Charlie Haden Tribute Brings the Rambling Boy Home

This year’s Healdsburg Jazz Festival came to a bittersweet close on Sunday night with “An Intimate Evening with Charlie Haden” at the . Sweet was the music that Haden has brought to jazz over the past 40-plus years, innovative and harmonically pure; bitter because the Jazz Festival is over, another 10 days in June filed away under memories.

An “intimate evening” may seem an inevitably anticlimactic conclusion to a 10-day jazz festival, but Charlie Haden is as important a musician as any who have come to town. The consummate jazz bassist, Haden’s recording career dates to 1959, when with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Billy Higgins the quartet essentially founded the music known as “free jazz.”

Haden, 73, has played twice before at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, and his association with goes back decades. “I remember playing with Joe Henderson in her living room in Oakland, which tells you how long ago that was,” he said.

The evening began with a feature-length documentary on Haden’s life by Reto Carduff, “Rambling Boy.”  The film starts with Haden’s recent recordings in the country music field, with his family and friends including his son Josh Haden and his triplet daughters Petra, Rachel and Tanya Haden on the album “Rambling Boy” (2008). It may seem an odd choice, but it actually brought his career full circle: the celebrated jazz bassist began his musical life in his father Carl Haden’s family country band, the Haden Family, at just 22 months.

How Haden got from yodeling to playing avant-garde jazz with Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett, John Coltrane and others forms the bulk of the film, and helps round out the portrait of a musician who has been a frequent headliner at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival and other festivals around the world.

Along the way Haden became very politically outspoken, forming the Liberation Jazz Orchestra on several occasions to comment on the political right turns taken by American presidents, and speaking out against colonialism (and being jailed for it) in Portugal.

After the film an audience question period gave Haden a chance to, as one audience member put it, “wear his heart on his sleeve.” He related several incidents from his life that were more personal than biographical, both about his discovery of jazz and psychological revelations. “You have to find your own insignificance and unimportance,” he concluded one anecdote, “before you can find your significance and importance in the world.”

After a brief break Haden and his long-time recording partner Alan Broadbent, began playing. Their musical dialog was quiet yet rich, seducing the audience into rapt if not worshipful attention. 

When it was all over, the regulars of this year’s festival gathered in the lobby and compared notes on this year's festival, and festival's past, as if unwilling to see it all end.

“I think people will be looking at the 13th annual as a new [benchmark],” said Elizabeth Candelario, a current board member and long-time supporter of the Jazz Festival.

“We’ve gone to a lot more concerts this year than ever before,” said Barbara Bozman-Moss of Healdsburg. “It’s really been an educational experience.”

Among the favorite performances several people returned to were Noam Lemish’s set on , Arturo Sandoval’s explosive trumpet solos at , the at the Raven with Marc Cary and Babtunde Lea, even the “after hours” sessions at the on Friday and Saturday night. Everybody seemed to have their favorites in what has turned out to be the most ambitious yet successful Healdsburg Jazz Festival in recent years.

“I think people are finally starting to get it,” said Candelario. “People in Healdsburg are seeing what an important role the festival has to play in this town, that it really is a big part of what makes Healdsburg special.”