Broadcast Partner
Like their late father, bassist Charlie Haden, who changed jazz’s trajectory alongside Ornette Coleman beginning in the 1950s, the Haden Triplets belong to the American heartland, and to the winsome family harmony singing of the region’s folk and country music.
The Family Songbook mines their family’s heritage with newly discovered songs by their grandfather, Carl E. Haden, friend to the Carter Family and Porter Wagoner, and patriarch of the singing Haden Family, a fascinating footnote in country-music history. Their uncle Carl Haden Jr. had recovered his father’s sheet music and relics like the songbook Favorites of the Haden Family. Carl released songs and songbooks, as well as ’zine-like collections of family photos and anecdotes, through the radio stations that broadcast the Haden Family, namely KWTO, out of Springfield, Missouri. Charlie Haden joined the family band as a tot in the late ’30s, and became a featured singer—yodelin’ “Cowboy” Charlie—when he was so young his mother had to hold him up to reach the mic.
