DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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Astonishing resurrection of jazz great
Chris Searle admires Barbara Frenz’s Music to Silence to Music: A Biography of Henry Grimes (Northway Publications, £20)
STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
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.
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