Welcome to Hadenville

Bass is the Place

The inimitable bassist Charlie Haden defied one of the basic principles of jazz. Spontaneity is the handmaiden of improvisation, the in-the-moment inventiveness that remains a cornerstone of the music. Haden was indeed a great improviser, a player committed to making it ever new. Yet few master jazz musicians have ever been as deliberate as Haden. Each note he painstakingly extracted from his instrument, each chiseled phrase he constructed, sounded as if it were released only after considerable consideration. Paradoxically, Haden was able to make this exceedingly intentional music sound freshly minted and spontaneously expressed.

This delicate balance came with specific rules. When Haden soloed, a listener was immediately ushered into “Hadenville,” a musical realm where things progressed according to the bassists’s personal sense of time and space. Here, there was no concept of technique for its own sake. When you dealt with Haden, technique as we generally understand it — instrumental flexibility, rapidity of notes, seamless delivery, and so forth — was left on the porch. Ideas replaced flash of any kind; expressivity, the tonal value of each deeply intoned note became paramount.

You can clearly hear this deliberate/spontaneous weave during Haden’s extended improvisation on “Malkauns” from trumpeter Don Cherry’s 1975 album Brown Rice. (The album’s title was changed to Don Cherry in 1976.) For the first four and a half minutes of the performance (I can’t label it a song; if there is a discernible melody, I can’t pin it down), Haden holds the spotlight, accompanied by the drone of Moki Cherry’s tamboura. Don Cherry and the drummer, Billy Higgins, then join Haden, making it, in effect, a reunion of the original 1959 Ornette Coleman quartet minus the iconic saxophonist. To my ears it sounds as if this vibrant group improvisation were grafted onto Haden’s solo track, especially as the performance morphs back to Haden’s statement after the trio improvisation ends. It’s expertly done and extremely satisfying, no matter any studio wizardry. And let’s acknowledge Cherry’s admiration and respect for Haden, granting him the spotlight for so great a portion of the piece.

Haden, Cherry and Higgins were blood-brother collaborators, and I hope to write more about their profound unity in the future. For now, let “Malkauns” stand as a tribute to the monarch of Hadenville.