Brown's father had intended for him to follow in his footsteps and become a practicing lawyer. While he did help his father at his practice, he ventured off into other careers, such as advertising and serving in the army in the mid-1950s and writing songs. When Mahalia Jackson recorded one of his songs, he began to focus on a career in music. His first major contribution to a recorded work was a collaboration with Max Roach, We Insist!, which was an early record celebrating the black freedom movement in the United States. Columbia Records signed Brown as a solo artist, who was by now in his mid-thirties and married with five children.[2
In 1960, Brown released his first LP, Sin & Soul, recorded from June 20 to October 23, 1960.[1] Printed on the cover of the album were personal reviews by well-known celebrities and jazz musicians of the time, including Steve Allen, Lorraine Hansberry, Nat Hentoff, Dorothy Killgallen, Max Roach and Nina Simone (Simone would later cover his "Work Song" and Steve Allen would later hire him for his Jazz Scene USA television program). The album is regarded as a "true classic"[3] for openly tackling the experiences of African Americans with songs such as "Bid 'Em In" and "Afro Blue".
Sin & Soul is also significant because Brown took several popular jazz instrumentals and combined them with self-penned lyrics on songs such as "Dat Dere", "Afro Blue" and "Work Song". This began a trend that would continue with several other major jazz vocalists. Several of the tracks from Sin & Soul were embraced by the 1960s Mod movement, such as "Humdrum Blues",[4] "Work Song" and "Watermelon Man".
Sin & Soul was followed by Between Heaven and Hell (1962). The success of Sin & Soul meant that much more money was spent on production and Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns were bought in to handle the arrangements.
However, Brown was soon to fall down the pecking order at Columbia following a rearrangement of the management at the company. His third album was notable for the lack of any self-composed songs, and Columbia was having a hard time packaging him as an artist. They were unsure whether Brown was suited to middle-of-the-road/easy listening nightclubs or alternatively should be presented as a jazz artist.
Who Dat Dere
He was given much more creative freedom for his fourth album, Tells It Like It Is (1963), and he was back to his creative best, composing songs such as "The Snake", which became a Northern Soul classic when it was covered by Al Wilson, and has featured on several adverts. Despite this return to form, and having been told by the new head of Columbia that he was high on the company's priorities, his contract at Columbia was not renewed. Stage and television
He attempted to mount a major musical stage show in New York City called Kicks & Co. in 1961. Host Dave Garroway turned over an entire broadcast of the Today show to Brown to perform numbers from the show and try to raise the necessary funds to launch it on the stage. Kicks & Co. is set on an all-African-American college campus in the American South during the early days of attempted desegregation. The character Mr. Kicks is an emissary of Satan, sent to try to derail these efforts in which the play's protagonist, Ernest Black, has become involved.
This was the first of several theatrical endeavors by Brown, and like all of them, the public was not won over sufficiently to allow financial success, despite acclaim by some critics. His longest-running relative success, thanks to the participation of Muhammad Ali, was Big-Time Buck White. Another notable musical show, Joy, saw two incarnations (in 1966 and 1969) and again addressed social issues. Appearing with Brown were his wife, Jean Pace, and the Brazilian singer/accordionist Sivuca. RCA released the original cast recording around 1970; it is long out of print.
In 1962, he worked on the Westinghouse syndicated television program Jazz Scene USA, produced by Steve Allen. Brown was the show's presenter and it featured a new musical guest each week.[5]
Family
Brown's son, Oscar "BoBo" Brown III, was an instrumental musician who died in a car crash. His daughter Maggie Brown is a musician as well. Along with Africa Brown, these three of his seven children carry out his legacy in singing and acting. His other four children are Donna Brown Kane, David "Napoleon" Brown, Jone Brown, and Lantha Brown.
Humanitarian work
He founded The Oscar Brown, Jr. H.I.P. Legacy Foundation to carry on his humanitarian work. He also took part at an anti-apartheid protest rally in Compton College in 1976.[6]
Death and musical legacy
Brown died in Chicago, from complications of osteomyelitis in May 2005, aged 78.[7]
Brown's lyrics and original compositions have been performed by a variety of other artists. "Somebody Buy Me a Drink", a track from Sin & Soul, was covered by David Johansen and the Harry Smiths on their eponymous first album. Pianist Wynton Kelly recorded "Strongman" with his trio in the late 1950s. Nina Simone popularized Brown's lyrics to "Work Song" and "Afro Blue," as well as his song "Bid 'Em In."[8] Brown's "Afro Blue" lyrics have since been performed by numerous contemporary jazz vocalists, including Dianne Reeves, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Lizz Wright. Vocalist Karrin Allyson has cited Brown as a particular inspiration, and has performed his compositions on several of her albums.[9] Brown was scheduled to contribute new lyrics to Allyson's 2006 album Footprints, but died before the project was complete; Allyson instead recorded Brown's songs "A Tree and Me" and "But I Was Cool" as a tribute.[10] Brown's work has also been the focus of full-length tribute albums by lesser-known jazz artists, including cabaret singer Linda Kosut[11] and Brown's own daughter, Maggie Brown.[12]
By Larry Mcshane
Chart-topping R&B singer Natalie Cole, who followed her famous father in the music business with hits like “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) and “Unforgettable,” died at age 65.
"Unforgettable"
Natalie Cole Performs a Duet with her Father Nat King Cole Thanks to some digital magic
Natalie Cole, sister beloved & of substance and sound. May her soul rest in peace,” tweeted the Rev. Jesse Jackson on New Year’s Day.
Cole, who had struggled with a variety of health issues in recent years, died at a Los Angles hospital.
The daughter of music legend Nat King Cole scored a huge 1991 hit with “Unforgettable” — a virtual duet with her late father. He died before his daughter launched her solo career.
Born in 1950, Cole grew up among musical royalty. Her father was one of the most accomplished singers and jazz musicians of the postwar era, and her mother, Maria Hawkins Cole, was a singer for Duke Ellington. Their house, in Los Angeles' upscale Hancock Park neighborhood, was a regular spot for her parents' colleagues.
"I remember meeting Peggy Lee, Danny Thomas, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and so many others at parties," she told The Wall Street Journal in 2014.
At age 6, Cole sang with her father on a Christmas album, and she was performing by the time she was 11. Nat King Cole died in 1965, when she was 15, a loss that "crushed" her, she said.
"Dad had been everything to me," she told the WSJ.
After college in Massachusetts, Cole embarked on her own career. In 1975, she had a massive hit with "This Will Be" from her album "Inseparable," which showed off her tremendous pipes -- she earned comparisons to Aretha Franklin -- and command of a range of styles. The work won her a Grammy for best new artist.
She followed that with other hits, including "I've Got Love on My Mind," "Our Love" and "Someone That I Used to Love."
By CBS/AP
...The Texas-born Coleman was only the second jazz artist to win the
Pulitzer Prize in music when he was honored for his 2006 album "Sound
Grammar."
His quartet shook up the jazz establishment when it burst on the scene in 1959 with the album "The Shape of Jazz to Come," which liberated musicians to freely improvise off the melody.
ORNETTE COLEMAN - Excerpts From the Documentary 1959 The Year that Changed Jazz
Coleman is regarded as one of the greatest innovators in jazz history along with Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. In the late 1950s, he originated "free jazz," challenging the bebop establishment by abandoning the conventional song form and liberating musicians to freely improvise off of the melody rather than the underlying chord changes. Coleman broke down the barrier between leader and sidemen, giving his band members freedom to solo, interact and develop their ideas.
Though largely self-taught, Coleman would create his own "harmolodic" concept of music, which also became a life philosophy. The music derived from a uniquely free interaction between the musicians, without being tethered to rigid meters and conventional harmonic structure. He referred to it as "removing the caste system from sound."
ORNETTE COLEMAN - The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959 -Full Album)
"I want everyone to have an equal relationship to the results," Coleman told the AP in a 2007 interview. "I don't tell them what or how to play. ... Sometimes the drum is leading, sometimes the bass is leading. ... I don't think I'm the leader, I'm just paying the bills."
In his later years, the jazz revolutionary became a respected elder statesman with the accompanying honors, including membership in the elite American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Grammy lifetime achievement award, even though none of his recordings ever won a Grammy.
But early in his career, Coleman's unconventional playing led him to be rejected by both the public and his fellow musicians who would walk off the stage when he showed up at jam sessions. One bandleader paid him not to solo; others simply fired him. Coleman was told he played out-of-tune and didn't know the basics of jazz improvisation.
One incident remained deeply ingrained in his memory: The night circa 1950 when the saxophonist was playing with an R&B band at a Louisiana road house and his solo stopped the dancers in their tracks. Coleman was dragged outside the club, roughed up and his horn was thrown over a cliff.
"One guy kicked me in my stomach ... and said, `You can't play like that!' He didn't even know what I was doing," recalled Coleman in the AP interview. "I think with dance music it's the rhythm that people like and I was just playing musical ideas. But I really did grow when I realized that all music uses the same notes whether it's classical or religious or funk. ... And when I realized that ... I decided to take my beatings until I can establish where people can say, `Oh don't beat him, listen.'"
[..]
Tired of rejection, Coleman moved to Los Angeles in 1952 where he got a job as a department store elevator operator, studying music theory on his breaks.
Coleman, who a decade before the Beatles had shoulder-length hair and a beard, soon found a like-minded group of musicians, including bassist Charlie Haden, who had performed in his family's bluegrass band back in Missouri; Don Cherry, who played a tiny pocket trumpet, and drummer Billy Higgins.
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazzsaxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, a term he invented with the name of an album. Coleman's timbre was easily recognized: his keening, crying sound drew heavily on blues music. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.
Biography
Early life
Coleman was born in 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas, where he was also raised.[1][2][3] He attended I.M. Terrell High School, where he participated in band until he was dismissed for improvising during "The Washington Post."[4] He began performing R&B and bebop initially on tenor saxophone, and started a band, the Jam Jivers, with some fellow students including Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett.[5] Seeking a way to work his way out of his home town, he took a job in 1949 with a Silas Green from New Orleans traveling show and then with touring rhythm and blues shows. After a show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he was assaulted and his saxophone was destroyed.[6]
He switched to alto, which remained his primary instrument, first playing it in New Orleans after the Baton Rouge incident. He then joined the band of Pee Wee Crayton and travelled with them to Los Angeles. He worked at various jobs, including as an elevator operator, while still pursuing his musical career.
From the beginning of his career, Coleman's music and playing were in many ways unorthodox. His approach to harmony and chord progression was far less rigid than that of bebop performers; he was increasingly interested in playing what he heard rather than fitting it into predetermined chorus-structures and harmonies. His raw, highly vocalized sound and penchant for playing "in the cracks" of the scale led many Los Angeles jazz musicians to regard Coleman's playing as out-of-tune. He sometimes had difficulty finding like-minded musicians with whom to perform. Nevertheless, pianist Paul Bley was an early supporter and musical collaborator.
1959 was a notably productive year for Coleman. His last release on Contemporary was Tomorrow Is the Question!, a quartet album, with Shelly Manne on drums, and excluding the piano, which he would not use again until the 1990s. Next Coleman brought double bassist Charlie Haden – one of a handful of his most important collaborators – into a regular group with Cherry and Higgins. (All four had played with Paul Bley the previous year.) He signed a multi-album contract with Atlantic Records who released The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959. It was, according to critic Steve Huey, "a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down a gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with."[8] While definitely – if somewhat loosely – blues-based and often quite melodic, the album's compositions were considered at that time harmonically unusual and unstructured. Some musicians and critics saw Coleman as an iconoclast; others, including conductor Leonard Bernstein and composer Virgil Thomson regarded him as a genius and an innovator.[9]
Coleman's quartet received a lengthy – and sometimes controversial – engagement at New York City's famed Five Spot jazz club. Such notable figures as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Leonard Bernstein and Lionel Hampton were favorably impressed, and offered encouragement. (Hampton was so impressed he reportedly asked to perform with the quartet; Bernstein later helped Haden obtain a composition grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.) Opinion was, however, divided. Trumpeter Miles Davis famously declared Coleman was "all screwed up inside" (although this comment was later recanted) and Roy Eldridge stated, "I'd listened to him all kinds of ways. I listened to him high and I listened to him cold sober. I even played with him. I think he's jiving baby."[10]
Coleman's unique early sound was due in part to his use of a plastic saxophone. He had first bought a plastic horn in Los Angeles in 1954 because he was unable to afford a metal saxophone, though he didn't like the sound of the plastic instrument at first.[11] Coleman later claimed that it sounded drier, without the pinging sound of metal. In later years, he played a metal saxophone.[12]
In 1960, Coleman recorded Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, which featured a double quartet, including Cherry and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Haden and LaFaro on bass, and both Higgins and Blackwell on drums. The record was recorded in stereo, with a reed/brass/bass/drums quartet isolated in each stereo channel. Free Jazz was, at nearly 40 minutes, the lengthiest recorded continuous jazz performance to date, and was instantly one of Coleman's most controversial albums. The music features a regular but complex pulse, one drummer playing "straight" while the other played double-time; the thematic material is a series of brief, dissonant fanfares. As is conventional in jazz, there are a series of solo features for each member of the band, but the other soloists are free to chime in as they wish, producing some extraordinary passages of collective improvisation by the full octet. In the January 18, 1962 issue of Down Beat magazine, in a special review titled "Double View of a Double Quartet," Pete Welding awarded the album Five Stars while John A. Tynan rated it No Stars.[13]
Coleman originally intended "Free Jazz" as simply an album title, but his growing reputation placed him at the forefront of jazz innovation, and free jazz was soon considered a new genre, though Coleman has expressed discomfort with the term. Among the reasons Coleman may not have entirely approved of the term 'free jazz' in that his music contains a considerable amount of composition. His melodic material, although skeletal, strongly recalls the melodies that Charlie Parker wrote over standard harmonies, and in general the music is closer to the bebop that came before it than is sometimes popularly imagined.[14] (Several early tunes of his, for instance, are clearly based on favorite bop chord changes like "Out of Nowhere" and "I Got Rhythm".) Coleman very rarely played standards, concentrating on his own compositions, of which there seemed to be an endless flow. There are exceptions, though, including a classic reading (virtually a recomposition) of "Embraceable You" for Atlantic, and an improvisation on Thelonious Monk's "Criss-Cross" recorded with Gunther Schuller.
1960s
After the Atlantic period and into the early part of the 1970s, Coleman's music became more angular and engaged fully with the jazz avant-garde which had developed in part around his innovations.[7]
His quartet dissolved, and Coleman formed a new trio with David Izenzon on bass, and Charles Moffett on drums. Coleman began to extend the sound-range of his music, introducing accompanying string players (though far from the territory of Charlie Parker with Strings) and playing trumpet and violin (which he played left-handed) himself. He initially had little conventional musical technique and used the instruments to make large, unrestrained gestures. His friendship with Albert Ayler influenced his development on trumpet and violin. Haden would later sometimes join this trio to form a two-bass quartet.
In 1966, Coleman was criticized for recording The Empty Foxhole, a trio with Haden, and Coleman's son Denardo Coleman – who was ten years old. Some[who?] regarded this as perhaps an ill-advised piece of publicity on Coleman's part and judged the move a mistake. Others, however,[who?] noted that despite his youth, Denardo had studied drumming for several years. His technique – which, though unrefined, was respectable and enthusiastic – owed more to pulse-oriented free jazz drummers like Sunny Murray than to bebop drumming. Denardo has matured into a respected musician, and has been his father's primary drummer since the late 1970s.
Coleman formed another quartet. A number of bassists and drummers (including Haden, Garrison and Elvin Jones) appeared, and Dewey Redman joined the group, usually on tenor saxophone.
He also continued to explore his interest in string textures – from Town Hall, 1962, culminating in Skies of America in 1972. (Sometimes this had a practical value, as it facilitated his group's appearance in the UK in 1965, where jazz musicians were under a quota arrangement but classical performers were exempt.)
In 1969, Coleman was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
Later Career
Coleman, like Miles Davis before him, took to playing with electrified instruments. Albums like Virgin Beauty and Of Human Feelings used rock and funk rhythms, sometimes called free funk. On the face of it, this could seem to be an adoption of the jazz fusion mode fashionable at the time, but Coleman's first record with the group, which later became known as Prime Time (the 1976 Dancing in Your Head), was sufficiently different that it had considerable shock value. Electric guitars were prominent, but the music was, at heart, rather similar to his earlier work. These performances have the same angular melodies and simultaneous group improvisations – what Joe Zawinul referred to as "nobody solos, everybody solos" and what Coleman called harmolodics – and although the nature of the pulse was altered, Coleman's own rhythmic approach did not.[citation needed]
Some critics[who?] have suggested Coleman's frequent use of the vaguely defined term harmolodics is a musical MacGuffin: a red herring of sorts designed to occupy critics overly focused on Coleman's sometimes unorthodox compositional style.
Jerry Garcia played guitar on three tracks from Coleman's 1988 album Virgin Beauty: "Three Wishes", "Singing in the Shower", and "Desert Players". Coleman joined the Grateful Dead on stage once in 1993 during "Space", and stayed for "The Other One", "Stella Blue", Bobby Bland's "Turn on Your Lovelight", and the encore "Brokedown Palace".[15][16] Another collaboration was with guitarist Pat Metheny, with whom Coleman recorded Song X (1985); though released under Metheny's name, Coleman was essentially co-leader (contributing all the compositions).
In 1990, the city of Reggio Emilia in Italy held a three-day "Portrait of the Artist" featuring a Coleman quartet with Cherry, Haden and Higgins. The festival also presented performances of his chamber music and the symphonic Skies of America.
In 1991, Coleman played on the soundtrack for David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch; the orchestra was conducted by Howard Shore. It is notable among other things for including a rare sighting of Coleman playing a jazz standard: Thelonious Monk's blues line "Misterioso". Two 1972 (pre-electric) Coleman recordings, "Happy House" and "Foreigner in a Free Land" were used in Gus Van Sant's 2000 Finding Forrester.
The mid-1990s saw a flurry of activity from Coleman: he released four records in 1995 and 1996, and for the first time in many years worked regularly with piano players (either Geri Allen or Joachim Kühn).
2000s
In 2004 Coleman was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to "a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind's enjoyment and understanding of life."[17]
In September 2006 he released a live album titled Sound Grammar with his newest quartet (Denardo drumming and two bassists, Gregory Cohen and Tony Falanga). This was his first album of new material in ten years, and was recorded in Germany in 2005. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music, Coleman being only the second jazz artist to win the prize.[18]
On February 11, 2007, Coleman was honored with a Grammy award for lifetime achievement, in recognition of this legacy.
Jazz pianist Joanne Brackeen (who had only briefly studied music as a child) stated in an interview with Marian McPartland that Coleman had been mentoring her and giving her semi-formal music lessons in recent years.[21]
Coleman continued to push himself into unusual playing situations, often with much younger musicians or musicians from radically different musical cultures. An increasing number of his compositions, while not ubiquitous, have become minor jazz standards, including "Lonely Woman", "Peace", "Turnaround", "When Will the Blues Leave?", "The Blessing", "Law Years", "What Reason Could I Give" and "I've Waited All My Life". He has influenced virtually every saxophonist of a modern disposition, and nearly every such jazz musician, of the generation that followed him. His songs have proven endlessly malleable: pianists such as Paul Bley and Paul Plimley have managed to turn them to their purposes; John Zorn recorded Spy vs Spy (1989), an album of extremely loud, fast, and abrupt versions of Coleman songs. Finnish jazz singer Carola covered Coleman's "Lonely Woman" and there have even been progressive bluegrass versions of Coleman tunes (by Richard Greene).
Personal Life and Death
Coleman married poet Jayne Cortez in 1954. The couple divorced in 1964. They had one son, Denardo, born in 1956,[22] who became a notable jazz drummer.
Coleman died of a cardiac arrest at the age of 85 in New York City on June 11, 2015.[23]
Charles Edward "Charlie" Haden (August 6, 1937 – July 11, 2014) was an American jazzdouble bass player, known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, pianist Keith Jarrett, and his Liberation Music Orchestra, a group he co-led with pianist Carla Bley.
Early life
Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa, and was raised on a farm. His family was exceptionally musical; they performed together frequently on the radio, playing country music and American folk songs as the Haden Family Band.
Haden was musical from an early age, and made his professional debut as a singer, when he was two years old, on the Haden Family's radio show. He continued singing with his family until he was 15 when he contracted a bulbar form of polio affecting his throat and facial muscles. As a result, Haden was unable to control his pitch while singing. At age 14, before he had contracted polio, Haden had become interested in jazz, and began playing his older brother's double bass; increasingly after he lost the ability to sing.
Haden's interest in the instrument was not sparked by jazz bass alone, but by the classical bass he heard frequently on the radio. He was particularly fascinated by the bass he heard in compositions by Bach. Eventually he set his sights on Los Angeles, and to save money for the trip took a job as house bassist for ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri.
Early career
Haden moved to Los Angeles in 1957 in search of pianist Hampton Hawes. He turned down a 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 Hampton Hawes from 1958-1959.
Charlie Haden and Carla Bley. (Photo by Thomas-Dorn)
He began recording with Ornette Coleman shortly after, including the important The Shape of Jazz to Come. Haden's folk-influenced style complemented the microtonal, Texas blues elements of Coleman. In 1959, the Coleman Quartet moved to New York City and secured a residency at the Five Spot Café. This residency lasted six weeks, and represented the beginnings of free, or avant-garde jazz.
The Ornette Coleman 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.”
Haden’s narcotics addiction forced him to leave Coleman’s band in August 1960. He went to rehabilitation in September 1963 at Synanon houses in Santa Monica, California and San Francisco, California. It was at Synanon House that he met his first wife, Ellen. They moved to New York City's upper West Side where their four children were born: Josh first and then his triplet daughters Petra, Rachel and Tanya.
1964 to 1987
He resumed his career in 1964, working with John Handy and Danny Zeitlin’s trio, and performing with Archie Shepp in California and Europe. He also did freelance work from 1966 to 1967, performing 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 Ornette Coleman’s group in 1967. This group remained active until the early 1970s. Haden was known for being able to follow the shifting directions and modulations of Coleman’s improvised lines skillfully.
Charlie Haden and his Liberation Music Orchestra "Sandino"
Haden joined Keith Jarrett's trio and his 'American Quartet' from 1967 to 1976 with Paul Motian and Dewey Redman. The group also consisted of percussionist Guilherme Franco. He also played in the collective Old and New Dreams, which consisted of Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, and Ed Blackwell, who were members of Coleman’s band. These musicians believed they understood and could perform Coleman’s improvisational concept, and applied it to their work in this band, continuing to play Coleman’s music in addition to their own original compositions.
Haden went on to lead the Liberation Music Orchestra in the 1970s. Largely arranged by Carla Bley, their music was very experimental, exploring the realms of free jazz and political music at the same time; the first album focused specifically on the Spanish Civil War. Carla Bley’s arrangements underscore compositions by Antonín Dvořák, Samuel Barber, Bill Frisell, and Pat Metheny. They also quote lines from songs such as “Dixie,” “The Star Spangled Banner,” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which the LMO intentionally satirized and portrayed ironically.
The LMO has had a shifting membership comprising a "who's who" of jazz instrumentalists, and consisted of twelve members from multicultural backgrounds. Some of the members included Ahnee Sharon Freeman (French horn), Joe Daley (tuba), 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 have concentrated on a wide palette of brass instruments, including tuba, French horn, and trombone, in addition to the more standard trumpet and reed section. 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.
In 1971, while on tour with the Ornette Coleman Quartet in Portugal (at the time under a fascist dictatorship), Haden decided to dedicate a performance of his "Song for Che" to the anticolonialist revolutionaries in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau. The following day, he was detained at Lisbon Airport, jailed, and interrogated by the DGS (the Portuguese secret police). He was promptly released the same day after the intervention of the American cultural attaché, though he was later interviewed by the FBI in the United States about his choice of dedication.
Charlie Haden's Quartet West "First Song"
The LMO's 1982 album The Ballad of the Fallen commented again on the Spanish Civil War as well as the political instability and United States involvement in Latin America. Haden’s involvement with the LMO began 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 which there were many fatalities), while so many internal problems in the United States (such as poverty, civil rights, mental illness, drug addiction, and unemployment), were neglected. Haden’s goal was to use the LMO to amplify unheard voices of oppressed people. He wanted to express his solidarity with progressive political movements from around the world by performing music that made a statement about how to initiate and celebrate liberating change.
John Snyder takes a photo of Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden, Art Pepper, George Cables.
The LMO toured most extensively throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1990, the orchestra returned with Dream Keeper, a more heterogeneous album which drew on American gospel music and South African music to comment on politics in Latin America and apartheid in South Africa. The album featured choral contributions from the Oakland Youth Chorus. Haden performed with Carla Bley and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra through the 1980s and 1990s as well. Following Dream Keeper, LMO released the album Not In Our Name. Unlike the previous albums, the material on Not In Our Name came solely from American composers, and was intended to convey a sense of patriotism towards the United States, while simultaneously stressing the necessity for political reform.
1987-2000
Thematic exploration of genres not typically considered to be jazz standards became one of the signature approaches of the "Quartet West". Started in 1987, the Quartet consists of Ernie Watts on sax, Alan Broadbent on piano, and Larance Marable on drums. Quartet West's albums feature lush, romantic arrangements by Broadbent, often with strings, of music from the 1930s and 1940s, often music associated with films of that period. Haden’s vision for Quartet West was the beginning of modernism in jazz. Their work combined forties pop ballads and originals by Haden or Alan Broadbent, and they played a noir infused, bop-oriented style. The group has been together for over twenty years and is one of the rare groups in jazz that has performed together for so long.
A brief collaboration with Joe Henderson and Al Foster, players not normally associated with Haden or his immediate circle, showcased Haden's playing in a more hard-driving jazz context. In 1982, Haden established the jazz studies program at California Institute of the Arts. His program emphasized smaller group performance and the spiritual connection to the creative process. He encouraged students to discover their individual sounds, melodies, and harmonies. Haden was honored by the Los Angeles Jazz Society as “Jazz Educator of the Year” for his educational work in this program. Haden’s students have included the tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, the trumpeter Ralph Alessi, and the bassist Scott Colley.
Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny "The Precious Jewel"
In 1989, Haden was featured at the Montreal Jazz Festival, and performed in concert every night of the festival, with different combos and bands. Each of these events was recorded, and most have been released in the series The Montreal Tapes. In 1995, Haden released Steal Away: Spirituals, Hymns and Folk Song with pianist Hank Jones, an album based on traditional spirituals and folk songs. Haden both played on the album and produced it. In late 1996, he collaborated with Pat Metheny on the album Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories), exploring the music that influenced them in their childhood experiences in Missouri with what they call "contemporary impressionistic Americana". Haden was awarded his first Grammy award for the album, for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.
In 1997, classical composer Gavyn Bryars wrote an extended adagio for Charlie Haden. Instrumentation included strings, bass clarinet, and percussion. The piece was recorded with the English Chamber Orchestra on the album Farewell to Philosophy, and is a synthesis of jazz and classical chamber music, featuring resonant pizzicato notes and gut strings in imitation of Haden’s bass sound.
2000-death
In 2001, Haden won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz CD for his album Nocturne, which contains boleros from Cuba and Mexico. In 2003 he won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Performance for his album Land of the Sun. Haden reconvened the Liberation Music Orchestra in 2005, with largely new members, for the album Not In Our Name, released on Verve Records. The album dealt primarily with the contemporary political situation in the United States.
Haden's 2008 release, Rambling Boy, features several members of his immediate family, along with Béla Fleck, Pat Metheny, Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash, Bruce Hornsby, and several others. The album consists his co-producer Ruth Cameron, and instrumentalists Haden, his wife Ruth Cameron, his four children (Petra, Rachel, Tanya, and Josh Haden), and his son-in-law Jack Black (each of whom have careers in music). The album, released on September 23, 2008, hearkens back to his days of playing Americana and bluegrass music with his parents on their radio show. The idea came to Haden when his wife Ruth Cameron gathered the Haden family together for his mother's 80th birthday, and they all sang "You Are My Sunshine" in the living room. This reunited Haden with an idea that was in his mind for a long time, and reminded him of his country and bluegrass roots. Rambling Boy was intended to connect music from his early childhood in the Haden family band to the new generation of the Haden family as well. The album includes songs made famous by the Stanley Brothers, the Carter Family, and Hank Williams, in addition to fabled traditional songs and original compositions. A concert tour with Quartet West (with a new drummer) took place in the late summer of 2008, the year the album was released.
In 2009, Swiss film director Reto Caduff released a film about Haden’s life, entitled Rambling Boy. It premiered at Telluride and Vancouver International Film Festivals festivals in 2009. In the summer of 2009, Haden performed many concert reunions with Ornette Coleman at the Meltdown Festival in Southbank, London. He also performed and produced duet recordings with Hank Jones on the album Steal Away, and with Kenny Baron on the album Kenny Baron Night and the City. In February 2010, Haden and Hank Jones recorded a companion to Steal Away: Spirituals, Hymns and Folk Songs called Come Sunday. Jones died three months after the recording of the album. In 2012, Haden was a recipient of the NEA Jazz Masters Award. The award was given to him and four other honorees at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Spirituality and teaching method
While he did not orient himself with a specific religious orientation, Haden was interested in spirituality, especially in association with music. His teaching method relied heavily on spirituality. He believed that in order to establish an individual musical voice, one must first establish a spiritual posture. This physical and mental position will allow the individual to find their own unique musical voice and bring it to their instrument. He also encourages his students to enter a meditative state when they play, one in which they focus solely on the present moment: “there’s no yesterday or tomorrow, there’s only right now,” he claims. In order to find this state, and ultimately to find one’s spiritual self, Haden urged that one must have humility and respect for beauty; they must be thankful for the ability to make music, and to give back to the world with the music they create. He claimed that music taught him this process of exchange, so he teaches it to his students in return.
Music, Haden believed, also teaches incredibly valuable lessons about life: "I learned at a very young age that music teaches you about life. When you're in the midst of improvisation, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow — there is just the moment that you are in. In that beautiful moment, you experience your true insignificance to the rest of the universe. It is then, and only then, that you can experience your true significance."
Musical philosophy
Haden viewed jazz as the “music of rebellion,” and felt it was his responsibility and mission to challenge the world through music, and through artistic risks that expressed his own individual artistic vision. He believed that all music originates from the same place, and because of this, he resisted the tendency to divide music into categories. He was democratic in his tastes and musical partners, and interested in musical collaboration with any individual who shares his views on music and life. His music (especially his music created with the LMO), was frequently political, and intended to help the oppressed find a voice, and ultimately improve the political state of the world around him. Haden spoke to this in reference to his 2002 album American Dreams, stating: “I always dreamed of a world without cruelty and greed, of a humanity with the same creative brilliance of our solar system, of an America worthy of the dreams of Martin Luther King, and the majesty of the Statue of Liberty...This music is dedicated to those who still dream of a society with compassion, deep creative intelligence, and a respect for the preciousness of life -- for our children, and for our future.”
Musical style
Haden was known for his warm tone and subtle vibrato on the double bass, in addition to his lyrical playing. He focused on simplicity and melodic playing rather than intricate bass lines, or complicated, horn-like solos. His approach to the bass stemmed from his belief that the bassist should move from an accompanying role to a more direct role in group improvisation. This is particularly clear in his work with the Ornette Coleman Quartet; he frequently improvised melodic responses to Coleman’s free-form solos instead of playing previously written lines. He frequently closed his eyes while performing, and assumed a posture in which he bent himself around the bass until his head was almost at the bottom of the bridge of the bass.
Haden owned one three-quarter sized bass, and one seven-eighths sized bass. The larger bass is one of a small number of basses made by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, a French luthier, in the mid nineteenth century. He greatly valued this bass, playing it only at recording sessions and jobs that are in close proximity to his home so he does not damage it in transit. He attributed the bass’s special and valuable nature to the varnish used by Villaume, which is similar to Italian varnish.
Haden suffered from tinnitus, a ringing in both ears that he believed he received from an extremely loud free jazz concert he played with tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and trombonist Roswell Rudd in the late 1960s. He also suffered from hyperacousis, or sensitivity to loud noises. As a result, when he played with a drummer, he had to play behind a Plexiglass divider.
Horace Silver (born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva, September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014) was an American jazz pianist and composer.
Silver is known for his distinctively humorous and funky playing style and for his pioneering compositional contributions to hard bop. He was influenced by a wide range of musical styles, notably gospel music, African music, and Latin American music and sometimes ventured into the soul jazz genre.
"Song For My Father"
Music by Horace Silver, Vocals by Leon Thomas
Early life and career
Silver was born on September 2, 1928, in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States. His father, John Tavares Silva, was from the island of Maio in Cape Verde while his mother was born in New Canaan, Connecticut, and was of Irish-African descent. His father taught him the folk music of Cape Verde.
Silver began his career as a tenor saxophonist but later switched to piano. His tenor saxophone playing was highly influenced by Lester Young, and his piano style by Bud Powell. Silver's big break came in 1950 backing saxophonist Stan Getz at The Sundown Club in Hartford, Connecticut. Getz liked Silver's band and took them on the road, eventually recording three of Silver's compositions. It was with Getz that Silver made his recording debut. His first recording was for the 1950 Stan Getz Quartet album, which featured Getz and Silver with Joe Calloway on bass and Walter Bolden on drums.
Silver moved to New York City in 1951, where he worked at the jazz club Birdland on Monday nights, when different musicians would come together and informally jam. During that year he met the executives of the label Blue Note while working as a sideman. He eventually signed with them, remaining there until 1980. In New York, he formed the Jazz Messengers, a cooperatively-run group with Art Blakey.
The album Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers was recorded on November 13, 1954 and issued in 1955. It was regarded as a milestone in the development of hard bop. It featured the mid-tempo blues "Doodlin" and Silver's first hit "The Preacher". During his time with Blakey, Silver rarely recorded as a leader, but after splitting with him in 1956, he formed his own hard bop quintet at first featuring the same line-up as Blakey's Jazz Messengers with 18-year-old Louis Hayes replacing Blakey.
Blue Note years
From 1956 onwards, Silver recorded exclusively for Blue Note, eventually becoming close to label boss Alfred Lion, who allowed him greater input on aspects of album production than was usual at the time. During his years with Blue Note, Silver helped to create the rhythmically forceful branch of jazz known as "hard bop", which combined elements of rhythm-and-blues and gospel music with jazz. Gospel elements are particularly prominent on one of his biggest hits, "The Preacher", which Lion thought corny, but which Silver persuaded him to record.
While Silver's compositions at this time featured surprising tempo shifts and a range of melodic ideas, they caught the attention of a wide audience. His own piano playing easily shifted from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic within just a few bars. At the same time, his sharp use of repetition was funky even before that word could be used in polite company. Along with Silver's own work, his bands often featured such rising jazz stars as saxophonists Junior Cook and Hank Mobley, trumpeter Blue Mitchell, and drummer Louis Hayes. Silver's key albums from this period include Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1955), 6 Pieces of Silver (1956) and Blowin' the Blues Away (1959), which includes his famous "Sister Sadie". He also combined jazz with a sassy take on pop through the hit "Filthy McNasty" (1961).
In 1963 Silver created a new group featuring Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone and Carmell Jones on trumpet; this quintet recorded most of Silver's best-known album Song for My Father. When Jones left to settle in Europe, the trumpet chair was filled by a young Woody Shaw and Tyrone Washington replaced Henderson.
As social and cultural upheavals shook the nation during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Silver responded to these changes through music. He commented directly on the new scene through a trio of records much later collected together under the title The United States of Mind (1970–72) that featured the spirited vocals of Andy Bey. The composer got deeper into cosmic philosophy as his group, Silver 'N Strings, recorded Silver 'N Strings Play The Music of the Spheres (1979).
Later years
After Silver's long tenure with Blue Note ended, he continued to create vital music. The 1985 album Continuity of Spirit (Silveto) features his unique orchestral collaborations. In the 1990s, he directly answered the urban popular music that had been largely built from his influence on It's Got To Be Funky (Columbia, 1993). Living surrounded by a devoted family in California, Silver received much of the recognition due a venerable jazz icon. In 2005, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) gave him its President's Merit Award. The SFJAZZ Collective focused on Silver's music for their 2010 season.
Silver died of natural causes in New Rochelle, New York, on June 18, 2014. He was 85.
Influences and legacy
Silver tended not to play up that he was proficient in Portuguese, nor draw directly on his rich Lusophone musical upbringing. His 1965 hit, "Cape Verdean Blues", is the only clear rhythmic reference to his childhood home where his father and friends jammed, with traditional Capeverdeanmorna and coladeira as the main fare. In the interview for the liner notes to 1964's Song for My Father (Cantiga Para Meu Pai), however, Silver remarked of the title track, "This tune is an original of mine, but it has a flavor of it that makes me think of my childhood days. Some of the family, including my father and my uncle, used to have musical parties with three or four stringed instruments; my father played violin and guitar. Those were happy, informal sessions." Silver melded additional Lusophone influences into his music directly after his February 1964 tour of Brazil. Referring to "Song for My Father", Silver said, "I was very much impressed by the authentic bossa nova beat. Not just the monotonous tick-tick-tick, tick-tick, the way it's usually done, but the real bossa nova feeling, which I've tried to incorporate into this number."
His early influences included the styles of boogie-woogie and the blues. It includes but is not limited to Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Nat "King" Cole, and Thelonious Monk. He liked to quote other musicians within his own work and would often recreate famous solos in his original pieces as something of a tribute to the greats who influenced him.
Silver's compositions, catchy and very strong harmonically, gained popularity while his band gradually switched to funk and soul. This change of style was not readily accepted by many long-time fans. The quality of several albums of this era, such as the The United States of Mind sequence (on which Silver himself provided vocals on several tracks), is to this day contested by critics. Silver's spirituality displayed on these albums also has a mixed reputation. Silver was the last musician to be signed to Blue Note in the 1970s before it went into temporary hiatus. In 1981 he formed his own short-lived labels, Silveto and Emerald.
Silver's music influenced such pianists as Bobby Timmons, Les McCann, and Ramsey Lewis. Silver's talent didn't go unnoticed among rock musicians who bore jazz influences: Steely Dan sent Silver into the Top 40 in the early 1970s when they crafted their biggest hit single, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", off the bass riff that opens "Song for My Father".
