Charlie Haden - R.I.P.

[Captain Bacardi]

Just received news that bassist Charlie Haden passed away this afternoon at the age of 76. No word yet as to the cause. Haden recorded two wonderful albums on A&M/Horizon - Closeness and The Golden Number.



Capt. Bacardi

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Here's an obit from Billboard:

Charlie Haden, one of the most influential bass players of his generation, has died after a prolonged illness, according to his family and his record label, ECM. Charles Edward Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa in 1937 and was raised in Springfield, MO. The youngest of four kids, Haden made his professional yodeling debut at the age of two as part of his family’s country music act, The Haden Family Band. As a teenager he lost his ability to sing due to polio, developed an interest in jazz and classical music, and began playing the double bass.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1957 and working with pianist Paul Bley, Haden joined Ornette Coleman’s iconic free jazz quartet, which caused quite a musical stir during their 1959 residency at the Five Spot Café in New York City. Haden made essential recordings with Ornette Coleman, trumpeter Don Cherry and original drummer Billy Higgins, including albums The Shape of Jazz To Come and Change Of The Century—his solos on tunes like "Lonely Woman" and "Ramblin'" are still remembered—and he also played on the influential Coleman LP, "This Is Our Music."

Addiction to drugs compelled Haden to leave Coleman’s group in 1960. After his rehabilitation he returned to a prolific career as a sideman, eventually joining Keith Jarrett in 1967 as a member of Jarrett’s "American quartet" along with drummer Paul Motian and saxophonist Dewey Redman and recording nearly twenty albums with the band over a twelve-year period. Haden reunited with Jarrett in 2007, which resulted in "Jasmine," a duet CD of standards, as well as the newly released companion piece "Last Dance."

In 1969 Charlie Haden organized the large, experimental and politically outspoken group, The Liberation Music Orchestra with several fellow jazz rebels including Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Roswell Rudd and Gato Barbieri. Their first album featured the famous Haden composition "Song For Che" as well as Ornette Coleman’s "War Orphans." Haden led the Liberation Music Orchestra in various combinations over the years, with the most recent recording being 2005's "Not In Our Name." He also played and sang (along with Linda Ronstadt) on Carla Bley’s 1971 opus, "Escalator Over The Hill."

A loving, communal musician, Haden reconnected with his cohorts from Ornette Coleman’s bands and formed "Old & New Dreams" in 1976 with Don Cherry, Dewey Redman and drummer Eddie Blackwell. Uniquely qualified, these four men played a number of Coleman’s obtuse compositions, recording and performing together into the late 1980s.

In 1987 the bassist formed another important group, the Charlie Haden Quartet West featuring saxophonist Ernie Watts, pianist Alan Broadbent and drummer Lawrence Marable. This elegant quartet fused modernist playing with affection for film noir and music of the 1930s and 1940s. Haden’s Quartet West released eight recordings, most recently 2010’s "Sophisticated Ladies."

In 1997, Haden released a GRAMMY-winning duet album with Pat Metheny, "Beyond The Missouri Sky," which included a moving version of "Spiritual," written by Haden's son Josh. He also put out a series of six recordings from a long stint at the 1989 Montreal Jazz Festival with the likes of Paul Bley and Don Cherry, entitled The Montreal Tapes. Over the years the accomplished bassist played with everyone from Art Pepper to Yoko Ono, John McLaughlin, Joe Henderson, Geri Allen, Beck, Archie Shepp and Rickie Lee Jones.

Haden released over twenty albums as a leader and appeared on approximately 150 other recordings. In 2008, he released "Ramblin' Boy," a return to countrified family music that featured the singing of his triplet daughters, Tayna, Rachel and Petra, as well as appearances by Ricky Scaggs, Jerry Douglas, Vince Gill, Bruce Hornsby, (son-in-law) Jack Black and Elvis Costello.

There’s a 2009 Swiss documentary about Charlie Haden entitled Rambling Boy, and in 2012 he received the NEA Jazz Masters Award at Lincoln Center in New York City. In recent years Haden had played reunion concerts with Ornette Coleman and recorded beautiful duets with veteran pianists Hank Jones and Kenny Baron. Charlie Haden is survived by his wife Ruth Cameron and his children Josh, Tanya, Petra and Rachel Haden.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6157477/charlie-haden-dies-at-77




Capt. Bacardi

 

[LPJim]

It was my good fortune to attend a Charlie Haden concert at a small theater near home in May 1995. Besides the honor or meeting Mr. Haden and his band, it was a novelty to see him with his instrument enclosed in a glass booth. He was reunited with Billy Higgins and Don Cherry on Cherry's 1989 release on A&M, 'ART DECO.'

JB

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

He'd been sick for a long time...we saw him accept a Grammy achievement award a year and a half ago and he was incredibly frail and gaunt, but very brave in the way he got up there and spoke, soft and haltingly......I think it was Parkinson's or some related condition....

 

[jazzdre]

Another legend has passed. I have BEYOND THE MISSOURI SKY, as well as REJOICING(two albums he did with Pat Metheny), and his QUARTET WEST project(one of them, anyway) and also his Latin tinged album as well. He and Pat were best friends, so I know that Pat is very crushed about this as well. Also, he was the bassist on Eddie Del Barrio's FREEPLAY album, which Herb Alpert produced, and was an A&M album as well.
My sympathies to his family and friends, and also, I'll never forget his tireless efforts to make jazz a more respectful American institution. RIP, Mr.Haden;you made others happy with your talent.

 

[Captain Bacardi]

JazzTimes is reporting that the cause of death is post-polio syndrome:

Charlie Haden Dead at 76
Legendary bassist dies in Los Angeles

One of the most versatile and influential bassists in jazz history, Charlie Haden, died at age 76 yesterday, July 11, in Los Angeles. Post-polio syndrome, an illness that affects the nervous system of polio survivors, of which Haden was one, was the cause.

Although he is remembered more than anything for his work with, first, Ornette Coleman and, later, Keith Jarrett, Haden, over a period of some six decades, contributed vastly to the language of jazz bass. His tone was both warm and subtle and, at times, ferocious and tough—never predictable, always absorbing. His playing, regardless of the setting, was imbued with an unceasing curiosity and daring. Haden was a pioneer of free jazz but also professed a deep love for simple roots and folk music—both American and that of other cultures. With his own Liberation Music Orchestra he created a crossroads where the late jazz ensemble met leftist radical politics and experimentalism. Yet his music was, even at its most avant-garde, somehow accessible—one of his final releases, 2012’s Come Sunday, was a series of folk- and spiritual-themed duets with the late pianist Hank Jones. His current pairing with Jarrett, Last Dance, is another duo recording (following 2010’s Jasmine) that displays Haden’s ability to move beyond a root melody and basic harmony and open wide any music that he touched, remaining lyrical even while anchoring it solidly.

For most though, the name Charlie Haden will forever be associated first and foremost with that of Coleman. The bassist was just beginning to make a name for himself when, in 1959, he astounded on the alto saxophonist’s groundbreaking Atlantic Records debut, The Shape of Jazz to Come. All of 22, Haden seemed to understand innately where Coleman was coming from and where he was going: the idea of ripping apart structures and allowing each participant to determine his own path within the music. Haden, along with drummer Billy Higgins, provided just enough of a tether to keep Coleman and cornetist Don Cherry from drifting off into parts unknown while simultaneously pushing the performances away from the center, improvising restlessly while creating new harmonies—no mean trick. Haden is credited as one of the first bassists to free the instrument from its traditional role as accompanist to soloists within an ensemble.

Charles Edward Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, on Aug. 6, 1937. His family was musical, performing as the Haden Family Band on radio. Charles sang as part of the show beginning at age 2 but the onset of polio, which affected his throat muscles, forced him to give up vocalizing. By his teens, Haden had taken up the double bass, securing work where he could, mainly within the country music field. At the age of 20, having witnessed Charlie Parker in action and cultivated an interest in jazz, he relocated to Los Angeles, attending the Westlake College of Music and working with pianists Paul Bley and Hampton Hawes, saxophonist Art Pepper and other artists.

But it was the Coleman gig that put Haden on the jazz map permanently. Haden also appeared on Coleman’s vital recordings Change of the Century (1959), This Is Our Music (1960) and the landmark double quartet session Free Jazz (1960).

Although he was sidelined by personal problems in the early ’60s, Haden returned to the scene in 1964, working during those years with free jazz pioneers like Roswell Rudd and Archie Shepp, with pianist Denny Zeitlin and others. He also returned to Coleman’s group in the late ’60s for a few years.

Haden joined with Jarrett and drummer Paul Motian in 1967, recording such eclectic albums as Somewhere Before and The Mourning of a Star, and that group evolved into a quartet with the addition of tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman in 1971. Although not as startling as the Coleman sessions, Haden’s work with Jarrett was similarly ambitious and helped define the pianist’s overall approach to group work. With the Jarrett quartet, Haden appeared on the Impulse! label albums Fort Yawuh (1973), Treasure Island (1974) and Death and the Flower.

In the late ’70s and through much of the ’80s, Haden also performed as part of the group Old and New Dreams, with other Coleman alumni.

But Haden saved his most challenging music of those early years for the Liberation Music Orchestra, partnering in 1969 with pianist and composer Carla Bley. Unabashedly topical in nature, the ensemble, with its revolving membership of a dozen or more players, seized on the antiwar and pro-civil rights fervor of the times, wedding strident themes to complex, driving arrangements. Haden ultimately recorded four albums with the LMO between 1969 and 2005. In 1971, Haden was arrested in Portugal after performing his “Song for Che” with the orchestra at a festival.

Although he was associated with the avant-garde, Haden also had a deep affection for folk music forms, classical music and other genres. With another of his long-lasting groups, Quartet West, Haden explored standards and romantic themes, utilizing orchestral accompaniment.

In later years, Haden zigzagged between projects that often didn’t seem connected yet somehow were. He and Coleman teamed with guitarist Pat Metheny in 1986 for the album Song X and Haden partnered with Metheny again in 1997 for Beyond the Missouri Sky, which won a Best Jazz Instrumental Performance Grammy. He recorded Latin music with Gonzalo Rubalcaba—they won Latin Grammys for the albumsNocturne and Land of the Sun—and ruminative piano-based music with Hank Jones and Kenny Barron.

In 2008, Haden released Rambling Boy, an Americana album that harkened back to his roots in country/folk and featured members of his family—all of whom are musicians; his daughter, Tanya, is married to actor/musician Jack Black—and such guests as Elvis Costello, Bruce Hornsby, Béla Fleck, Rosanne Cash and Metheny. A documentary film of the same title was released in 2009.

In addition to his many albums as a leader, Haden also served as a sideman to dozens of artists, among them Dizzy Gillespie, Red Allen, Motian, Joe Henderson, Fred Hersch, Enrico Pieranunzi, David Sanborn, Yoko Ono, Joshua Redman, Lee Konitz, Ringo Starr, Wadada Leo Smith, Michael Brecker, Beck, Alice Coltrane, John McLaughlin, Joe Lovano, Abbey Lincoln and Haden’s wife Ruth Cameron.

Haden was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2012 and last year received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Grammys.


Capt. Bacardi

 

[LPJim]

I also enjoyed Haden's collaboration with Hank Jones (piano), 'STEAL AWAY,' a collection of spiritual tunes. I think it got a Grammy or at least was nominated.
JB

 

[Rudy]

Haden performed with Metheny on the following:

80/81 (with Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker)
Rejoicing (with Haden and Billy Higgins)
Song X (with Haden, Ornette Coleman, Denardo Coleman, Jack DeJohnette)
Beyond The Missouri Sky (duet with haden)
Secret Story (one of a few guest bassists)

Just finished playing Rejoicing a few moments ago...