In 1994 during a visit to London, Derek Ansell talked to ‘one of just a handful of bassists who changed the way the instrument is played’. WHEN Charlie Haden starts to play he wraps his entire frame around his bass, head down, intense, seeming to pull those plump, woody notes from somewhere deep within his instrument. Lately he has had some ear trouble so he mostly plays on a raised part of the stage, behind large perspex-covered shields as he did at the Jazz Café on Easter Saturday. He is meticulous about the sound going out to the audience and asked me what the balance was like when I met him the following morning at his London hotel. It was clear and bright I assured him, with each instrument audible and no overlapping of frequencies. Charlie leads his Quartet West (Ernie Watts on tenor, Alan Broadbent at the piano and veteran drummer Lawrence Marable) through a programme of new compositions and old standards in a musical style designed to pay homage to nineteen-forties and fifties
Jamo Spingal