Henry Grimes

Henry Grimes (born November 3, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a jazz double bassist.

As a child, Grimes took up the violin, then began playing tuba, English horn, percussion, and finally the double bass at age 13 or 14, while he was in high school. Grimes furthered his musical studies at The Juilliard School, and established a reputation as a versatile bassist in the mid 1950s. He recorded or performed with saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and Sonny Rollins, pianist Thelonious Monk, singer Anita O'Day, clarinetist Benny Goodman and many others. When famed bassist Charles Mingus experimented with a second bass in his band, Grimes was the person he selected for the job.

Gradually growing interested in free jazz, 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, and clarinetist Perry Robinson. He recorded one album, The Call (1965) as a leader for the ESP-Disk record label.

Then in the late 1960s, Grimes seemed to disappear completely after moving to California. Many assumed Grimes was dead; he was listed as such in several jazz reference works.

Marshall Marrotte, a social worker and jazz fan, set out to discover Grimes's fate once and for all. To his surprise, he found Grimes alive, but nearly destitute, renting a tiny apartment in Los Angeles, California, writing poetry and doing odd jobs to support himself. Having suffered from bipolar disorder and long ago sold his bass, Grimes had fallen out of touch with the jazz world, but was eager to perform again.

Word spread of Grimes's "resurrection" and many musicians offered their help. Bassist William Parker donated a bass (nicknamed "Olive Oil", for its distinctive greenish color) and had it shipped at considerable expense 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 documentary film is planned, as is a biography.

Grimes has made up for lost time: In 2003 he performed at over two dozen music festivals or other appearances. Grimes received a returning hero's welcome at the free jazz-oriented Vision Festival, and is teaching lessons and workshops for bassists. His November, 2003 appearance on trumpeter Dennis González' Nile River Suite was the bassist's first recording in more than 35 years. In 2004 he recorded as leader with David Murray and Hamid Drake; 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 kKife Jazzedition in Cologne, Germany, a collection of Grimes' poetry, in which he presents his selection of entries from thousands of pages of his writings. Also in 2007, Henry Grimes recorded with drummer Rashied Ali. In many venues around New York and on tour in the U.S., Canada, and 19 countries in Europe, working mostly as a leader since 2003, Henry Grimes has been making music with Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Andrew Lamb, Joe Lovano, William Parker, Cecil Taylor (with whom Henry resumed playing in October, 2006 after forty years), John Tchicai, and others. Grimes is now a resident of New York City and has a busy schedule of performances, clinics, and international tours.

Here's a lengthy quote from an article about Grimes from the Winter 2008 issue of The Double Bassist:

" 'A serious, intense and fearless musician whose personal life reflected those exceptional ­qualities…’ When Sonny Rollins – frequently proposed as the most important living jazz musician, and a man, moreover, not given to fulsome tributes – says this about a fellow musician, it’s worth paying attention. Particularly when the great tenor player’s association with the musician in question, bassist Henry Grimes, dates back 50 years. Scroll forward through that half-century to an utterly contemporary musician, guitarist Marc Ribot, and the praise is still flowing unstinted: ‘Henry has unbelievable ears and what he plays will always relate to what’s going on in some completely unpredictable and beautiful way … when you listen to it you hear the melody of the tune you’re playing sped up, counterpointed, harmonised, attacked, distorted, played backwards. He’s really the Cecil Taylor of the bass … 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.’

Grimes is indeed a remarkable bassist and a man with an extraordinary life history. There are no quotes relating to the period between 1968 and 2002 because he disappeared from the jazz scene for that time, renting a room in a hotel in downtown Los Angeles, supporting himself with casual labour and writing poetry (some of it recently published in his first collection, Signs Along the Road, reviewed last issue). Rumour and speculation about his whereabouts abounded, and in 1986 Cadence Magazine even reported Grimes as having died ‘in late 1984’. His return to the scene in the new millennium was one of the most heartening comeback stories to emerge from the music world since the traditional trumpeter Bunk Johnson was rediscovered in 1938, given a set of dentures to allow him to resume playing, and carved out a revivalist career for himself in the 1940s."