Charlie Haden

Charlie Haden
Haden in Pescara Italy, 1990
Background information
Birth name	Charles Edward Haden
Born	August 6, 1937 (1937-08-06) (age 74)
Origin	Shenandoah, Iowa, U.S.
Genres	Free jazz Mainstream jazz Post-bop Hard bop
Occupations	Double bassist
Instruments	Double bass
Years active	1957–present
Associated acts	Ornette Coleman, Pat Metheny, Liberation Music Orchestra, Quartet West

Charles Edward Haden (born August 6, 1937)^[1] is an American jazz musician. He is a double bassist, probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Haden is also known for his signature lyrical bass lines.

Biography

Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, and raised in a musical family, which often performed together on the radio playing country music and American folk songs. Haden made his professional debut as a singer when he was two years old, and continued singing with his family until he contracted a mild form of polio when he was 15.^[1] The polio damaged his throat muscles and vocal cords, and as a result, Haden was unable to control his pitch while singing. A few years before contracting polio, Haden had become interested in jazz, and began playing his older brother's double bass. Eventually he set his sights on Los Angeles, and to save money for the trip took a job as house bassist for ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.

Haden moved to Los Angeles in 1957, and quickly began playing professionally, including stints with pianist Hampton Hawes and saxophonist Art Pepper. He began playing with Ornette Coleman in the late 1950s. Their first record together is The Shape of Jazz to Come.^[1] Haden's counterpoint to Coleman was full of his Ozarkian folk song. This folk element related naturally to Coleman's microtonal Texas blues. In the rhythm section, Haden and Billy Higgins both could play with a classic jazz feel, but they also could experiment. On "Lonely Woman", the first track on The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959), Haden does not not keep time but inhabits a slow dirge while Higgins plays at twice or three times the tempo.

Besides his association with Ornette Coleman, Haden was also a member of Keith Jarrett's trio and 'American quartet' from 1967 to 1976 with Paul Motian and Dewey Redman.^[1] He played in the collective Old and New Dreams.^[1]

He went on to lead the Liberation Music Orchestra in the 1970s. Largely arranged by Carla Bley, their music was very experimental, exploring the realms of free jazz and political music at the same time; the first album focused specifically on the Spanish Civil War. The LMO has had a shifting membership comprising a "who's who" of jazz instrumentalists. Through Bley's arranging, they have concentrated on a wide palette of brass instruments, including tuba, French horn, and trombone, in addition to the more standard trumpet and reed section. The LMO's 1982 album The Ballad of the Fallen commented again on the Spanish Civil War as well as the political instability and United States involvement in Latin America. In 1990, the orchestra returned with Dream Keeper, a more heterogeneous album which drew on American gospel music and South African music to comment on politics in Latin America and apartheid in South Africa. The album featured choral contributions from the Oakland Youth Chorus.

In 1971, while on tour with the Ornette Coleman Quartet in Portugal (at the time under a fascist dictatorship), Haden decided to dedicate a performance of his "Song for Che" to the anticolonialist revolutionaries in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau. The following day, he was detained at the Lisbon airport, jailed, and interrogated by the DGS (the Portuguese secret police). He was promptly released the same day after the intervention of the American cultural attaché, though he was later interviewed by the FBI in the United States about his choice of dedication.^[2]

Thematic exploration of genres not typically considered to be jazz standards became one of the signature approaches of the Charlie Haden Quartet West. Started in 1987, the Quartet consists of Ernie Watts on sax, Alan Broadbent on piano, and Larance Marable on drums. Quartet West's albums feature lush, romantic arrangements by Broadbent, often with strings, of music from the 1930s and 1940s, often music associated with films of that period.

Haden has also been active over the years working in duets with pianists such as Hank Jones, Kenny Barron, and Denny Zeitlin. He has explored spiritual hymns with Jones, American folk music in American Hymns, and Cuban folk music in Nocturne. A brief collaboration with Joe Henderson and Al Foster, players not normally associated with Haden or his immediate circle, show how distinctive Haden's voice is in a pure, hard-driving jazz context.

In 1989, Haden was featured at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and performed in concert every night of the festival, with different combos and bands. Each of these events was recorded, and most have been released in the series The Montreal Tapes.

In late 1996, he collaborated with Pat Metheny on the album Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories), exploring the music that influenced them in their childhood experiences in Missouri with what they call "contemporary impressionistic americana".

Haden reconvened Liberation Music Orchestra in 2005, with largely new members, for the album Not In Our Name, released on Verve Records. The album dealt primarily with the contemporary political situation in the United States.

Haden's most recent release, Rambling Boy, features several members of his immediate family, along with Béla Fleck, Pat Metheny, Elvis Costello, and others. The album, released on 23 September 2008, hearkens back to his days of playing Americana and bluegrass music with his parents on their radio show. A concert tour with Quartet West (with a new drummer) was scheduled for the late summer.

Family

His son Josh Haden is a bass guitarist and singer. He recorded with 1980s punk band Trecherous Jaywalkers (who recorded for SST Records), and is presently a member of Spain. His triplet daughters, Petra, Tanya and Rachel Haden, are all musicians. Petra and Rachel were in that dog.; Petra was a member of progressive folk group The Decemberists, Rachel played in the rock band The Rentals, and Tanya is married to actor Jack Black.

Discography

As leader

Haden in Gent, Belgium, 2007

• Liberation Music Orchestra (1969)
• Escalator Over The Hill (Carla Bley, 1971)
• Brown Rice (Don Cherry, 1975)
• Closeness (Horizon Records)
• The Golden Number (Horizon, duets featuring Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Hampton Hawes and Archie Shepp, 1977)
• As Long As There's Music (Hampton Hawes, 1978)
• Musique Mecanique (Carla Bley, 1978)
• Magico (Jan Garbarek and Egberto Gismonti, 1979)
• Folk Songs (with Jan Garbarek and Egberto Gismonti, 1979)
• Chair in the Sky (Mingus Dynasty, an ensemble of Charles Mingus sidemen, along with Joni Mitchell, 1980)
• Time Remembers One Time Once (ECM, 1981)
• The Ballad of the Fallen (Liberation Music Orchestra, 1982)
• Silence (Chet Baker, Enrico Pieranunzi, Billy Higgins, 1987)
• In Angel City (1988)
• Private Collection (1988)
• The Montreal Tapes, vol.1 (Charlie Haden, Paul Bley, Paul Motian, 1989)
• Dialogues (Carlos Paredes, 1990)
• Dream Keeper (Liberation Music Orchestra, 1990)
• Haunted Heart (Quartet West, 1991)
• Pop Pop (Rickie Lee Jones, 1991)
• Always Say Goodbye (1993)
• Going Back Home (Ginger Baker Trio with Bill Frisell, 1994)
• The Montreal Tapes (Trio with Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell, 1994)
• Steal Away (Hank Jones, 1995)
• Night And The City (Kenny Barron, 1996)
• Now is the Hour (Quartet West, 1996)
• Deep In The Blues (James Cotton, Joe Louis Walker, Charlie Haden, Dave Maxwell, 1996)
• None but the Lonely Heart (1997)
• Beyond the Missouri Sky (Pat Metheny, 1997)
• In The Year Of The Dragon (Geri Allen, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, 1998)
• The Art of the Song (1999)
• In Montreal (Egberto Gismonti, 2001)
• Nocturne (2001)
• American Dreams (with Michael Brecker, 2002)
• The Montreal Tapes: a tribute to Joe Henderson (with Joe Henderson and Al Foster, Verve, 2004)
• Land of the Sun (with Gonzalo Rubalcaba, 2004)
• Not in Our Name (Liberation Music Orchestra, 2005)
• Special Encounter (Enrico Pieranunzi, Paul Motian, 2005)
• Heartplay (with Antonio Forcione, 2006)
• Private Collection (Quartet West, live, Naim, 2007)
• Rambling Boy (Decca, 2008)
• Sophisticated Ladies (Quartet West, EmArcy, 2010)

With Old and New Dreams

• Old and New Dreams (Black Saint, 1976)
• Old and New Dreams (ECM, 1979)
• Playing (ECM, 1980)
• A Tribute to Blackwell (Black Saint, 1987)

As sideman

With Kenny Barron

• Wanton Spirit with Roy Haynes (1994)

With Paul Bley

• Memoirs (Soul Note, 1990)

With Ornette Coleman

• The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)
• Change of the Century (1959)
• This Is Our Music (1960)
• Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1961)
• Science Fiction (1971)
• Soapsuds, Soapsuds (1971)

With Alice Coltrane

• Journey in Satchidananda (1971) - on one track, "Isis and Osiris"

With Dizzy Gillespie

• Rhythmstick (1990)

With Keith Jarrett

• Life Between The Exit Signs (1967)
• Expectations (1971)
• Fort Yawuh (1973)
• Treasure Island (1974)
• Death and the Flower (1974)
• The Survivors' Suite (1977)
• Eyes of the Heart (1979)
• Jasmine (2010)

With Lee Konitz

• Alone Together (Blue Note, 1996) with Brad Meldhau
• Live at Birdland (ECM, 2011) with Brad Mehldau & Paul Motian

With Joe Lovano

• Universal Language (Blue Note, 1992)

With John McLaughlin

• My Goal's Beyond (1970)

With Helen Merrill

• You and the Night and the Music (1998)

With Paul Motian

• Conception Vessel (1990)

With Yoko Ono

• Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970)

With Roswell Rudd

• Everywhere (1966)

With Pee Wee Russell and Henry "Red" Allen

• The College Concert (Impulse!, 1966)

With Dino Saluzzi

• Once Upon a Time - Far Away in the South (ECM, 1985)

With Archie Shepp

• Mama Too Tight (Impulse!, 1967)

With Wadada Leo Smith

• Divine Love (ECM, 1978)

With Ringo Starr

• Ringo Rama (2003)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} allmusic Biography
2. ^ Jazz Legend Charlie Haden on His Life, His Music and His Politics. Democracy Now. September 01, 2006 Accessed January 5, 2009.

External links

• Charlie Haden Official Web site
• Charlie Haden interview on Democracy Now!, September 1, 2006
• Official Documentary Website
• Charlie Haden at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview by Ethan Iverson

Persondata
Name	Haden, Charlie
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	August 6, 1937
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death