long story short: 3 years ago Henry Grimes (legendary bassist, free jazz luminary, collaborator of Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, etc, etc.,) was found living in a tiny hotel room in downtown Los Angeles, after missing for 3 decades. some of the rumors were that he chanced his name and moved to Germany, or that he died in Florida. he apparently sold his bass in San Francisco in 1969 (likely for a meal), wondered down to LA, depressed, broke and was homeless for a good part of the 70s. He had been doing janitorial and grocery store packaging jobs for another 20 years until someone found him - now that he got all those royalty checks from all those records he played on in the 60s, and that William Parker gave him a new bass, he played a couple of shows in LA, and has since moved to NYC - from everyone who has heard him recently, sounding every bit as good as 1969. this was his only album as leader from back then.
[note: apologize for the confusion earlier. I had mistakenly zipped up both this album as well as Steve Lacy's "Troubles" (the last 5 tunes) together. it is corrected, and I will post the Lacy separately at a later date. the following is this album by itself]
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mxd55q
4 comments:
Thanks for sorting this out. I d/l'd the first, recognized the Lacy album & just assumed it was not-to-be. Only time I'd heard this was back in the late 70's, when I did a late-night a/g jazz show in Santa Cruz. Perry Robinson isn't exactly over-recorded himself.
Hello! This is Margaret, Henry Grimes's partner since mid-2OO3. Goodness, confusion aplenty! Please see www.henrygrimes.com for the straight story. And by the way, no royalty checks have followed Henry's rediscovery and return to the music world except one from New Artists Records, thanks to Connie Crothers. The planet is blessed with many, many releases and re-releases and new releases on CD with Henry Grimes's brilliant artistry to be heard on them, but Henry is considered by the record companies to have no rights to any income because he was a side man who agreed at the time to record for a one-time fee of a few dollars. African-Americans really had no rights anyway in those years, you know (the '6O's actually sort of happened in the '7O's). As to the leaders on those albums, some of whom are very rich and famous now, it's sad that they haven't seen fit to share any of the proceeds with Henry, whether legally required to or not. And in the case of Henry's single leader album, the aforementioned "The Call" on ESP, Bernard StoleMan claims he never sold any, though why he keeps reissuing it if he never sold any is quite a mystery. There are a lot of justice issues here. But meanwhile Henry is playing again, as brilliantly as ever if not more so, and not just the bass but also the violin, and he's the published author of some wonderful poetry he wrote instead of playing the bass when he didn't have a bass, and he's touring and playing concerts and teaching workshops and master classes far and wide, so please read all about him at www.henrygrimes.com. Happy holidays!
Sorry to say that this file is apparently gone from Sendspace.
hello. could you reupload this file? please! and how cool margaret grimes didn't ask you to remove this music.
thx,
t
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