Henry Grimes' Return
In avant-garde jazz circles in the mid-1960's, Henry Grimes was one of the most respected bassists working. Trained at Juilliard, he had already played with Anita O'Day, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins when he was in his 20's.He went on to play on some of the seminal albums of the free-jazz era, by such musicians as Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Pharoah Sanders. He was known for his ability to alternate from long Eastern-sounding bowing to hard pizzicato plucking, all of which generated tremendous calluses on his hands.
But in the early 70's, after moving to California, Mr. Grimes disappeared. For three decades nobody in music circles heard from him. Several reference works listed him as dead.
And that is how the story of Mr. Grimes might have ended if it were not for a determined fan from Athens, Ga., named Marshall Marrotte
Henry Grimes played at the Vision Festival in NYC earlier today. The New York Times covers a bit of the story, but I read the whole thing a few months back when Mr Marrotte told it in Signal to Noise Magazine. If you don't already subscribe, you should.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Henry Grimes' Return.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.0xdeadbeef.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2672
Henry Grimes's official Web site is at http://www.henrygrimes.com. Henry's been playing a lot of concerts with many great musicians since his return to the music world in early 2OO3, and just this month he rejoined Cecil Taylor, with whom he last played forty years ago ("Conquistador," "Unit Structures," "Into the Hot") in three trio concerts with drummer Pheeroan akLaff, one in Hartford and two in New York City. Now Henry is in Europe touring with Marc Ribot's Spiritual Unity Quartet playing music by and for Albert Ayler, and after that Henry will be in Sweden with one of his own groups, Spaceship on the Runway, with Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, and Avreeayl Ra (four concerts in four Swedish cities later this month). Please go to http://www.henrygrimes.com and click on the "schedule" button for more details, or by direct link, it's http://www.henrygrimes.com/schedule.html. Thanks!
I've been enjoying Henry on the Spiritual Unity album. I wasn't familiar with Spaceship on the Runway - any plans for a recording?
As a Tamil Midget, I am thoroughly offended by Hickenloop and his Christofascist campaign to send Coloradough back to the dark ages. This blog used to be a place where all people, including Tamil Midgets, could come and discuss the pressing issues of the day. Now it is a cesspool where the likes of Ted Haggard issue denunciations of Little People out of one side of their mouths while hitting the meth pipe with the other. Please play the YouTube of me kung-fu fighting. They don't call me Frog for nothing.