Charlie Haden

“It used to be that creative music was most of the music that you heard back in the '30s and '40s, and now it's like 3 percent. So, its kind of a struggle getttin' it out there.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“I want to expand jazz; I don't want to keep the audience limited. I want to reach people who have never come to a jazz concert before. One way to do that is by making records that have a lot of different kinds of music on them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I grew up around guitar players.”

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

“I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'”

“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.”

“I'm always searching. It's the reason I'm here. It's not really about music: it's about searching for meaning.”

“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.”

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