Charlie Haden Quotes

Author Image

Charlie Haden

Profession : Musician

Birth : August 6, 1937

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.

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.

Charlie Haden

I came from being a singer going into jazz. And that's one of the things that polio did for me is it took away my ability to sing with a range because it paralyzed my vocal chords, so that was when I started playing. But I hear the music as if I were singing even when I am playing.

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

I don't sing now, because I had polio when I was 15, bulbar polio. This was when the epidemic was happening. And I was lucky that it didn't affect my lungs or my legs. It went to my face and kind of paralyzed my vocal chords, and I wasn't able to sing. And they said I was very lucky that I would get over it, which I did.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

I had to learn right away how to improvise behind Ornette, which not only meant following him from one key to another and recognizing the different keys, but modulating in a way that the keys flowed in and out of each other, and the new harmonies sounded right.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Haden

My dad was a great guy; my mother was wonderful. I was very lucky to be around music from the time I woke up until I went to bed.

Charlie Haden