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On Jasmine, his duo record with Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden plays “Body and Soul.” Here’s what he plays for the first four bars: four whole notes.
Four. One per bar, held all the way down. And it’s one of the most beautiful things on the record.
We bass players talk a lot about the two-feel. This isn’t even a two-feel. It’s more like a one-feel. He’s literally just playing whole notes, and the stuff he plays on this record is mind-blowing.
Four whole notes behind Keith Jarrett
Think about the spot he was in. It’s just the two of them, and Keith Jarrett is arguably the greatest musician ever, in my opinion at least. If you got the chance to play with him, you’d probably be so excited that you’d overplay.
Haden went the other way. I don’t even want to call it underplaying, because what he plays is absolutely perfect. But it’s phenomenal how little he plays.
A lot of that comes from country music. If you’ve ever listened to real country music, the bass player’s playing whole notes, or a subtle embellishment on each root and nothing else. Haden brought that into a duo with one of the great jazz pianists, and Jarrett was really in touch with that kind of music too. That’s what separates this from, say, a Red Garland and Paul Chambers duo, which is also amazing. These two were in touch with all different kinds of music, and they brought it to this record.
What most of us would play in those four bars
Now picture what most of us do in that same spot. We reach for the hip chromatic thing, cram in a little run, try to sound like we know something. And it comes out sounding like exactly that. Like we’re trying.
Haden wasn’t trying. He let each note ring and gave it weight.
The notes were the easy part. Any of us can play a whole note. If I play four whole notes on “Body and Soul” with no phrasing, that’s boring. Phrase them the way Haden phrased everything, melodies and bass lines alike, and it’s kind of beautiful. In the right context, it can be magical.
The part no scale book can hand you
Theory can give you the notes. It can’t tell you to pick that one, hold it for a whole bar and leave everything else out.
You only get that by looking at what the greats actually chose, up close, and hearing the thinking underneath it. Haden’s a good place to start. I go through more of his choices, like the repeated notes on “Nothing Personal,” and how I got my own sound from imitating him, in Charlie Haden bass lines and how to get his sound. And on “One Finger Snap,” he plays four bars of textbook walking to prove he knows the rules, then goes off into his own thing.
Next time you’ve got a ballad and a little room, try it his way. One note a bar. Let it ring the whole bar, and phrase it the way you’d phrase a melody.
Go deeper
Charlie Haden: Three Bass Lines
Three Charlie Haden lines that break the rules and sound like there’s nothing hipper.
