Charlie Haden Quotes

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Charlie Haden

Profession : Musician

Birth : August 6, 1937

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

We're here to bring beauty to the world and make a difference in this planet. That's what art forms are about.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

I never heard anything so brilliant in my life as I did that first time I heard Ornette. He played like some revolutionary angel. Soon, we were rehearsing in his place, music scattered everywhere, and he was telling me to play outside the chord changes, which was exactly what I had been wanting to do. Now I had permission.

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

That's what I tell my students at California Institute of the Arts where I taught for 27 years. I taught them if you strive to be a good person, maybe you might become a great jazz musician.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

My parents were on the Grand Ole Opry. They traveled all over the country singing hillbilly music. That's what they called it back then. They were friends with Roy Acuff and the Delmore Brothers and the Carter Family. And all of my brothers and sisters who were older than me started on the show, after they were big enough to hold a guitar and sing.

Charlie Haden

I grew up around guitar players.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden