Bassist Henry Grimes was born in Philadelphia on November 3, 1935 and passed away just over six years ago. His is one of the more interesting lives of jazz musicians profiled on the page, as Grimes disappeared for more than thirty years and was assumed dead before reemerging and reengaging with music in the early 2000s.

The son of two musical parents, Henry Grimes took up the violin at age 12, but switched to the double bass during his high school years. He continued his studies at Julliard and established a reputation as a versatile bassist by the mid-1950s. He performed with Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Anita O’Day and Benny Goodman and appears in the 1958 film about the Newport Jazz Festival “Jazz on a Summer’s Day.”

In the 1960s Grimes became associated with the free jazz movement and gigged with performers such as Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Steve Lacy. By 1970, though, Grimes had moved to California and essentially disappeared. It was widely assumed that he had passed away, and his death was listed as deceased in several jazz reference books. But, a jazz fan and social worker named Marshall Marrotte decided to discover what had really occurred in the case of the mysterious disappearance of Henry Grimes. Marrotte found Grimes in 2002 living in a small Los Angeles apartment writing poetry and doing odd jobs for money. He had lost touch with the music world and didn’t even have a bass to play. Word spread and many musicians and admirers helped him get an instrument and return to playing and performing.

Making up for lost time, Grimes performed at more than two dozen music festivals and other appearances in 2003. He received a returning hero's welcome at the free jazz-oriented Vision Festival and began teaching lessons and workshops for bassists. Within weeks of his return to New York City in 2004 he played a solo concert live on radio station WKCR, and by 2004 he was making albums as a leader and made seven such records before his death in 2020 due to complications from Covid-19.

Here is a link to a Henry Grimes bass solo:

"A STONE COMMUNION"