Charlie Haden
Charlie Haden
Charles Edward "Charlie" Hadenwas an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator known for his deep, warm sound, and whose career spanned more than fifty years. In the late 1950's, Haden achieved early legendary status as an original member of the ground-breaking Ornette Coleman Quartet that turned the jazz world on its head...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBassist
Date of Birth6 August 1937
CityShenandoah, IA
CountryUnited States of America
I think life is really hard sometimes. It's not easy to wake up every day and go through what you go through. But the beautiful moments that you share with people that you love, or even experience alone, are worth all of the pain and sorrow. Those moments should be cherished, and I think that's what music is all about-to remind people of the beautiful moments that are in everybody's life
I learned at a very young age that music teaches you about life. When you're in the midst of improvisation, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow — there is just the moment that you are in. In that beautiful moment, you experience your true insignificance to the rest of the universe. It is then, and only then, that you can experience your true significance.
The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.
Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.
James Cotton is a real blues guy, and he played with Muddy Waters, and it surprised me that they would want me to make a record with them, that he called me to do this record. I'd never done anything like that before. But I love blues, so I was very happy.
I have music inside me and I'm very lucky to be able to play music and that's the way that I try to do it.
I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.
We're here to bring beauty to the world and make a difference in this planet. That's what art forms are about.
It used to be that creative music was most of the music that you heard back in the '30s and '40s, and now it's like 3 percent. So, its kind of a struggle getttin' it out there.
The whole underlying theme for the new music... is to communicate honest, human values, and in doing that to try to improve the quality of life.
When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.
I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.
I just see myself as a human being that's concerned about life.
I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.