Charles Edward Haden (August 6, 1937 – July 11, 2014) was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than fifty years. Haden helped to revolutionize the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz, evolving a style that sometimes complemented the soloist, and other times moved independently, liberating bassists from a strictly accompanying role.
In the late 1950s, he was an original member of the ground-breaking Ornette Coleman Quartet. In 1969, he formed his first band, the Liberation Music Orchestra, featuring arrangements by the pianist Carla Bley. In the late 1960s, he became a member of the pianist Keith Jarrett's trio, quartet and quintet. In the 1980s, he formed his own band, Quartet West. Haden also often recorded and performed in a duo setting, with musicians including the guitarist Pat Metheny and the pianists Hank Jones and Kenny Barron.
The German musicologist Joachim-Ernst Berendt wrote that Haden's "ability to create serendipitous harmonies by improvising melodic responses to Ornette Coleman's free jazz solos (rather than sticking to predetermined harmonies) was both radical and mesmerizing. His virtuosity lies (...) in an incredible ability to make the double bass 'sound out'. Haden cultivated the instrument's gravity as no one else in jazz. He is a master of simplicity which is one of the most difficult things to achieve."
Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, on August 6, 1937. His family was exceptionally musical and performed on KMA radio as the Haden Family, playing country music and American folk songs. Haden made his professional debut as a singer on the Haden Family's radio show when he was just two years old. He continued singing with his family until he was fifteen, when he contracted bulbar polio. At the age of fourteen, Haden had become interested in jazz after hearing Charlie Parker and Stan Kenton in concert. Once he recovered from polio, Haden began in earnest to concentrate on playing the bass. Haden's interest in the instrument was not sparked by jazz, but the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Haden soon set his sights on moving to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz musician; to save money for the trip, he took a job as house bassist for the American Broadcasting Company TV show Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.
Haden often said that he moved to Los Angeles in 1957 in search of pianist Hampton Hawes. He 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. His first recordings were made that year with Paul Bley, with whom he worked until 1959. He also played with Art Pepper for four weeks in 1957, and with Hawes from 1958 to 1959. For a time, Haden shared an apartment with bassist Scott LaFaro.
In May 1959, Haden recorded The Shape of Jazz to Come with Ornette Coleman. Haden's folk-influenced style complemented Coleman's Texas blues elements. Later that year, the Ornette Coleman Quartet moved to New York City and secured a six-week residency at the Five Spot Café. Ornette's quartet played everything by ear, as Haden explained: "At first when we were playing and improvising, we kind of followed the pattern of the song, sometimes. Then, when we got to New York, Ornette wasn't playing on the song patterns, like the bridge and the interlude and stuff like that. He would just play. And that's when I started just following him and playing the chord changes that he was playing: on-the-spot new chord structures made up according to how he felt at any given moment."
In 1960, drug problems caused Haden to leave Coleman's quartet. He went to rehab in September 1963 at Synanon houses in Santa Monica and San Francisco, during which time he met his first wife, Ellen David. They moved to New York City's Upper West Side, where their four children were born: their son, Josh, in 1968, and in 1971, their triplet daughters Petra, Rachel, and Tanya. They separated in 1975 and subsequently divorced.
Haden resumed his career in 1964, working with saxophonist John Handy and pianist Denny Zeitlin, and performing with Archie Shepp in California and Europe. He also did freelance work from 1966 to 1967, playing with Henry "Red" Allen, Pee Wee Russell, Attila Zoller, Bobby Timmons, Tony Scott, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. He recorded with Roswell Rudd in 1966, and returned to Coleman's group in 1967. This group remained active until the early 1970s. Haden was known for being able to skillfully follow the shifting directions and modulations of Ornette's improvised lines.
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. The group also included percussionist Guilherme Franco. He also organized the collective Old and New Dreams, which consisted of Don Cherry, Redman, and Ed Blackwell, who had also been members of Coleman's band. They continued to play Coleman's music in addition to original compositions in a style informed by Coleman.
In 1970 Haden received a Guggenheim Fellowship on the recommendation of Leonard Bernstein. Over the years, Haden received several NEA grants for composition. Haden founded his first band, the Liberation Music Orchestra ("LMO") in 1969, working with arranger Carla Bley. Their music was very experimental, exploring both the realms of free jazz and political music. The first album focused specifically on music from the Spanish Civil War, which had markedly inspired Haden. Inspired by the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he superimposed songs such as "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Happy Days are Here Again", contrasted with "We Shall Overcome".
The original Liberation Music Orchestra lineup consisted of Haden, Bley, Gato Barbieri, Redman, Motian, Don Cherry, Andrew Cyrille, Mike Mantler, Roswell Rudd, Bob Northern, Howard Johnson, Perry Robinson, and Sam Brown.
Over the years, the LMO had a shifting membership comprising a "who's who" of jazz instrumentalists, and consisted of twelve members from multicultural backgrounds. Its members also included Ahnee Sharon Freeman and Vincent Chancey (French horn), Tony Malaby (tenor saxophonist) Joseph Daley (tuba), Seneca Black (trumpet), Michael Rodriguez (trumpet), Miguel Zenón (alto saxophone), Chris Cheek (tenor saxophone), Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), Steve Cardenas (guitar), and Matt Wilson (drums). Through Bley's arranging, they employed not only more common trombone, trumpet and reeds but included the tuba and French horn. The group won multiple awards in 1970, including France's Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros, and Japan's Gold Disc Award from Swing Journal.
While on tour with the Ornette Coleman Quartet in Portugal in 1971, Haden dedicated a performance of his "Song for Ché" to anti-colonial resistance movements in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea. The following day, he was detained at Lisbon Airport, jailed, and interrogated by the DGS, the Portuguese secret police. He was released only after Coleman and others complained to the American cultural attaché; Haden was later interviewed by the FBI about the dedication. A mono recording of Haden's dedication and the audience's applause is included at the beginning of "For A Free Portugal" on the album Closeness. It was released in 1976, two years after the Carnation Revolution.
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 in lieu of internal problems. Haden's goal was to use the LMO to amplify unheard voices of oppressed peoples and express solidarity with progressive political movements from around the world. The LMO's 1982 album The Ballad of the Fallen on ECM commented again on the Spanish Civil War as well as United States involvement in Latin America. The LMO toured extensively throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1990, the orchestra returned with Dream Keeper, inspired by a poem by Langston Hughes, which also drew on American gospel music and South African music to comment on racism in the United States and apartheid in South Africa. The album featured choral contributions from the Oakland Youth Chorus. In 2005, Haden released the fourth Liberation Music Orchestra album, Not in Our Name, a protest against the Iraq War.