The poet returns

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.

To read the whole feature buy the Winter 2007 issue of Double Bassist by calling telephone number: +44 (0)20 8606 7506 or email: newsquestsubs@wdis.co.uk.