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Charlie Haden Dead: Veteran Jazz Bassist Dies at 77 | Billboard






Charlie Haden Dead: Veteran Jazz Bassist Dies at 77 | Billboard


 

Charlie Haden, Veteran Jazz Bassist, Dead at 77

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."

 




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