Henry Grimes 1935-2020 | In Memoriam

Going to Juilliard was a lifelong dream for Grimes, a jazz bass player

Born in Philadelphia, Henry Grimes (’54, double bass) studied violin tuba, English horn, and percussion before switching to the double bass in high school and arriving at Juilliard. His career started out—and ended—strong but, as Molly Yeh (BM ’11, percussion) wrote in the Journal in a 2010 profile, “for nearly half of his life, beginning shortly after his days as a Juilliard student and continuing until 2002, Grimes was stuck in Los Angeles without a home, without a car, and without a bass.”

“Going to Juilliard was a lifelong dream,” Grimes told Yeh. But “there was no jazz, my native form of music”—it would be almost half a century before Juilliard established its jazz program. So in 1954, he left and began a career that led him to work with some of the great jazz musicians of the time, including Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, and McCoy Tyner. But then a move across the country in the late 1960s damaged his bass; unable to afford the repairs, he sold it with every intention of buying it back, though that never happened. Fast-forward to 2002, when a social worker and jazz fan tracked down Grimes (he’d been presumed dead by many), another musician got him a new bass (which he promptly nicknamed Olive Oil), and a triumphant new career began that lasted until his performing was sidelined again, this time by Parkinson’s disease, in 2018.

Grimes, who died of COVID-19 on April 15, is survived by his wife, Margaret Davis Grimes. Juilliard sends its condolences.

Read more about Henry Grimes in the Journal's November 2010 Alumni Spotlight, "After Half a Lifetime Away, Bassist Returns to His Instrument"