Song of the Day
The preciously talented Petra Hayden
I Can See For Miles- Petra Haden Petra Haden's father is jazz bassist Charlie Hayden who played in the classic edition of the Ornette Coleman Quartet, the avant garde jazz group that was the launching pad for the free jazz movement. Charlie Hayden began showing his musical talent at age two according to his family and was singing with his parent's country and western act by age three. Like her father, Petra was a child prodigy.
As a child Petra found out she could do a vocal rendition of any song upon one hearing... and not only that, she could also use her voice to do near perfect imitations of all of the musical instruments in the song. She began studying the violin when she was eight years old, and by her teens she was on her way to becoming a virtuoso. She also mastered the trumpet, mandolin, and various keyboard instruments, making her a true multi-instrumentalist.
It was Petra's voice with it's extraordinary range that most people noticed. In early 2005, Bar/None Records released Haden's
The Who Sell Out, a recording that she worked on intermittently for three years. The album reinterpreted the classic Who album in its entirety, using Haden's a cappella voice as the sole instrument. It's a cult classic. Hayden's voice was overdubbed on as many as 11 different tracks to provide all the vocals and instrumental tracks on the songs.
In order to perform the complex a capella arrangements in a live setting, Ms. Haden wrote a musical score of her idosyncratic vocal parts and assembled a ten woman a capella choir and she sang and directed the choir at performances.
I Can See For Milesis a live performance by Petra and her a capella choir called the Sellouts.
More On Haden Family Talent Glut
The Haden family musical franchise has a bigger glut of talented siblings than the Wainwright family. Neither family sells as many records as the Jonas Brothers but the jury's still out on whether the Jonas Brothers have any musical talent.
In 2008 Charlie Haden recorded
Rambling Boy an well received album of Americana folkways classics with three of his daughters and his son.
As a result of performing on
Rambling Boy, Petra and her talented sisters Rachel and Tanya formed a rootsy Americana group called the Hayden Triplets. Below is the Haden Triplets performance of the Carter Family classic
Single Girl, Married Girl.
For those of you unfamilar with Charlie Haden's work with the Ornette Coleman Quartet, I've posted a video a 1987 perfomance of the Ornette Coleman Quartet in Europe.
Members are of the Ornette Coleman Quartet are Coleman on alto sax, the late Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Charlie Haden on upright double bass and Ed Blackwell on drums. Like Haden, Don Cherry sired musically talented siblings and was the father of R&B/Pop artists Neneh Cherry and Eagle Eye Cherry.
Be forewarned that the Ornette Coleman's music doesn't adhere to a fixed harmonic structure and the entire band improvises at will without observing any rules about fixed metres, musical keys, tempos, instrumental roles, harmonics, stuctures of rythym. Free jazz abandons the idea of musical composition altogether. The timbre of Coleman's alto sax draws heavily from traditional blues. The title of the piece is
4 Tet.