A Rain Forest: Charlie Haden (1937-2014)

Here is Charlie Haden talking about his somewhat Jungian philosophy of improvisation.

Charlie Haden, an influential jazz bassist and band leader whose eclectic career spanned seven decades, and ranged from the most avant-garde music to the most traditional, died in Los Angeles on July 11 at age 76.  He had been suffering from post-polio syndrome, a disease affecting people who had polio as children, which causes muscle weakness and pain and left him unable to play.  His last appearance was at the Healdsburg (Cal.) Jazz Festival in June, 2013.

Charles Edward Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa on August 6, 1937. His family played country music on the radio and barnstormed throughout the Midwest as the Haden Family Band. He first performed at the age of 2, singing and yodeling as Cowboy Charlie. He was forced to give up singing at 15, when he contracted polio, which affected his facial and throat muscles. He took up the bass, and was the house bassist on Ozark Jubilee, a Springfield, MO, TV show. He retained a lifelong interest in country music and in 2008, he released Ramblin' Boy, a country CD featuring his wife, Ruth Cameron, his son, Josh, his triplet daughters, Petra, Rachel and Tanya, his son-in-law, actor Jack Black, and several guest stars. (I only recommended it for country music fans.)

In 1851, Charlie Haden saw Charlie Parker perform with Jazz at the Philharmonic and was inspired to take up jazz. He moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Westlake College of Music, and played with Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, and Paul Bley. In 1959, he joined the Ornette Coleman Quartet, consisting of Coleman, alto sax; Don Cherry, trumpet; Haden and Ed Blackwell, drums. Coleman favored a polytonal approach to improvisation known as free jazz, not bound by chords or structure. While Coleman is a revered jazz elder statesman today, his music was controversial at the time. Here, Haden explains why Coleman's approach appealed to him.

The Ornette Coleman Quartet plays “Lonely Woman,” in which Haden plays a bass melody under Coleman's solo, and “Ramblin',” with a Haden solo that quotes from country music.

Haden left the Coleman Quartet due to drug addiction and enrolled at Synanon in 1963. He rejoined Coleman from 1967 to the early '70s, and at occasional reunions thereafter. From 1967 to 1976, he performed with keyboardist Keith Jarrett's American Quartet, which also included Dewey Redman on tenor sax and Paul Motian on drums. He was also a member of Old and New Dreams, a collective consisting of former Coleman sidemen Cherry, Redman and Blackwell.

Charlie Haden's discography lists a total of 46 CDs as leader, and 132 as a sideman, including 15 with Coleman and 19 with Jarrett. In 1969, he formed the Liberation Music Orchestra with pianist Carla Bley, and released an album on Impulse. He explains:

I established it from my concerns about what was going on in the world because of the Nixon administration and the war in Vietnam, and I started thinking about, “I've gotta do something about this.”. . . And maybe I could do something where I can play some political songs from the Spanish Civil War. I can write a song about my hero Che Guevara and call it “Song for Che.” I can write a piece about the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, where people were, you known, beaten on the street and jailed.

Three other LMO albums were released in 1982, 1990 and 2005. (One of the unintended effects of Republican occupation of the White House was a new LMO CD.) The most recent, Not in Our Name, protested our illegal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In 1971, while playing with Ornette Coleman in Portugal, then a fascist dictatorship, he dedicated “Song for Che” from the stage to anti-colonial revolutionaries in Mozambique and Angola. He was arrested at the airport and jailed for several hours.

Demonstrating his more traditional side, Charlie Haden was interested in films noir, and in movie themes and other pop songs from the late '40s and early '50s. In 1987, he formed Quartet West with Ernie Watts, tenor sax; Alan Broadbent, piano; and Larence Marable, drums. Their collaboration produced seven CDs containing songs of the period and originals written in the same style.

In 1982, he founded the CalArts jazz program and began teaching. He won three Grammy awards, one for Under the Missouri Sky with guitarist Pat Metheny, and two Latin jazz awards for Nocturne and Land of the Sun, with Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. 

He was recognized as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts in 2012, elected to the Down Beat Hall of Fame in 2013, and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, also in 2013. His most recent CD, released last month, is a collaboration with Keith Jarrett, Last Dance, recorded in 2007. A recording with the late guitarist Jim Hall is scheduled for release this Fall. There will no doubt be others.

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