Students, colleagues, and parents who encountered Gryce during this time knew him as a very private, serious, passionate, and caring man. Believing that music aided literacy, Gryce was a strict but caring teacher, and went out of his way to aid students at educational risk, working at an under-resourced mostly black and Hispanic school. Gryce died on March 14, 1983, of a heart attack after becoming increasingly ill. Before his death he reached out to his family again, and visited Pensacola for the first time in almost thirty years. While in many ways his work exemplifies the conventions of the hard bop era, Gryce always attempted to push the limits of common practice. As an educated composer with an extensive theoretical background, Gryce was prone to unconventional harmonization, form, and instrumentation as his style developed. In "Up in Quincy's Place", one of his very early tunes, Gryce was rather ahead of his time in his frequent use of quartal harmony, a practice that would be popularized during the cool jazz era. His compositions and arrangements with Farmer continued to feature non-standard forms and harmonies 175. His approach to hard bop trod the line between experimental and accessible, particularly in later work with the Teddy Charles Tentet and the Oscar Pettiford Orchestra. As an experimental composer, his goal was not jazz without limits, but forms which provided boundaries which liberated the soloist. While Gryce was a very accomplished saxophonist, clarinetist, and flautist his playing tended to be less innovative than his writing. As a saxophonist he was always very much influenced by Charlie Parker, who he had always idolized and became friends with in the mid-fifties. Contemporaries recall that Parker would sometimes borrow Gryce's horn. With Art Blakey With Clifford Brown With Betty Carter With Teddy Charles With Jimmy Cleveland With Earl Coleman With Kenny Dorham With Art Farmer With Curtis Fuller With Dizzy Gillespie With Benny Golson With Thad Jones With Duke Jordan With Herbie Mann With Mat Mathews With Big Maybelle With Howard McGhee With Thelonious Monk With Lee Morgan With Oscar Pettiford With Johnnie Ray With Max Roach With Tony Scott With Mal Waldron With Randy Weston With Leo Wright