Music to Silence to Music - A Biography of Henry Grimes
by Barbara Frenz with a Foreword by Sonny Rollins
Northway Publications
As this review is being written, Henry Grimes is celebrating his 80th birthday in Manhattan with friends, family and some of the many musicians with whom he has shared a stage over the years, and Barbara Frenz important and timely biography provides a detailed and deeply human record of his astonishing career and creativity.
By the mid-1960s, Henry Grimes had established a reputation as one of the finest bass players in a new generation of musicians in America. His reputation was built early, and on the coupling of a world class and innovative technique (which was further honed in his studies at the Julliard School to be flexible and expansive), and an unparalleled and abundant natural creativity. Grimes was quiet, a listener and a do-er; dedicated to his art, with a temperament suited to forming productive collaborations.
From the start, his sound was big but it was also new. Grimes could work in the finest straight jazz bands of the day, but his music and musicality were forward leaning, formative of; belonging in and resonant of the contemporary world. Within a decade he was to be in the foreground of some of jazz and improvisation's most original and influential moments, a key player as the music stepped into freedom with Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and many others. But then silence came, and an absence from the stage that would last for more than three decades. Grimes disappeared.
In this biograph, Barbara Frenz, who has a clear and infectious love for the music she explores, and who competed this work with the active cooperation of its subject, the dizzying rise of Grimes to prominence on the US and European stage is meticulously laid out for the reader. The growing circle of contacts and influences, the necessary moves from city to city, the insecurities of living; of life spent moving from one to gig to another, are all detailed. As are the frustrations, the set backs and the harsh reality of the situation for one of America’s finest musicians. The stark truth is clear. Grimes was playing and in demand, but surviving on a hand-to-mouth existence in insecure and shared accommodation. By the mid 1960s, even with a full and impressive diary that included tours with Sonny Rollins across Europe and the US, and being a part of many of the top groups, music was barely providing a living, and opportunities to play the music he wanted to play were rare. To play anything new was to commit to a struggle, not with the creative flow, but with poverty, rejection, obscurity. Grimes was key to the most innovative music of the day, his work was allied with the struggle for Black rights and equality A music moved from the mainstream, to the margins.
From a career that started in Philadelphia in the early 1950s, where Grimes was raised and he mixed with contemporaries such as Lee Morgan and McCoy Tyner, and with Bobby Timmons, Jimmy Garrison, amongst many other his career in the top flight started as early as 1956, working live with Anita O’day and Gerry Mulligan, and recording with Mulligan, O’Day, Chet Baker, Lennie Tristano, Warne Marsh and many others. By 1958 he was in more than one of the main acts at the Newport Jazz Festival, key to the ensembles of Sonny Rollins, Lee Konitz, Thelonious Monk and in the Benny Goodman Big Band - an incredible diversity of platforms.
And Frenz’s biography lets the facts do their own talking. Here was a musician held in wide regard, known across the US and Europe, and his work already captured on some of the most influential recordings in jazz history, but it wasn’t enough. With a highly judged and restrained narrative, Frenz takes us into the early moments of Grimes disappearance. She does not seek to place answers where there is not information, and is happy to leave questions open, and then in the years when Henry Grimes is not playing, we see some light, we see an active creativity pieced together from note and fragments.
By the late 1960s, Grimes as working at the very cutting edge of the music, with Taylor and Ayler he would change a music’s history, and forever. By the end of that decade, he was silent, living without a bass.
Frenz takes us to the point of Grimes silence with subtle reflection. It was an event that seemed to happen almost without design or desire in Grimes’s life, the outcome of a series of relentless mishappenings, maybe all small in their own stature, but accumulative, persistent.
It is also clear from Frenz’s biography that Grimes is a man to whom creativity is like breathing to the rest of us. It is natural and immediate in his life. He turned to writing, to poetry, typically also to study and engagement. He lived in hand-to-mouth circumstances, but survived on a level that enabled him to write. There is not much detail of this period, save for the excerpts explored from Grimes’s own diaries and notes, which are at times elusive and contradictory, at others revealing.
And the the return. The devotion of a fan and a trail of research that finds Grimes, not dead as reported in some of the jazz press, but very much alive, and the time was right for Grimes to reemerge. This period and the relationship with the bass that restarted after the efforts of musicians such as William Parker, are vividly captured in this work, and Grimes’s return was and is emphatic. His virtuosity of the bass, rusty in the early days of the comeback, was clear, and his music would be available once again to an older generation, and telling to a new. Important also is Grimes presence as a musician. He is famously quiet, but his hands and ears do the talking.
Frenz’s portrait is of an enigmatic master, and it is a work of research and record that equals its subject. This is a book that opens the door to a body of work that is vital. Frenz remains in the background of this portrait, the events tell us what we need to know, she has laid out the map and removed the obstacles to our own path of discovery of Grimes's creativity. Take the trip.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
by Barbara Frenz with a Foreword by Sonny Rollins
Northway Publications
As this review is being written, Henry Grimes is celebrating his 80th birthday in Manhattan with friends, family and some of the many musicians with whom he has shared a stage over the years, and Barbara Frenz important and timely biography provides a detailed and deeply human record of his astonishing career and creativity.
By the mid-1960s, Henry Grimes had established a reputation as one of the finest bass players in a new generation of musicians in America. His reputation was built early, and on the coupling of a world class and innovative technique (which was further honed in his studies at the Julliard School to be flexible and expansive), and an unparalleled and abundant natural creativity. Grimes was quiet, a listener and a do-er; dedicated to his art, with a temperament suited to forming productive collaborations.
From the start, his sound was big but it was also new. Grimes could work in the finest straight jazz bands of the day, but his music and musicality were forward leaning, formative of; belonging in and resonant of the contemporary world. Within a decade he was to be in the foreground of some of jazz and improvisation's most original and influential moments, a key player as the music stepped into freedom with Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and many others. But then silence came, and an absence from the stage that would last for more than three decades. Grimes disappeared.
In this biograph, Barbara Frenz, who has a clear and infectious love for the music she explores, and who competed this work with the active cooperation of its subject, the dizzying rise of Grimes to prominence on the US and European stage is meticulously laid out for the reader. The growing circle of contacts and influences, the necessary moves from city to city, the insecurities of living; of life spent moving from one to gig to another, are all detailed. As are the frustrations, the set backs and the harsh reality of the situation for one of America’s finest musicians. The stark truth is clear. Grimes was playing and in demand, but surviving on a hand-to-mouth existence in insecure and shared accommodation. By the mid 1960s, even with a full and impressive diary that included tours with Sonny Rollins across Europe and the US, and being a part of many of the top groups, music was barely providing a living, and opportunities to play the music he wanted to play were rare. To play anything new was to commit to a struggle, not with the creative flow, but with poverty, rejection, obscurity. Grimes was key to the most innovative music of the day, his work was allied with the struggle for Black rights and equality A music moved from the mainstream, to the margins.
From a career that started in Philadelphia in the early 1950s, where Grimes was raised and he mixed with contemporaries such as Lee Morgan and McCoy Tyner, and with Bobby Timmons, Jimmy Garrison, amongst many other his career in the top flight started as early as 1956, working live with Anita O’day and Gerry Mulligan, and recording with Mulligan, O’Day, Chet Baker, Lennie Tristano, Warne Marsh and many others. By 1958 he was in more than one of the main acts at the Newport Jazz Festival, key to the ensembles of Sonny Rollins, Lee Konitz, Thelonious Monk and in the Benny Goodman Big Band - an incredible diversity of platforms.
And Frenz’s biography lets the facts do their own talking. Here was a musician held in wide regard, known across the US and Europe, and his work already captured on some of the most influential recordings in jazz history, but it wasn’t enough. With a highly judged and restrained narrative, Frenz takes us into the early moments of Grimes disappearance. She does not seek to place answers where there is not information, and is happy to leave questions open, and then in the years when Henry Grimes is not playing, we see some light, we see an active creativity pieced together from note and fragments.
By the late 1960s, Grimes as working at the very cutting edge of the music, with Taylor and Ayler he would change a music’s history, and forever. By the end of that decade, he was silent, living without a bass.
Frenz takes us to the point of Grimes silence with subtle reflection. It was an event that seemed to happen almost without design or desire in Grimes’s life, the outcome of a series of relentless mishappenings, maybe all small in their own stature, but accumulative, persistent.
It is also clear from Frenz’s biography that Grimes is a man to whom creativity is like breathing to the rest of us. It is natural and immediate in his life. He turned to writing, to poetry, typically also to study and engagement. He lived in hand-to-mouth circumstances, but survived on a level that enabled him to write. There is not much detail of this period, save for the excerpts explored from Grimes’s own diaries and notes, which are at times elusive and contradictory, at others revealing.
And the the return. The devotion of a fan and a trail of research that finds Grimes, not dead as reported in some of the jazz press, but very much alive, and the time was right for Grimes to reemerge. This period and the relationship with the bass that restarted after the efforts of musicians such as William Parker, are vividly captured in this work, and Grimes’s return was and is emphatic. His virtuosity of the bass, rusty in the early days of the comeback, was clear, and his music would be available once again to an older generation, and telling to a new. Important also is Grimes presence as a musician. He is famously quiet, but his hands and ears do the talking.
Frenz’s portrait is of an enigmatic master, and it is a work of research and record that equals its subject. This is a book that opens the door to a body of work that is vital. Frenz remains in the background of this portrait, the events tell us what we need to know, she has laid out the map and removed the obstacles to our own path of discovery of Grimes's creativity. Take the trip.
Reviewed by Peter Urpeth
