Aligning the Planets

FINALLY: Philly jazz luminaries Henry Grimes (left) and Marshall Allen never played together before this tour.

The remarkable rebirths of Henry Grimes and Marshall Allen.

by Shaun Brady

So how does life change when you go from living in a single-room occupancy hotel, on the brink of poverty, forgotten or presumed dead, to touring the world, performing alongside jazz luminaries and basking in the glow of a successful comeback?

According to Henry Grimes, it doesn't. "I don't think it's any different. I mean, it's a different date and time, but that's all."

The bass tends to attract a more stoic breed of musician, but Grimes has a take-what-comes attitude that borders on Zen. Born in Philadelphia in 1935, Grimes studied at Juilliard before gigging around New York, including a stint with Gerry Mulligan. He joined Sonny Rollins' group at a time when the saxophonist was branching out into more experimental playing. "Sonny Rollins has always been a very modern guy. [His] music is like studying advanced theories."

Grimes embraced free jazz, recording several notable dates with Albert Ayler and becoming the avant-garde's bassist of choice. "At that time, Ayler was something totally new, but so were Sunny Murray and Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor. And we used to all work together." In 1966, ESP issued Grimes' sole recording as a leader, The Call, featuring clarinetist Perry Robinson and Tom Price on drums.

And then nothing. Rumors circulated that Grimes had died in 1984. The liner notes to the CD reissue of Grimes' own The Call end, "Does anybody know what happened to him?"

"I needed some money and I wasn't making any," Grimes explains. In 1967, he left New York and headed west, landing first in San Francisco and later in Los Angeles. But it soon became clear that financial prospects weren't any more promising, and he was forced to hock his bass. Turning to odd jobs and custodial work, he holed up in his studio apartment, not to be heard from again for more than 30 years.

Marshall Allen, too, has lived in the same place for more than three decades, in his case a Germantown row home turned living museum to Sun Ra and his Arkestra. The multi-instrumentalist moved to Chicago in 1951 after leaving the Army and sought out Sun Ra after hearing some early recordings. "He was trying to make a better music for a better world." Allen joined an early incarnation of the Arkestra in 1958.

The band reconstituted itself in New York before relocating to Philly in 1969 and settling on Morton Street. For many years, the house was well-known as home and rehearsal space for the Arkestra, with Allen, saxophonists John Gilmore and James Jackson, clarinetist Elo Omoe, and the leader himself living together and practicing day and night at the whim of the infamous disciplinarian. "We wanted to come to Philadelphia, where America began. So if we win Philadelphia, we win the world. But they gave us a hard time here, too."

The Arkestra was, if anything, even farther out than the New York avant-garde scene, just as unacceptable to mainstream tastes yet frowned upon by the jazz cognoscenti for the bizarre costumes and Egypt-by-way-of-Saturn cosmology. But somehow, Allen and his compatriots held a big band together, surviving many of the same hardships that drove Henry Grimes into hiding. "If you're sincere about creating or building something, you go and you do it with whatever you have to survive with," according to Allen. "So we lived together, which was cheaper. You could cook a whole pot of food cheaper than if each individual was going to buy something. It's like you do with a family. You make the best of what you have."

Sun Ra left the planet in 1993, followed quickly by Gilmore in '95 and Jackson in '97. "The '90s were scary for me. You're traveling with cats for 30 years or more, and all of a sudden they start [dying] one right after another like a chain." Allen was the only remaining Arkestra mainstay. "They left me in the world by myself." After initial doubts, he decided to continue the Arkestra, gathering a number of musicians who had played under Sun Ra and recruiting a few new members. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Allen's tenure as leader.

Henry Grimes was rediscovered by a social worker in late 2002 and given a bass donated by William Parker, who performed a phenomenal duet show here with Grimes last year. Grimes has been touring almost constantly ever since, finally releasing his long-overdue second album under his own name, Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival, with David Murray and Hamid Drake. Listening to the intricate communication between the bassist and his accomplished sidemen, it is hard to believe that he had been away so long. Throughout his layoff, Grimes kept the idea of returning to music "right at the forefront of my mind. And I used to write poetry and keep my mind active aesthetically. I felt it didn't make any difference if it was music or not, as long as it was self-expression."

Grimes and Allen have never played together before this tour, but both maintain similar outlooks towards their long histories. "Back in the '60s when this first occurred, in a sense I didn't know what the music meant," claimed Grimes. "So much of the music that was recorded back then is still like it was recorded today, and it's more modern, more alive."

"Two veterans together," chuckled Allen. But he very seriously maintains the spiritual outlook that Sun Ra always brought to the music. "It takes a lifetime to make your music work for your well-being."

Fri., March 18, 8 p.m., $12-$15, Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St., 215-222-9050, www.slought.org.