Rashied Ali

All Music Guide:

After over three decades of being "lost," Henry Grimes made a remarkable comeback. He was born and grew up in Philadelphia, studying violin while in junior high school and also playing tuba a bit in high school before settling permanently on bass. Grimes moved to New York City in the early '50s, studied at Juilliard, and began playing with major jazz musicians. He toured with the bands of Arnett Cobb and Willis Jackson, and spent time back in Philadelphia, where he worked with Bobby Timmons and Lee Morgan. Grimes worked with Anita O'Day and Sonny Rollins in 1957 and was a member of the Gerry Mulligan quartet in 1957-1958, during the period that Art Farmer was in the band. A very versatile bassist who could play with anyone, Grimes really stretched himself at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival when he performed quite capably with the Benny Goodman big band, Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonious Monk.

Grimes played stints with Lennie Tristano (1958) and Sonny Rollins (touring Europe in 1959, right before the tenor's temporary retirement) and was greatly respected by stylists from all jazz fields. In 1961 he became an important contributor to free jazz, working with Cecil Taylor off and on during 1961-1966 in addition to playing regularly with Perry Robinson (1962), Sonny Rollins (1962-1963), Albert Ayler (1964-1966), and Don Cherry (1965-1966). Grimes led a record date (The Call) for ESP in 1965 and, in addition to the musicians mentioned, recorded with Mose Allison, Chet Baker, Bill Barron, Karl Berger, Gary Burton, Gil Evans, Burton Greene, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Haynes, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus, Sunny Murray, Jerome Richardson, Annie Ross, Pharoah Sanders, Shirley Scott, Archie Shepp, Billy Taylor, Charles Tyler, McCoy Tyner, Marzette Watts, and Frank Wright. (Not too many musicians have recorded with both Benny Goodman and Albert Ayler!)

But then, in 1967 when he was just 31, Henry Grimes disappeared completely from the jazz scene. Decades passed and he became one of jazz's most prominent missing persons. He was long presumed dead because no one in jazz heard a word from him. So in 2002, it was a major surprise when Grimes was discovered living in a hotel in South Central Los Angeles, where he had resided for the past 20 years. After becoming frustrated with the music world, Grimes had spontaneously driven to San Fransisco with drummer Clarence Becton. He hocked his bass,which had become weathered after being strapped to the car roof and crossing the desert, and was afterward essentially unaware of the musical developments of the past 35 years. Grimes was discovered by Marshall Marrotte, a social worker and writer, and was soon interviewed by Sound to Noise magazine. Word went out that Henry Grimes was alive, basically well but destitute, and desiring to play bass again. William Parker sent him a bass in December 2002 and since then, Grimes has regained his form and begun to play in public again. He has played at Billy Higgins' World Stage and the Jazz Bakery in addition to several other clubs in the Los Angeles area, appeared at the Vision Festival in New York, and began teaching an improvisation class at a local high school. His comeback was one of the great jazz stories of 2003, an unlikely case of a missing figure suddenly re-emerging on the jazz scene after a 35-year "vacation." He began playing dates and festivals around the world, released several new recordings, took up the violin, and even published a volume of Signs Along the Road.

Wikipedia:

Rashied Ali, born Robert Patterson (July 1, 1933 – August 12, 2009) was an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz drummer best known for playing with John Coltrane in the last years of Coltrane's life.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Contents

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Patterson was born and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; his family was musical: his mother had sung with Jimmie Lunceford. His brother, Muhammad Ali, is also a drummer, who played with Albert Ayler, among others. Ali, along with his father and brother, converted to Islam.

Starting off as a pianist he eventually took up the drums, via trumpet and trombone. He joined the United States Army, and played with military bands during the Korean War. After his military service he returned home and studied with Philly Joe Jones.

Career[edit]

Ali moved to New York in 1963 and worked in groups with Bill Dixon and Paul Bley. In addition, Ali was scheduled to be the second drummer, alongside Elvin Jones, on John Coltrane's landmark free jazz album Ascension, but he dropped out just before the recording was to take place. Coltrane did not replace him, and settled for one drummer. Ali began to record with Coltrane from Meditations in November 1965 onwards.

Among his credits are the last recorded work of John Coltrane's life (The Olatunji Concert) and Interstellar Space, an album of duets with Coltrane recorded earlier in 1967. Ali "became important in stimulating the most avant-garde kinds of jazz activities". Following Coltrane's death Ali played with his widow, Alice, and during the early 1970s, he ran an influential loft club in New York, called Ali's Alley. Ali also briefly formed a non-jazz project called Purple Trap with Japanese experimental guitarist Keiji Haino and jazz-fusion bassist Bill Laswell. Their double-CD album, Decided...Already the Motionless Heart of Tranquility, Tangling the Prayer Called "I", was released on John Zorn's Tzadik Records label in March 1999.

In the 1980s, he was member of Phalanx, a group with guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer, tenor saxophonist George Adams, and bassist Sirone. From 1997 - 2003 he played extensively with Tisziji Munoz, in a group that usually also included Pharoah Sanders.

Though most known for his work in the jazz idiom, Rashied Ali also made his contributions to other experimental art forms including multi-media performances with The Gift of Eagle Orchestra and Cosmic Legends. Performances such as Devachan and the Monads, Dwarf of Oblivion, which took place at the Kitchen Center for Performance Art, and a special tribute to John Cage in Central Park, have taken performance art to new levels with the addition of fully improvised large scale performance pieces. Other artists of the orchestra and Cosmic Legends have included Hayes Greenfield (sax), Perry Robinson (clarinet), Wayne Lopes (guitar), Dave Douglas (trumpet), Gloria Tropp (vocals), director/pianist Sylvie Degiez along with poets and actors Ira Cohen, Taylor Mead and Judith Malina (Living Theater).

Later life[edit]

In the last years of his life, Rashied Ali led his own eponymous quintet. A double CD entitled Judgment Day was recorded in February 2005 and features Jumaane Smith on trumpet, Lawrence Clark on tenor sax, Greg Murphy on piano and Joris Teepe on bass. This album was recorded at Ali's own Survival Studio, which has been in existence since the 1970s. In addition to his performance activities Ali served as mentor to numerous young drummers including Matt Smith. During the later

In 2007, Ali recorded "Going to the Ritual" in duo with bassist/violinist Henry Grimes (Porter Records PRCD-4005), with a second duo recording in post-production at the time of Ali's death. Ali and Grimes also played five duo concerts together between 2007 and 2009, and a sixth concert in June 2007 with pianist Marilyn Crispell. Ali is the featured drummer on Azar Lawrence's album Mystic Journey, recorded in April 2009 and released in May 2010.

Rashied Ali died at age 76 in a Manhattan hospital after suffering a heart attack. He is survived by wife Patricia and three children.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).