59 Facts About Charlie Haden

1.

Charles Edward Haden was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years.

2.

Charlie Haden often recorded and performed in a duo setting, with musicians including guitarist Pat Metheny and pianist Hank Jones.

3.

Charlie Haden cultivated the instrument's gravity as no one else in jazz.

4.

Charlie Haden is a master of simplicity which is one of the most difficult things to achieve.

5.

Charlie Haden's family was exceptionally musical and performed on KMA radio as the Haden Family, playing country music and American folk songs.

6.

Charlie Haden made his professional debut as a singer on the Charlie Haden Family's radio show when he was just two years old.

7.

Charlie Haden continued singing with his family until he was 15 when he contracted a bulbar form of polio affecting his throat and facial muscles.

8.

Once he recovered from his bout with polio, Charlie Haden began in earnest to concentrate on playing the bass.

9.

Charlie Haden soon set his sights on moving to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz musician, and to save money for the trip, took a job as house bassist for ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.

10.

Charlie Haden often said that he moved to Los Angeles in 1957 in search of pianist Hampton Hawes.

11.

Charlie Haden turned down a full scholarship at Oberlin College, which did not have an established jazz program at the time, to attend Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles.

12.

Charlie Haden played with Art Pepper for four weeks in 1957, and from 1958 to 1959, with Hampton Hawes whom he met through his friendship with bassist Red Mitchell, For a time, he shared an apartment with the bassist Scott LaFaro.

13.

Charlie Haden went to self-help rehabilitation in September 1963 at Synanon houses in Santa Monica, California and San Francisco, California.

14.

Charlie Haden resumed his career in 1964, working with saxophonist John Handy and pianist Denny Zeitlin's trio, and performing with Archie Shepp in California and Europe.

15.

Charlie Haden recorded with Roswell Rudd in 1966, and returned to Coleman's group in 1967.

16.

Charlie Haden was known for being able to skillfully follow the shifting directions and modulations of Ornette's improvised lines.

17.

Charlie Haden became a member of Keith Jarrett's trio and his 'American Quartet' from 1967 to 1976 with drummer Paul Motian and saxophonist Dewey Redman.

18.

Charlie Haden organized the collective Old and New Dreams, which consisted of Don Cherry, Redman, and Ed Blackwell, who had been members of Coleman's band.

19.

In 1970 Charlie Haden received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition upon the recommendation of the eminent conductor Leonard Bernstein.

20.

Charlie Haden founded his first band, the Liberation Music Orchestra in 1969, working with arranger Carla Bley.

21.

Charlie Haden was only released after Ornette Coleman and others complained to the American cultural attache, and he was later interviewed in the United States by the FBI about his choice of dedication.

22.

Charlie Haden decided to form the LMO at the height of the Vietnam War, out of his frustration that so much of the government's energy was spent on the war, while so many internal problems in the United States, were neglected.

23.

Charlie Haden's goal was to use the LMO to amplify unheard voices of oppressed people.

24.

Charlie Haden wanted to express his solidarity with progressive political movements from around the world by performing music that made a statement about how to initiate and celebrate liberating change.

25.

In 2005, Charlie Haden released the fourth Liberation Music Orchestra album Not in Our Name, a protest against the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

26.

In 1982, Charlie Haden established the Jazz Studies Program at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Santa Clarita.

27.

Charlie Haden's program emphasized smaller group performance and the spiritual connection to the creative process.

28.

Charlie Haden encouraged students to discover their individual sounds, melodies, and harmonies.

29.

Charlie Haden was honored by the Los Angeles Jazz Society as "Jazz Educator of the Year" for his educational work in this program.

30.

Charlie Haden's students included John Coltrane's son, tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, pianist and composer James Carney and bassist Scott Colley.

31.

In 1984, Charlie Haden met the singer and former actress Ruth Cameron.

32.

In 1986, Charlie Haden formed his band Quartet West at Ruth's suggestion.

33.

In 1989, Charlie Haden inaugurated the "Invitation" series at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

34.

Duets: Charlie Haden performing in duets as he loved the intimacy the format provided.

35.

In 1995, Charlie Haden released Steal Away: Spirituals, Hymns and Folk Songs with pianist Hank Jones, an album based on traditional spirituals and folk songs.

36.

In late 1996, he collaborated with guitarist Pat Metheny on the album Beyond the Missouri Sky, exploring the music that influenced them in their childhood experiences in, respectively southwest Iowa and northwest Missouri, with what Charlie Haden called "contemporary impressionistic Americana".

37.

Charlie Haden was awarded his first Grammy award for the album, for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.

38.

In 2001, Charlie Haden won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz CD for his album Nocturne which contains boleros from Cuba and Mexico.

39.

Charlie Haden reconvened the Liberation Music Orchestra in 2005, with largely new members, for the album Not In Our Name, released on Verve Records.

40.

The idea came to Charlie Haden when his wife Ruth gathered the Charlie Haden family together for his mother's 80th birthday and suggested they all sing "You Are My Sunshine" in the living room, as that was a song everyone knew.

41.

In 2009, Swiss film director Reto Caduff released a film about Charlie Haden's life, titled Rambling Boy.

42.

Charlie Haden performed and produced duet recordings with pianist Kenny Barron, with whom he recorded the album Night and the City.

43.

Awards: In 2012, Charlie Haden was a recipient of the NEA Jazz Masters Award.

44.

In 2014, Charlie Haden was bestowed the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

45.

Charlie Haden felt it was his duty, and the duty of the artist, to bring beauty to the world, to make this world a better place.

46.

Charlie Haden encouraged his students to find their own unique musical voice and bring it to their instrument.

47.

Charlie Haden encouraged his students to be in the present moment: "there's no yesterday or tomorrow, there's only right now", he explained.

48.

Charlie Haden claimed that music taught him this process of exchange, so he taught it to his students in return.

49.

Charlie Haden viewed jazz as the "music of rebellion" and felt it was his responsibility and mission to challenge the world through music, and through artistic risks that expressed his own individual artistic vision.

50.

Charlie Haden believed that all music originates from the same place, and because of this, he resisted the tendency to divide music into categories.

51.

Charlie Haden was democratic in his tastes and musical partners, and was interested in musical collaboration with individuals who shared his sensibilities in music and life.

52.

Charlie Haden's music, was based on the music of peoples struggling for freedom from oppression.

53.

Charlie Haden frequently closed his eyes while performing, and assumed a posture in which he bent himself around the bass until his head was almost at the bottom of the bridge of the bass.

54.

Charlie Haden greatly valued this bass, playing it only at recording sessions and jobs in close proximity to his home so as not to risk damaging it in transit.

55.

Charlie Haden attributed the bass's special and valuable nature to the varnish used by Vuillaume, which is similar to Italian varnish.

56.

Charlie Haden suffered from tinnitus, a ringing in both ears that he believed he acquired from constant exposure to playing in proximity to drums, and possibly from an extremely loud concert in which he played during the late 1960s.

57.

Charlie Haden's son Josh Charlie Haden is a bass guitarist and singer of the group Spain.

58.

Charlie Haden died in Los Angeles on July 11,2014, at the age of 76.

59.

Charlie Haden had been suffering from effects of post-polio syndrome and complications from liver disease.