Charlie Haden RIP

[Mike Schwartz]

from Tina Pelikan, ECM Records Publicity:

It is with deep sorrow that we announce that Charlie Haden, born August 6, 1937 in Shenandoah, Iowa, passed away today at 10:11 Pacific time in Los Angeles after a prolonged illness. Ruth Cameron, his wife of 30 years, and his children Josh Haden, Tanya Haden, Rachel Haden and Petra Haden were all by his side.

[Cem]

Really sorry to hear this. Ramblin' was on my mind today while delivering the damn mail! Farewell, Charlie Haden...
Mike Formanek just posted this link on fb:
http://variety.com/2014/music/news/charlie-haden-legendary-jazz-bassist-dies-at-77-1201261391/

[bluenoter]

I have a feeling that he'd be in the "Don't mourn, organize" contingent, but that news is beyond awful. R.I.P. Charlie Haden, who's irreplaceable in the realm of music and who, directly as well as indirectly, strove for social justice his whole life.

[Chazro]

RIP Charlie Haden.

Don't know why but I'm thinking; is there any Jazz enthusiast that doesn't own at least 1 record with Charlie on it? I also wasn't aware of his age, guess I always thought of him as a younger man.

[Mike Schwartz]

RIP Charlie Haden.

Don't know why but I'm thinking; is there any Jazz enthusiast that doesn't own at least 1 record with Charlie on it? I also wasn't aware of his age, guess I always thought of him as a younger man.

The warmth & tone quality that came out of his bass was always remarkable to me.

So fortunate to have seen him play so many times over the years in many situations!

RIP

[Ron Thorne]

Oh, my. I'm stunned, because I was unaware that Charlie was sick.

What a huge loss.


Remembering Jazz Legend Charlie Haden, Who Crafted His Voice In Bass

by Patrick Jarenwattananon
July 11, 2014 5:23 PM ET



Bassist Charlie Haden in 1978. Haden died on Friday in Los Angeles.
Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis


Bassist and composer Charlie Haden, whose resonant playing and penetrating melodic craft influenced generations of jazz musicians, died this morning in Los Angeles, after a prolonged illness. He was 76.

Haden's death was announced by his record label, ECM Records.

"It is with deep sorrow that we announce that Charlie Haden, born August 6, 1937 in Shenandoah, Iowa, passed away today at 10:11 Pacific time in Los Angeles after a prolonged illness. Ruth Cameron, his wife of 30 years, and his children Josh Haden, Tanya Haden, Rachel Haden and Petra Haden were all by his side."

Born and raised in the rural Midwestern United States, Haden grew up in a family that hosted a country western music radio program. He sang on air in the family band from before the age of 2. At age 15, he contracted polio, damaging his vocal cords, and turned instead to learning bass.

In 1957, Haden moved to Los Angeles, where he integrated quickly into the West Coast jazz community — including saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman. Their collaboration over decades, onstage and on record, not only anchored Coleman's innovations in harmony and melody but also generated new possibilities for his own instrument in group improvisation.

His work with Coleman made him an icon of avant-garde jazz, but in a career that spanned over 50 years, Haden worked in many and varied contexts. His Liberation Music Orchestra large ensemble, a collaboration with composer-arranger Carla Bley, performed and recorded political protest songs for over 30 years. His Quartet West ensemble, featuring pianist Alan Broadbent and saxophonist Ernie Watts, provided avenues for more traditional hard bop and backing vocalists. And in 2008, he revisited his country roots with an album called Rambling Boy, gathering his wife, son and triplet daughters in a new family band.

In 2012, he spoke of the connections between the music he grew up with and the music he was known for. "When you think about the art form jazz coming from this country and you think about the Underground Railroad and all the music that came from that struggle, and then you think about all the music coming over from Scotland and Ireland and England into the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozark Mountains where I was born and raised, you know, it's all one really," he told NPR's Rachel Martin. "We can only have been born here in this country."

As a sideman, Haden was the bassist for many of pianist Keith Jarrett's bands of the 1960s and '70s. The group Old and New Dreams reunited Coleman's sidemen, sometimes to reinterpret Coleman's compositions. He frequently performed in duet settings, which brought him into close contact with fellow jazz greats like Hank Jones, Alice Coltrane and Pat Metheny. And in 1982, he introduced jazz studies to CalArts, now one of the premier programs of its kind.

In interviews and onstage, he spoke often about the artist's duty to introduce beauty into a conflicted world. "That's what I tell my students at California Institute of the Arts where I teach for 27 years," he said to Martin. "I tell them if you strive to be a good person, maybe you might become a great jazz musician."

Earlier this year, Haden released his latest album, a collection of duets with pianist Jarrett. It ends with the two standards "Every Time We Say Goodbye" and "Goodbye," and is titled Last Dance.



http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2 ... e-in-bass#

[Mike Schwartz]

New [June 2014] ECM release recorded at Jarrett's home studio

Irony the perfect parting title.....


http://player.ecmrecords.com/keith-jarr ... last-dance

[Ron Thorne]

Review: Pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Charlie Haden evoke joy and sadness on 'Last Dance'

By CHARLES J. GANS | Associated Press | 3 hours, 2 minutes ago in Entertainment




There's a sense of both joy and sadness to "Last Dance," which surprisingly is the first album in pianist Keith Jarrett's illustrious nearly 50-year career to hit No. 1 on Billboard's traditional jazz chart.

"Last Dance" is drawn from the same informal 2007 sessions at Jarrett's home studio that reunited the pianist with bassist Charlie Haden for the first time in more than three decades and yielded the Grammy-nominated 2010 CD, "Jasmine."

The joy comes from hearing these two jazz masters in a relaxed, intimate setting, complementing, supporting and listening intensely to each other without wasting any notes.

The sadness comes from the realization that the album is this masterful duet's "last dance" together. Shortly after the release of "Jasmine," Haden suffered an onset of post-polio syndrome, which led to a hiatus from touring and recording; he died Friday from the prolonged illness. That gives an added poignancy to the three closing tracks, "Where Can I Go Without You," ''Every time We Say Goodbye" and "Goodbye"— two of which are alternate versions of takes heard on "Jasmine."

Jarrett and Haden each pushed jazz in new directions and shared a deep-rooted love of standards. On "Last Dance," they tenderly embrace such melodic ballads as Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's "My Ship" and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "It Might As Well Be Spring." They also change pace by lightly swinging through "'Round Midnight" at a slightly faster tempo than Thelonious Monk's original version, and quicken the tempo even more on Bud Powell's bebop burner "Dance of the Infidels."

[BeBop]

Thanks, Charlie Haden.

One of a select group of bassists that was, for me, much more than a keeper of the pulse.

I was surprised to hear of his passing on the local AM news station in California. His legacy with the general public must be closer to what it merits than I thought.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Truly one of the greats. Gotta queue up some Quartet West.

RIP, Mr. Haden.

[Chazro]

I follow 100's of musicians/bands on Facebook. It's like my personal music newsletter. Anyhow, there's been such an outpouring of love and respect for Charlie Haden. But 2 of the posts resonated with me so I thought I'd post them here.

Joe Lovano -
Reflections on Charlie Haden... I'm feeling tears of love and joy with the passing of Charlie Haden. I grew up listening to his spiritual, poetic music through recordings with Ornette Coleman and The Keith Jarrett Quartet. Charlie said once that Ornette gave him permission to be himself in the music, this gave me the inspiration to try and develop in the art of improvising. Before I knew it, after moving to NY in the mid 70's, in a mysterious and magical way, I found myself playing with Paul Motian. This led to me becoming a member of The Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra in the mid 80's. Playing the music of Carla Bley with Dewey Redman, Paul, Tom Harrell, Don Cherry, "Maconda" Ken Mcintyre, Ray Anderson and others was like a beautiful dream. There was a searching exploration in Charlie's melodic bass lines that created music within the music. He had a telepathic, magical gift in his harmonic and rhythmic approach that was amazing. It was a blessing for me to tour the world under his leadership throughout my years in the LMO, with Quartet West on occasion, and with Ganzalo Rubalcaba. I learned from his generous loving spirit all things about sharing the blessings of life and music. Charlie was serious, meditative, introspective, fun, joyous, wild, cool, fearless and very politically active. The lessons I've learned from him will live on in my life forever. Charlie Haden was truly a bright light for all of us!!! Thank You Charlie.


Some recordings we're on together:
My recording - "Universal Language" (Blue Note) LMO - "Dream Keeper" (Blue Note)
LMO - "The Montreal Tapes" (Verve)
Ganzalo Rubalcaba - "Nocturne"
Ganzalo Rubalcaba - "The Land of the Sun"
Tom Harrell - "Form" (Contemporary)
John Scofield - "Time On My Hands" (Blue Note)

Dave Liebman -
PASSING - CHARLIE: From Blanton to Pettiford to (Ray) Brown, Charlie Haden was the next step along with Scott LeFaro in re-defining the role of the bass. "Time, no changes" was his world, but he could deal with harmony very easily. It was his linear, highly melodic and counterpoint phrasing that was uniquely Charlie that found its home with Ornette. We recorded "My Goals Beyond" with John McLaughlin in the early '70s and Charlie is also on my recording "Sweet Hands" a bit later. Charlie's solos were invariably plainly stated, apparently "simple," obviously melodic, but most of all played with a passionate feeling and deep tone. We talked a few times in the past years about post polio syndrome (which several well-known people have encountered), trying to find someone, somewhere, who could treat it, apparently to no avail. He went down as a warrior, just the way he played.
- Lieb

[Cem]

Thank you, Chazro… very nice!

[bluenoter]

From an ECM Facebook page:

http://www.ecmrecords.com/News/Diary/505_Haden.php

—a Charlie Haden obit on ECM's website, written from the label's unique perspective

[David Gitin]

Check out Ethan Iverson's blog DO THE MATH for an assemblage of staggering quotes on Charlie from musicians who worked with him.

[bluenoter]

Check out Ethan Iverson's blog DO THE MATH for an assemblage of staggering quotes on Charlie from musicians who worked with him.

Thanks, David! That assemblage, titled Liberation Chorus, is here:

http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/liberation-chorus.html

[bluenoter]

Posted July 22, 2014, on an ECM Facebook page:

[Ron Thorne]

Thank you Chazro and bluenoter for those wonderful posts reflecting on Charlie Haden from a musician's vantage point. I saw the Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman comments and almost posted them myself, but Chaz beat me to it.

Here's a brief but lovely clip I just found.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dZ0Ytf9NBI

[Ron Thorne]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VkHjig6MSI

[bluenoter]

Thank you Chazro and bluenoter for those wonderful posts reflecting on Charlie Haden from a musician's vantage point. I saw the Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman comments and almost posted them myself, but Chaz beat me to it.

YW, Ron. There's also David's find, which is indeed an assemblage of staggering quotes---and a staggering assemblage of quotes:

Check out Ethan Iverson's blog DO THE MATH for an assemblage of staggering quotes on Charlie from musicians who worked with him.

Thanks, David! That assemblage, titled Liberation Chorus, is here:

http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/liberation-chorus.html

[Ron Thorne]

YW, Ron. There's also David's find, which is indeed an assemblage of staggering quotes---and a staggering assemblage of quotes:

Of course! Thanks to David, too. Sorry for the oversight.

One gets the impression that Charlie was a well-loved, relatively special person, eh?

[rlfun]

Yes, Quartet West. A very special group. Playing them a lot.

[Ron Thorne]

Thanks, rlfun.

Quartet West was a special group, to say the least. Charlie deserves as many accolades and mementos as possible.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_9UXzpCyPQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvr1cdGvNpw

[Ron Thorne]

Charlie Haden (1937-2014)—One of the Greatest
By Carla Bley on July 22, 2014


[Ed. Note: It was extremely shocking to receive an email with the sad news of Charlie Haden's passing from Tina Pelikan at ECM late in the afternoon on Friday, July 11, 2014. As per our tradition at NewMusicBox, rather than rushing in with breaking news that soon became widely available elsewhere, we waited and then asked someone close to reflect on the life and music of the artist we had lost. Carla Bley seemed the natural choice. Haden had been making headlines as a sideman since the late 1950s, first with Paul Bley, Art Pepper, and Hampton Hawes, and then most notably as the bassist in the Ornette Coleman Quartet. (He ultimately appeared on 15 of Coleman's albums.) But Haden did not emerge as a leader until his Liberation Music Orchestra made its debut in 1969, releasing a genre-defying album that merged politically charged anthems with a free jazz sensibility. Aside from Haden's own firm bass playing, which grounded the adventurous music of leaders he had worked with over the course of the previous decade, what held the music of the Liberation Music Orchestra together and made it all work were the arrangements by Carla Bley, who was also the group's pianist. Bley served as the arranger as well as conductor for the LMO's subsequent recordings in 1982, 1990, and 2005. As Bley relates, they were actually working on a new recording before Haden became ill; her brief but poignant words are a testimony to a musical creator who transcended language and style.—FJO]





Death sucks, not for the person who dies—it’s mostly a rational solution—but for the people who live on with the absence of a favorite living, breathing creature. That moment that separates life and death is unsettling to contemplate. The day after Charlie died, I read a piece in the July 13 New York Times Op-Ed section called “The Afterlife” by Ted Gup. There was a beautifully written paragraph that I was moved to send to Charlie’s wife, Ruth. I knew what she had been through during the last few years as his health got worse and worse, and what she must be experiencing now. Gup wrote about “how death plays out over time—not the biological episode that collapses it all into a nanosecond of being and not being, but the slower arc of our leaving, the long goodbye—sorting through the mail, paying the bills, stumbling upon notes. It is like the decommissioning of a great battleship. There is the official notice and ceremony, and then the long and agonizing process that follows—the disposition of so much tonnage. Eulogies are never the last word.”

There is a creepy scrawled note on my desk with “call Charlie” crossed off.

For the past few years, we had been talking about making another Liberation Music Orchestra album. This one would be about the environment, an issue that Charlie was deeply into. I had already finished three arrangements and we had played them at a couple of festival concerts in Europe during the summer of 2012. Manfred Eicher was interested in producing the album for ECM. The plot was to record it during the orchestra’s next European tour, but Charlie’s health had him so grounded that the next tour never happened. I had to stop working on the project because I had other commitments. We got to play the new pieces once more at a festival in California that celebrated the entire Haden family. That miraculously joyful occasion, during June of 2013, was the last time we saw each other, but we kept in touch by telephone until two days before he passed away.

On Saturday I turned on the radio and heard Charlie’s voice. He was talking to Terry Gross during the replaying of a Fresh Air interview from the ‘80s. The conversation was almost embarrassingly about things that had nothing to do with his importance as one of the greatest and certainly most recognizable jazz bass players that ever lived.





Charlie Haden and Carla Bley. Photo by Roberto Masotti, courtesy ECM.



http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/cha ... 1937-2014/

[Ron Thorne]

And, these reflections from another fine bassist I had the occasion to meet and be around for a time when he was part of the rhythm section in an incarnation of Jim Pepper's band Pepper's Pow-Wow.


Ratzo B. Harris July 22, 2014 at 2:48 pm

I first heard Charlie Haden on a Columbia Records LP featuring the music of Ornette Coleman called, Science Fiction. My turntable would pick the record up and play it over and over, so I would leave it on when I went to sleep, hoping that the music on the recording would stick better if I heard subliminally while I was asleep. But every time Haden’s introduction to ”Law Years” began to play, I had to wake up and listen. It’s been that way for me ever since and I’m sure that many other bassists have had a similar reaction to Charlie’s playing. His was a singular voice on our instrument that could not be ignored. Thank you for pointing that out, Carla, because all of the other aspects of Charlie Haden’s persona (his charm, his politics, his compositions) might make people forget that it was his bass playing that spoke first, and in the bigger picture, the loudest.

[Mike Schwartz]

Haden's passing keeps sprouting one nice piece after another!