Grimes Times ! Henry Grimes, Renaissance Man, hits the road in his 75th birthday year

HENRY GRIMES (acoustic bass, violin, poetry) has played more than 38O concerts in 24 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.

In the '5O's and '6O's, he came up in the music playing and touring with Arnett Cobb, Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson, "Bullmoose" Jackson, "Little" Willie John, 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, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and many more.

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 in 2OO2 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, 'O3 to play in the Vision Festival.

Since then, often working as a leader, Mr. Grimes has performed and / or recorded solo, playing upright bass and violin and reading his poetry, and in groups with many of today's music heroes, such as Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Paul Dunmall, David Murray, William Parker, Marc Ribot, and Cecil Taylor.

Mr. Grimes has also held recent residencies at the Berklee College of Music, Hamilton College for the Arts, New England Conservatory, the University of Michigan, University of Gloucestershire at Cheltenham, and more; he has given a number of workshops and master classes on other major campuses, released several brilliant new recordings, made his professional debut on a second instrument (the violin) at the age of 7O, has now published the first volume of his poetry, "Signs Along the Road," and has been creating illustrations to accompany his new recordings and publications. He has received many honors in recent years, including four Meet the Composer grants, a grant from the Acadia Foundation, and a grant from WKCR's "New York Music Alive" series.

Mr. Grimes can be heard on 85 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. Henry Grimes now lives and teaches in New York City.

Please listen to Henry Grimes and Rashied Ali on "Going to the Ritual" (Porter Records, 2OO8) here: http://www.porterrecords.com/id27.html; and to The Profound Sound Trio (Andrew Cyrille, Paul Dunmall, Henry Grimes as co-leaders) on "Opus de Life" (Porter Records, 2OO9) here: http://www.porterrecords.com/id53.html.
For high-resolution photos of Henry Grimes, please click on the seven links at the top of the page at http://www.henrygrimes.com/photos.html.
http://www.henrygrimes.com/


He left Juilliad to join the vibrant New York city jazz scene of the late fifties. At 22 he was playing bass for Thelonious Monk. In the early 60's he helped forge Free jazz, making music that would influence John Coltrane. at the age of 31, he disappeared. In 1984 Cadence magazine ran his obituary. Thing is, Henry Grimes wasn't dead. This is his story. The life and death and life of Henry Grimes.