
Festival in New York City. He continued to play live and give workshops
at colleges and universities throughout the 2010s.
Free Jazz Blog
Sometimes life takes mysterious paths, but death sometimes provides
bitterly ironic coincidences. Yesterday Giuseppi Logan and Henry Grimes
died shortly after each other, and their lives also contained further
common ground. Grimes, a great bassist, violinist and poet was a legend,
which is on the one hand due to the fact that he was an outstanding
musician, and on the other hand due to his unusual life, which actually
contains enough material for a Hollywood screenplay. In the New York of the
1960s, Grimes was one of the spearheads of the musical revolution. He was
involved in many of the things that happened during that period. Trained at
Juilliard, Grimes teamed up with all the major jazz musicians of that time:
Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler,
Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, Frank Wright and Roswell Rudd (and this is only a
narrowed-down list). No matter what the musical context was, he played with
an intensity that musicians like Dennis Charles thought “his bass was about
to explode“. Grimes was famous for his voluminous tone and drive, for his
energy and vitality, as well as for his ability to alternate from long
Eastern-sounding bowing to hard pizzicato plucking. He was really focused
on the music but when you saw him play it seemed as if he was somewhere
else. His particular strength was to support and push his fellow musicians.
You can still hear this well on Cecil Taylor's albums Unit Structures and
Conquistador, on which he plays in a duet with Alan Silva, or on Albert
Ayler’s albums Spirits and Bells.
In the second half of the 1960s, at the height of his career, Grimes left
the scene almost out of the blue - this is what he has in common with
Giuseppi Logan. In 1967, so the story goes, he took a job as a replacement
for Jon Hendricks’ usual bass player. This job took the band to San
Francisco, and an anecdote has Grimes getting out of the car that was about
to take the musicians back to New York after Hendricks made derogatory
remarks about Cecil Taylor’s music. Grimes himself told the story a bit
differently. he said that he had financial problems so he went to
California, where the sun shines. He just didn’t want to face homelessness
in the cold New York winters. He played gigs in San Francisco before moving
to Los Angeles, where he would remain for three decades. When he wasn’t
able to connect to the Hollywood scene and facing health problems, Grimes
finally faded into musical oblivion and eventually sold his bass. As a
result he had to start working in ordinary jobs (e.g. in the construction
industry or as a janitor).
It would take thirty years before he finally got his hands on a double bass
again. In 2002 Marshall Marotte, a social worker and jazz fan, tracked
Grimes down in L.A. As soon as he found him, he let people know that Grimes
was still alive - and the jazz world hadn’t forgotten him. He started
getting calls and offers from musicians, William Parker finally donated him
a bass and encouraged his idol to return to the scene. What started then
was a second career, it seemed as if Grimes had never left. His sound and
musical vision were still unique. Outstanding projects were Spiritual
Unity, Marc Ribot’s Albert-Ayler project in 2005, his duets with drummer
Rashied Ali (
Going to The Ritual
and
Spirits Aloft), on which he also shines as a violinist and a poet, and Same Egg, his
quartet with Roberto Pettinato (sax), Dave Burrell (piano) and Tyshawn
Sorry (drums). In 2016 the Vision Festival honored Grimes with a Lifetime
Achievement Award for his considerable artistic contributions and Barbara
Frenz published a biography on his life and his music,
Music To Silence To Music
(2015).
Unfortunately, I’ve never had the chance to see Henry Grimes play live.
However, I saw him twice when he visited the Vision Festival. He sat there
in the first row (he was already tied to a wheelchair) and the musicians
all came to him and asked how he was doing. It was as if a king granted an
audience. Now Henry Grimes, the man with the characteristic bandana, has
really left us for good. Another great voice of the free jazz world has
gone. He will really be missed.
Watch Henry Grimes play in a duet with Kidd Jordan on the occasion of his
75th birthday at The Stone in New York:
Henry Grimes' 75th Birthday Concert
February 11, 2011
Henry Grimes celebrated his 75th Birthday with a month of concerts at The Stone in NYC. The night of his birthday he was accompanied by Kidd Jordan, the legendary New Orleans saxophonist, in 2 "beyond description" sets of music.
Video by Joe Chonto
“Henry was not hired to fill the role of a bass player; he was hired to be Henry,” declares fellow bassist William Parker
Henry Grimes was one of greatest musicians in the last
century – a bassist and deep listener who opened the door to his inner
world every time he was on the bandstand.
He came out of the Philadelphia jazz scene that included a plethora
of first generation bass players: Jimmy Garrison, Reggie Workman, Jymie
Merritt, Percy Heath and Art Davis. Henry was right in the middle
holding up his own, not missing a step with these giants. I was told by
the drummer Sonny Murray that many bassists would come by Henry’s house
in South Philly for lessons “because Henry Grimes knew his stuff”. He
played with many of the more established musicians like Benny Goodman,
Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus and Thelonius Monk, to the new
fire music of Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Frank Wright, Charles Tyler
and Don Cherry, and to the looking-ahead-sounds of pianist Cecil Taylor.
From what I heard on the recordings Henry could have been on all the
Blue Note records that came out in the 1960s: he certainly had the
credentials and creativity to do so. I personally feel there was
something too real in his sound, the way he constructed bass lines
always had a freedom that elevated the music into a different dimension.
Perhaps a zone only the brave dare go.
Henry’s sound was thick – a resonant driving pulsating, pushing
walking concept. Taking things to the edge, even in the beauty. Swinging
and dancing a black sound. Always hearing differently, one could hear
the earth, the soil, sweat and toil of the people in his sound. A sound
laced in the blues and the purples: listen to Henry on the Archie Shepp
album On This Night. The colours of the gospel of freedom,
freedom of sound and speech, freedom of rhythm, freedom to dance inside
and play textures; to drop one note and turn it into a sound. Sound of
clouds, sound of thunder, singing out to write poems called bass lines
and before the end of the day transforming back to space words and
utterances walking in, filling the frame up with sound. Behind all of
this is a love for music like no other. Deep intuition, listening,
feeling and becoming one with a higher consciousness. Listen to Henry on
the Don Cherry Record Where Is Brooklyn?, or just about
anything that he recorded in the 1960s – it’s all brilliant. It all
soars and roars, opening up the gates of heaven.
From the beginning to the end Henry Grimes loved music dearly. His
story is huge. Some say he was missing in action between 1967–2003. I
say he was not missing, we just didn’t know where he was. He was living
his life as a human being. This is the other side music. When he
returned on the scene in 2003 he came back with a different perspective.
He was somehow able to tap directly into the source of music that was
inside him. Henry was not hired to fill the role of a bass player; he
was hired to be Henry. This is the ultimate accomplishment of a musician
to be oneself and be respected for that. Henry returned and was able to
travel around the world playing and living the musical life. This life,
this was the blessing and gift to us all.
Thank God for the manifestation that was Henry Grimes.
THE MUSIC OF HENRY GRIMES: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUSVARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH HENRY GRIMES:
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
FARUQ Z. BEY
Henry Grimes 
