Henry Grimes

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 [email protected] or [email protected] or call 212-841-0899 and receive a call-back. Henry's Web page is http://henrygrimes.com. Thank you!

Awards

Henry Grimes has received many honors in recent years, including four Meet the Composer grants, and he has been honored for his outstanding musicianship by many publications and organizations (designated "best of," etc). On June 7th, 2016, he received the Arts for Art / Vision Festival Lifetime Achievement Award and played for 12 hours non-stop, leading three very different groups of his own choosing. If you go to artsforart.org and click on "menu" and then Vision Festival, you can read full details of this, Henry Grimes's crowning achievement at age 80.