Mr. Grimes had traveled to California to perform with the vocalists Jon Hendricks and Al Jarreau, but when his bass broke he sold it for a meager sum. Soon he was without either an instrument or money. For more than 30 years, he worked off and on as a janitor while battling bipolar disorder and scribbling dreamlike, often-beautiful poetry into notebooks. It was not until 2002 that a social worker and jazz devotee tracked him down in Los Angeles. The bassist William Parker had an instrument sent to him. Soon after, Mr. Grimes finally returned to New York, receiving a hero’s welcome at the 2003 Vision Festival.

Mr. Grimes had always had a bold, resounding bass sound, but upon his return, what those who played with him often noticed was his note choice. Even amid rancorous free improvisation, he still seemed able to select notes that were in perfect counterpoint to what surrounded him, such that they not only fit in but unlocked extra dimensions in the group sound.

The drummer Chad Taylor, who played hundreds of shows alongside Mr. Grimes in the Marc Ribot Trio, described the bassist’s note choices as “3-D.”

“He was always thinking of playing something against what you were playing,” Mr. Taylor said in a phone interview. “Against might not be the right word. Playing something different that would be complementary to what you’re playing.”

Mr. Grimes was a man of painfully few words, making it easy to misinterpret his silence as a consequence of age. But even as a young person he had been famously laconic; and as the decades advanced, he remained first and foremost committed to listening. In New York over the past 10-plus years, you were just as likely to find Mr. Grimes in the front row at a younger musician’s concert — eyes bright, body held upright, listening — as to see him onstage.