Alan Haig was a jazz pianist, best known as one of the pioneers of bebop.
Haig was born in Newark, New Jersey. He started playing with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and then performed and recorded under Gillespie. Later, as a member of Eddie Davis and His Beboppers they featured another friend of my father's, Fats Navarro. Haig went back with Parker from 1948 to 1950, and then Stan Getz from 1949 to 1951. He was part of the celebrated first session of Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool album. Although Haig became known for his distinctive and pioneering bebop style, he in fact spent much of his career playing in non-jazz contexts. His work was the subject of a revival in the 1970s.
In 1969 Haig was acquitted of a murder charge. He had been accused of strangling his third wife, Bonnie, at their home in Clifton, New Jersey in October 1968. He had said in evidence that his wife had been drunk, and had died in a fall, down a flight of stairs. Grange Rutan, Haig's second wife, challenged Haig's account in her book, Death of a Bebop Wife. Rutan's book (in which I wrote a chapter) is partly autobiographical, partly based on interviews with friends and family members. She describes Bonnie's story in detail, describing an underside to Haig that included a history of serial domestic abuse. Rutan notes that several family members sounded alarm bells regarding Haig's violent personality that went unheeded. Importantly, she quotes bassist Hal Gaylor, who was talking with Haig before a performance at the Edison Hotel lounge in the early seventies, when Haig admitted to him he had caused Bonnie's death.
I became very friendly with Grange over the phone. We talked about jazz, musicians, what it was like being married to a musician, what it was like being a child of a musician and many other related subjects. Over a period of about a year we probably talked at least once every two weeks on average but in some weeks we would talk two or three times for many hours. The funny thing was I never thought she was going to write the book. I always thought it was a kind of a fantasy. But she did and I contributed in some small degree.
My dad, who played saxophone back in the 30s, 40s. 50s, and 60s with such bands as Mugsy Spanier, both Dorsey’s, Harry James, Paul Whiteman and a whole host of other big band greats, met Al Haig in 1948. It was in the middle fifties that my dad introduced me to Al Haig.
I liked the man precisely because he was strange. And while my father said he was moody and had at times told people off when they would just look at him cross-eyed, I think he liked me because I was born cross-eyed and the surgery that was supposed correct the problem didn't accomplish what it was supposed to achieve.
He played a couple of summers with my dad in Southampton at the Scotch Mist Inn and during the day, since all the musicians lived at the same rooming house, Mabel Edwards', on Hill Street, Al would drive me up to Coopers Beach and I'd hang out with him or sometimes he would want to be alone or sometimes he would sit with me and my friends.
It was during these two summers that Al and I started to play some serious chess. I was just a teenager but I loved the game. He told me he played it a lot and I believed him as he was much better than me. He was wonderfully patient and would teach me moves and strategies as well as basic openings and defenses.
I'd say we were friends even though he was much older than me. He was most certainly different and I saw that as being good, and enviable. It was intriguing and when I heard some things about him I was both angry and sad that folks wouldn't talk to him directly and ask if the stories were true. I learned later, however, that some of them were true.
After the summer was over I lost touch with Al Haig but then in the seventies I learned he was playing with Major Holly, the talking bass player, at Bradley’s, in the Village. I went to see him a number of times.
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