JAZZ is a music of stories and the story of the pioneering free bassist Henry Grimes defies all expectations and predictabilities, just like his astonishing musicianship.

In this biography, Swiss jazz historian Barbara Frenz divides Grimes’s life into three dramatic phases. In his twenties, he became one of the prime bassists of his era after a Philadelphia boyhood when he was a school companion of Archie Shepp, Lee Morgan and Ted Curson.

He played and recorded with Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Sonny Rollins — who said of him that “he has always been a serious, intense and fearless musician,” — and was heralded as one of the founders of the avant-garde in jazz with his 1965 album The Call considered as one of his most potent achievements.