Terry and I on our way back, driving, from L.A., heard something about Charlie Haden passing.

I met Charlie briefly, backstage in New York, at the Blue Note club. I had to look it up to realize it was ten years ago, 2004. It was a Bill Frisell duo concert, and on account of having produced two Frisell shows here in Palo Alto, I felt comfortable (comfortable enough) going backstage to say hey.

I told my weird anecdote about meeting his daughter (the one who married the movie star).

It was kind of a rarity for Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden to do those duo shows.

A short time later Bill cut and album with Charlie’s daughter Petra Haden (not the one I tell stories about).

Also, it turns out that in 2005 on a Liberation Movement Orchestra set, they recorded a Frisell tune called “Throughout”. It appears on a 1991 live album of Bill’s, featuring his first quartet of Joey Baron, Kermit Driscoll.

Terry and I caught Bill Frisell in Napa on our way to (!) LA, but the news about Charlie Haden trumps writing more directly about the Frisell show.

To fess up: I’m kind of a faker and poseur regarding jazz and heard about Charlie Haden because an indie rock dude named Roger Anderson (of Vapor Trail – but we met because he had an Archers of Loaf sticker on his guitar case) told me to check out Josh Haden’s Spain at DuNord and from that I pieced together the legendary Haden music legacy, only since about 1995.

But from 1995 to hearing over the radio, driving over the Grapevine in 90 degree heat yesterday that Haden had left the terrestrial domain I have held him in high regards.

The 2005 set I reference is called “Not in Our Name” and I will take it to heart and keep being (my version of) courageous in terms of my own utterances on those types of things.