# Carl Grubbs, a powerfully searching saxophonist whose grassroots influence extends from Philadelphia to Baltimore, dies at 79: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2024/01/11/carl-grubbs-a-powerfully-searching-saxophonist-whose-grassroots-influence-extends-from-philadelphia-to-baltimore-dies-at-79/
- Published: 2024-01-11T04:27:10+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Carl Grubbs, a powerfully searching saxophonist and music educator whose grassroots
influence extends from Philadelphia, the city of his youth, to Baltimore, his home
for more than 40 years, died on Jan. 5 at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. He 
was 79.**

The cause was pneumonia, his wife, Barbara Harrell Grubbs.

Grubbs — whose main instrument was alto saxophone, though he also played soprano
and tenor, as well as clarinet — carried a formative connection with John Coltrane
with pride throughout his career. In one sense it was a family legacy: Grubbs was
a first cousin of Juanita Grubbs, Coltrane’s first wife, known as Naima.

In 1958, when Carl was 13, he and his brother, Earl, paid an Easter weekend visit
to Naima’s apartment in New York. There they not only met Coltrane but heard him
practice a set of intervals that would soon form the harmonic basis for “Giant Steps.”
Carl, who had recently received his first clarinet, and Earl, who was playing alto
saxophone, were struck not only by the intensity of Coltrane’s discipline but also
by his generosity of spirit.

![](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/3e17022/2147483647/strip/true/crop/
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“As years went on,” Carl Grubbs told Lewis Porter, the author of John Coltrane: 
His Life and Music, “when he’d come to Philadelphia we’d go over to his house on
Thirty-third Street and ask him questions and he would show us some things on the
saxophone.”

The Grubbs brothers later applied these insights in their own music — notably with
a Philadelphia-based quintet called The Visitors. On their debut album, Rebirth,
released on the Muse label in 1974, the band featured an all-star rhythm section
of Kenny Barron on piano, Buster Williams on bass and Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums.
Later editions of the group, which released a total of four albums, would include
pianist Sid Simmons, drummer Victor Lewis, and a young bass phenom named Stanley
Clarke.

Grubbs’ solo career deepened after his move to Baltimore. He created one of his 
most ambitious pieces, “The Inner Harbor Suite,” as a tribute to that city, recording
it live in 1994 at the Baltimore Museum of Art; reviewing it in DownBeat, Howard
Mandel hailed it as “a work of considerable color and depth.”

Grubbs returned to the piece in recent years, self-releasing Inner Harbor Suite 
Revisited in 2016, and performing it at Keystone Korner Baltimore, with the young
siblings Ebban and Ephraim Dorsey on saxophones, in 2020. “It was one of the most
important pieces of music that has been performed here in our first five years of
music,” attests Todd Barkan, the club’s proprietor. “It was just an overwhelmingly
beautiful and emotionally gratifying experience to hear that played, especially 
by a couple generations of players.”

Carl Gordon Grubbs was born on July 27, 1944. His parents both played piano, and
their home in North Philadelphia was always full of musicians. Both Carl and his
brother, Earl, Jr., were encouraged to pursue music as a career, and both were playing
professionally by their high school years.

In addition to their work in The Visitors, the Grubbs brothers played, separately
and together, in a range of for-hire musical settings. But the erosion of Philly’s
club and showroom landscape in the 1970s necessitated outside work. Carl, who’d 
married and had four children, paid the bills as a substitute teacher, and with 
a job at a grocery store.

By 1980 he had divorced and remarried the former Barbara Harrell, moving to Baltimore,
where she was a history teacher. She survives him along with all four children from
his previous marriage — sons Gordon and Carl, and daughters Naima and Camille — 
as well as four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His brother, Earl, died
in 1989.

Grubbs dug into the scene in Baltimore and nearby Washington, D.C., not only as 
a player but also as an arts presenter, often in partnership with his wife. In 1983
he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for a series of concerts under
the the Arts in the Marketplace program at Harbor Place Mall in Baltimore. He received
another grant for his work with a community band called the D.C. Jazz Workshop Orchestra.

Through an organization they founded, the Maryland Center for Creative Music, Carl
and Barbara Grubbs presented concerts by distinguished visiting artists like pianist
Jaki Byard and saxophonist Julius Hemphill. That contact led Hemphill to take Grubbs
on tour. As a member of the Julius Hemphill Saxophone Sextet, he appeared on the
1991 Black Saint album Fat Man and the Hard Blues.

He also took part in Hemphill’s self-described “saxophone opera,” first presented
at Lincoln Center in New York under the title Long Tongues; and a Bill T. Jones/
Arne Zane Dance Company production, Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Promised
Land.

All the while, Grubbs mentored younger musicians, the way he had been mentored. “
He’s the kind of person that would keep in touch with you, follow you during your
development,” recalls alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, who first met Grubbs at a master
class in Philadelphia, when he was 12 or 13.

In 1997, Carl and Barbara co-founded Contemporary Arts, Inc., a nonprofit devoted
to jazz education. Among other programs, it yielded the SAX Music and Dance Camp—“
SAX” being an acronym for Summer Activity Extraordinaire — which has taken place
every summer since, with the pandemic exception of 2020. The camp has received an
Annie E. Casey grant every year since 2021.

“One of the most wonderful things about Carl was his warmth and effectiveness as
an educator and exemplar of this music,” remembers Barkan. “He was really an inspiration
to so many younger players.” Grubbs played his last concert at Keystone Korner Baltimore
on Dec. 6 — fittingly, a tribute to John Coltrane, whose light he always carried.

“I didn’t get to meet John Coltrane,” offers Jaleel Shaw, “but I had a feeling that
this was his demeanor too: just a very calm, gentle soul, and very generous. People
like him made me understand the importance of community, and what we do — that it
wasn’t just about performing and putting out albums. It was also about giving back
to the community. And he did that until the day that he left us.”

![Alto saxophonist Carl Grubbs perfro](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/
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