Charlie Haden and Me...

I think it's very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you're in, because when you improvise you're in right now, you're not in yesterday or tomorrow — you're right in the moment. Being in that moment really gives you a perspective of life that you never get at any other time as far as learning about your ego. You have to see your unimportance before you can see your importance and your significance to the world. The artist is very lucky, because in an art form that's spontaneous like jazz, that's when you really see your true self. And that's why, when I put down my instrument, that's when the challenge starts, because to learn how to be that kind of human being at that level that you are when you're playing — that's the key, that's the hard part.
Charlie Haden

I don’t believe in categories. I believe in beautiful music coming from the heart. And if it’s coming from the heart and it’s meaningful music to make the world a better place, then that’s wonderful. So, it really doesn’t matter what you call it. It matters that it’s really beautiful and that it touches somebody’s life in a positive way.
Charlie Haden

***Liberation Music Orchestra*** (1969) signed by Charlie, Carla Bley, Andrew Cyrille, Roswell Rudd, Paul Motian

There was a lot of controversy around us. When we opened up at the Five Spot in New York, fights used to break out right in the club. People would be putting us down, people would be praising us. The club was packed every night with everybody from different parts of the art world: painters, famous writers, film makers, dancers, musicians. I would look out, and standing at the bar would be Paul Chambers, Percy Heath, Charles Mingus, and they would be looking dead in my eye, you know, saying, 'Okay, what are you going to do?' And I would be playing, and have my eyes closed, and one night I opened my eyes and there was Leonard Bernstein with his ear glued to the front of my instrument...New things were happening, not only in music, but in people's minds, every night from that music.
Charlie Haden on playing with Ornette Coleman, late 1950s in New York City

Born in Shenandoah, Iowa, Charlie Haden grew up near Springfield, Missouri, surrounded by music. His father, Carl, was a songwriter and performed with his wife Virginia on The Haden Family Hour, a popular radio show in the 1930s and 1940s. In those pre-Spotify and iTunes days, there was real money to be earned selling sheet music and some of Carl's biggest hits - "Memories Of Will Rogers", "Moberly Mine Disaster", "Little Rose Of The Ozarks" and "Ozark Moon" - sold thousands of copies. At 10 cents a copy, it was a nice source of income and a valuable royalty stream.

***The Golden Number*** (1977) signed by Charlie

Charlie made his professional debut as a yodeling cowboy as a precocious two year old, and "Cowboy Charlie" remained a vital part of the Haden Family radio show. Of his time on radio, Charlie had warm remembrances, ""Every day was a great experience for me. I just loved it. We did our radio show from the farmhouse, and my brothers and sisters would go out and do the chores, milk the cows and come in, have breakfast, and my dad would crank the phone on the wall to let the engineer in Springfield, (Missouri)], know that we were ready to go on the air, and we'd do the show. Every day was like a wonder to me." Unfortunately, Charlie was stricken with bulbar polio in his teens which affected his vocal chords, so his singing days ended.

Fortunately, Jazz proved to be the antidote for what ailed Charlie. Although raised on country music - he had performed with Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Chet Atkins and The Carter Family - Charlie was smitten with jazz after his father took him to Omaha, Nebraska to see Charlie Parker. Thereafter, it was jazz, all jazz and Charlie knew he had to get out of Missouri. He saved and scraped enough to buy a bus ticket to Los Angeles and pay for tuition at the Westlake College Of Modern Music, one of the few music schools at the time which offered a dedicated jazz program. “As soon as I had enough money, I packed my suitcase and my bass and was gone," he recalled, even tying his bass to the top of the bus for the trip. Thankfully, it did not rain!

The Los Angeles jazz scene of the late fifties was a fertile environment and Charlie availed himself of every opportunity to see, hear and (eventually) perform with Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Hampton Hawes, and Art Pepper. One day, Charlie walked into a club on Wilshire Boulevard, The Hang, and he saw a tall, thin man pull a plastic alto saxophone out of a bag and sit in with the band. It was music that Charlie had never heard before, a swirling cacophony of exotic sounds and free jazz. Apparently, neither had the band leader, who simply asked the young musician to leave after two songs. Off the stage, out the door and into the night walked the stranger, plastic alto sax tucked safely in his bag.

Unsure of who (or what) he had just seen, Charlie tracked down the mystery man the next day with the help of Lenny McBrowne, a friend and drummer. Charlie explained the weird gig that he had witnessed the night before, Lenny shrugged, "Oh, that's Ornette Coleman. I can introduce you." Lenny made the introduction, and Charlie jammed at Ornette's apartment the next night. They were kindred spirits, “I was finally able to play music the way I had been hearing it in my head. What Ornette was doing was playing in a free way in which you didn’t have to improvise on chord changes. We started rehearsing every day with trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins. We were all thinking the same things musically. It was a matter of everyone being at the same place at the same time.” Over the next three years, Ornette, Charlie, Don Cherry and Billy Higgins recorded five seminal albums which revolutionized the jazz world. As Charlie confided in a later interview, "We all were feeling the same way about music, probably similar to the way that Bird and Diz and the bebop guys felt when they revolutionized jazz. It was the same way with us, if you think about it. I was ready to go to New York and I went. We turned it upside down!"

I was lucky to see Charlie perform many times over the years and I met him several times. Each time, he was gracious and kind. One of my favorite albums (and performances) was his duet with the great Hank Jones on Steal Away: Sprituals, Hymns and Folk Songs– an amazing and inventive collection of traditional songs like "Motherless Child", "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen," and even, "Danny Boy" (yes, that Irish hoary chestnut!). Hank's soulful playing and elegant gospel is buttressed by the warm bedrock of Charlie's honeyed bass. It is truly a spiritual experience.

Steal Away program, Georgetown University

One memorable visit happened at the old Iridium Jazz Club when it was in the basement of a wine bar near Lincoln Center (circa 1998). Charlie had finished a beautiful set and I brought some albums for him to sign. I asked him about the picture on the cover of Ornette Coleman’s This Is Our Music. Where were his black, hard rimmed glasses? And what was going on? Charlie seemed very pensive. "Yes," he sighed, "There was a lot going on in that photo. We were in the studio recording, and I was in the bathroom about to fix some heroin. I was startled when Ornette started banging on the locked door to tell me that the photographer was there for the album cover shoot. Man, was I flustered. I knocked my glasses off the back of the toilet and they broke on the floor." Thus, the photo shoot continued without Charlie's trademark hard rimmed glasses, and I believe it is the one and only time in his illustrious career that he was photographed without his glasses on an album cover.

***This Is Our Music*** (1961) signed by Charlie, no glasses!

I told Charlie that I really enjoyed his (then) recent release Beyond The Missouri Sky, a duet with fellow Missourian Pat Metheny. I opined that I wasn’t really a big Metheny fan, that my jazz guitar sensibilities (at the time) were more traditional - Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, and Jim Hall - but I was enjoying the diverse artists they were covering (Roy Acuff, Jimmy Webb, Ennio Morricone) and Charlie’s playing, as always, was impeccable. Begrudgingly, I liked Pat’s playing too. Charlie nodded, "Yes, I understand Pat’s playing isn’t for everyone." Then I told him that my favorite song on the album was his son’s composition "Spiritual" which was recently covered by Johnny Cash on Unchained, produced by Rick Rubin. Ever deferential, Charlie asked, "Have you ever heard Josh’s version?" No, I said sheepishly. He said "You really need to check that out. I think you will really like it." I did check it out and Charlie was right, although it’s hard to top Johnny Cash. In anything.

I learned a lot from Charlie Haden. In a barely ten minute conversation, he showed me how to expand my musical interests, from free jazz to folk songs to country to spirituals and everything in between. He showed me how to stay open minded to new possibilities, and, as he sipped water and I nursed a seltzer, he showed me that it was possible to stay clean and recover. And be a good dad and fabulous jazz musician.

Now, if I only had some musical talent….and I still need a lot of work on the parenting thing.

Hope our paths cross soon.