74 Quotes by Charlie Haden

I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.

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.

Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.

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

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.

When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.

The whole underlying theme for the new music... is to communicate honest, human values, and in doing that to try to improve the quality of life.

Before music there was silence and the duet format allows you to build from the silence in a very special way.

In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness.