Charlie Haden

An immensely celebrated and forward-thinking bassist, Charlie Haden first emerged in the late '50s as one of free jazz's founding fathers. While he never fully settled into any of jazz's many stylistic niches, he certainly played his share of dissonant music, appearing with saxophonist Ornette Coleman on albums like 1959's landmark The Shape of Jazz to Come, and 1961's This Is Our Music. Similarly, he embraced the avant-garde, as on 1970's Liberation Music Orchestra, and on albums with influential artists like Roswell Rudd, Archie Shepp, and Alice Coltrane, among others. For t...