The Resurrection of Henry Grimes

By Hank Cherry

It’s a cold January Friday afternoon in Manhattan. Henry Grimes and his wife, the writer and music promoter Margaret Davis-Grimes, have assembled a pickup quintet for a jam session in a cozy walk-up overlooking West Twenty-second Street in Chelsea. The apartment has high ceilings, and portraits of jazz musicians hang on the wall.

A sparse afterthought of a beard hangs around his chin, and Grimes is bald on top. His face, though, bears the same expression of intent it did some forty years ago when he could be seen in magazines, heard on records, and caught onstage alongside Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, and other giants of the 1960s free-jazz movement. But that was before he died…

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in Slake No. 1. To read the entire story, purchase or subscribe at shop.slake.la.