Top 40 Charlie Haden Quotes

I wish I could’ve been friends with Charlie Parker and played with him. That’s my period. I feel real close to the ’40s – and actually, I was born in ’37, so I was a kid singing on the radio in the ’40s. But I always dreamed of going to big cities.

My family influenced me very deeply because my dad came from a musical background, from the hillbilly music part of it, and all that music came over from Scotland and Ireland and England in to the Appalachian Mountains and Ozark Mountains, where I was raised.

I always felt that I was born in the wrong era. I wanted to be friends with John Garfield, for instance.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that’s never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

Hoover’s Music Store in Springfield, Missouri – I would listen to records there for hours.

One of the things polio does is it takes away your energy. They don’t know very much about it. They should be a lot more aware of what polio is.

I want to expand jazz; I don’t want to keep the audience limited. I want to reach people who have never come to a jazz concert before. One way to do that is by making records that have a lot of different kinds of music on them.

Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.

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.

I wanted to do ‘Oh Shenandoah’ because that’s the town I was born in – as a tribute to my mom and dad for giving me all this music. I don’t really sing this as a singer, because I’m not a singer. But I wanted to do it for them.

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 just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can. Just give them other alternatives, especially people who aren’t exposed to creative music.

When I was four, we moved to a farm outside Springfield, Missouri. We had a radio show from that farmhouse. My dad always wanted a farm. We used to go out and milk the cows every morning and then do a radio show with a remote control from our living room. We’d start by singing ‘Keep On The Sunny Side.’

You can’t be at your full creative power if you are sedated.

When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don’t – there’s no bass part, there’s not that much depth. That’s why I’m attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It’s like playing in a rainforest.

I want people to feel what it was like in the ’40s. That’s when popular music in the United States was so beautiful. Frank Sinatra, the Pied Pipers, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday. That’s when popular music had deeper values, to me. This was music that was selling millions of records.

That’s the thing about musicians: The priority is to create something new that’s never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play.

I didn’t play a lot of bass as a kid, but I sang it.

I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.

In L.A., I played with Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo. Mick Goodrick plays guitar in the Liberation Music Orchestra, and he’s a real special player. Then I did a duet concert with Jim Hall at the 1990 Montreal Festival.

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.

Mostly I play with records. I play with my friend Bill Evans.

I grew up around guitar players.

I have a very clear picture of what I want to do and what I feel is important as far as my contribution or my appreciation and respect for this life that we’re living, and to try to make it better. I can’t feel that I’m making it better playing commercial music, and I never could, and I never will.

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.

There’s enough dismemberment going on in the world without writing music about it.

There’s like a special group of people that come from different parts of the planet to study with me. It’s nice. I just gave a workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory, which was really nice.

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.

Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.

I used to listen to a lot of Bach on the radio, and when the basses started to sing, it made everything complete – it made it all make sense.

I can write a song about my hero Che Guevara and call it ‘Song for Che.’

I want to take people away from the ugliness and sadness around us every day and bring beautiful, deep music to as many people as I can.

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.

People ask me how could I go from country to jazz. It’s been a natural convergence for me.

I’m always searching. It’s the reason I’m here. It’s not really about music: it’s about searching for meaning.

I just see myself as a human being that’s concerned about life.

I think it’s very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you’re in because, when you improvise, you’re in right now. You’re not in yesterday or tomorrow – you’re right in the moment.

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.

My roots have never left me… because the very first memory I have is my mom singing and me singing with her.

I’ve got a collection of songs that I’ve had, I keep adding to and they’re all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I’ve done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.