A friend remembers Charlie Haden

Some regular Independent Ear readers may recall our piece on the exceptional Washington History volume released by the Historical Society of Washington, DC last spring titled “Jazz in Washington.” That project was a labor of love for author Blair Ruble and his co-editor/publisher, Georgetown University Professor, author and cultural warrior Maurice Jackson. Prof. Jackson is a longtime friend and colleague from DC jazz circles and beyond, including our membership in a thoroughly unique DC-area jazz enthusiast/jazz scholars collective known as The Listening Group. Maurice has often talked about his warm and abiding friendship with the NEA Jazz Master Charlie Haden, who recently ascended to ancestry. Ruth Cameron, Charlie’s widow, invited Maurice to speak at Charlie’s private memorial service, where the good Professor delivered the following lovely remembrance of one of the most unique artists this music has ever known. I had to chuckle at a few of the references, fondly recalling Charlie’s telephone calls to our house where even if it was my wife answering the standard greeting was something along the lines of “Hey man, its Charlie.” Maurice has graciously consented to our publishing the remarks he delivered at Charlie Haden’s July 10 memorial service in Los Angeles.

Professor Maurice Jackson

Remembrances of Charlie Haden
By Maurice Jackson
July 20, 2014

I first met Charlie Haden in the late 1970s. He was playing at the One Step Down on Pennsylvania Ave. with the pianist and arranger Joanne Brackeen. Later he had duets there with the noted DC pianist Reuben Brown. The One Step was a cozy spot with booths and a long bar where I sat. After the gig we struck up a talk — not about music but about radical politics —and we kept talking, most often on his frequent calls to me (except when he was on the road), for over 35 years.

By the time I met him he had already gained an international reputation as a member of the legendary Ornette Coleman Quartet. And I had every record that I could find by Coleman’s group and had Charlie’s first recording with his Liberation Music Orchestra. I was just a young activist. We spoke that first night about the songs of the Spanish Civil War and the men and women who fought to defend the Spanish Republic in the 1930s that he recorded. He had interspersed some of their songs including “Los Cuatro Generales” the “Four Generals.” He became excited when I told him that once at a rally in Moscow I saw Delores Ibarruri—the famed “La Pasonaria” of the Spanish resistance. Like Ben Webster or Lester Young on the tenor sax her voice was so powerful that she seldom needed a microphone and she could belt out a speech so resonant that one could hear her in whispers on the front row or loudly in the rear, of a rally, with the same intonations.

Charlie was a man of the world who cared deeply about the world — and its environment and peoples. Too often people, especially artists, like Charlie or scholars like me — know very little of the plight of everyday human beings. Many, as the late historian and social activist, W.E.B. Du Bois once said know a lot about humanity but know little of men (and women). Charlie was different and I try to be.

Whenever he would call and even if my wife or children answered the phone they would always be greeted with the same refrain “Hey man, Its Charlie.” Over the years the topics changed. When the hearings on Clarence Thomas and his suitability for the Supreme Court were held — Charlie was glued to the proceedings. He wondered how a man who had been so convincingly portrayed by Anita Hill as a sexual harasser could be nominated for the land’s highest Court. Charlie felt the discrimination suffered by women, especially African American women. He had a deep appreciation of their role in history and in music. He loved playing with DC’s own Shirley Horn, and with the Howard University trained pianist Geri Allen who joins us today [at Charlie’s services]. He was close to and recorded with Abbey Lincoln and with Alice Coltrane the widow of John Coltrane, and a grand musician in her own right. He had a special relationship with their son saxophonist Ravi Coltrane who he also taught at Cal Arts, where he founded the jazz program.

Over the years when any big political event occurred he would call. Because of his disdain of US policies in Latin America especially during the Iran-Contra hearings he recorded another album with the Liberation Music Orchestra, “Not in Our Name.” He also recorded partly at my own suggestion the Chilean resistance song “The People United Will Never be Defeated” and the anthem of the African National Congress, of South Africa “Nkosi SikeleL’I Afrika.”

Charlie helped me understand the role of jazz in changing society and I regularly teach a course “Jazz and Human Rights” at Georgetown University about the social origins and the effect of the music on society. He and Hank Jones recorded “Spirituals, Folksongs and Hymns,” (1995) and “Come Sunday.” (2012) I was honored when he asked me to write the liner notes for both CD’s. He performed these songs twice at Georgetown, in 1995 with Mr. Jones and in 2009 with NEA Jazz master Kenny Barron and I accompanied he and Hank when they preformed them at Duke University in 2007. It was always a pleasure being with Hank and Charlie both NEA jazz masters and Downbeat Hall of Fame inductees. They were both teetotalers and would tell the corniest jokes, and we all fell out laughing with them.

I wrote a letter to the National Endowment for the Arts to nominate Charlie for the NEA Jazz Master’s honor. He did not receive it the first time. He asked me not to bother with submitting a letter the next year. I ignored him and the next year he was inducted at a grand ceremony at the Lincoln Center chaired by its musical director, Wynton Marsalis. Charlie was ill and could not attend so his daughter Petra, the singer and violinist, read a message from him. The noted NY Daily News columnist and Charlie Parker biographer Stanley Crouch said introductory words for Charlie. Some time later I got a message from an old friend in NYC who sent me an article, in the NY Daily News, by Mr. Crouch in praise of Anthony Benezet, the French born Huguenot turned Quaker (1713-1784) who had fled France, gone to Philadelphia and became an international leader against slavery and the slave trade and founder of a school to educate Blacks. I had written a book Let this Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet Father of Atlantic Abolitionism about Benezet and Charlie quietly made sure that Mr. Crouch got a copy. Charlie, for me, was made of the same cloth as the antiracist Quaker, Benezet. In the parlance of Black people, like me, who have witnessed so much inequality, poverty, hatred and bigotry and have seen too few whites willing to fight for justice “they were 2 good white men.”