He was awesome and was actually a dixieland revivalist who got "corrupted" by playing with Cecil Taylor. Many of the white free-jazz musicians were like that-I think Roswell Rudd was pure trad-jazz as well and Haden was a country-musician initially and Burton Greene I think played kletzmer or something, I think they had an easier time to go into free-jazz due to the lack of "rules" than they had playing more post-bop stuff where they might not have been as comfortable; at least not initially...