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Don Cherry — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Career

By the early 1950s Cherry was playing with jazz musicians in Los Angeles, sometimes acting as pianist in Art Farmer's group. While trumpeter Clifford Brown was in Los Angeles with Max Roach, Cherry attended a jam session with Brown and Larance Marable at Eric Dolphy's house, and Brown informally mentored Cherry. He also toured with saxophonist James Clay.

Cherry became well known in 1958 when he performed and recorded with Ornette Coleman, first in a quintet with pianist Paul Bley and later in the quartet which recorded for Atlantic Records. During this period, "his lines ... gathered much of their freedom of motion from the free harmonic structures." Cherry co-led The Avant-Garde session which saw John Coltrane replacing Coleman in the quartet, recorded and toured with Sonny Rollins, was a member of the New York Contemporary Five with Archie Shepp and John Tchicai, and recorded and toured with both Albert Ayler and George Russell. His first recording as a leader was Complete Communion for Blue Note Records in 1965. The band included Coleman's drummer Ed Blackwell as well as saxophonist Gato Barbieri, whom he had met while touring Europe with Ayler, and bassist Henry Grimes.

After leaving Coleman's quartet, Cherry often played in small groups and duets, many with ex-Coleman drummer Ed Blackwell, during a long sojourn in Scandinavia and other locations. He traveled through Europe, India, Morocco, South Africa, and elsewhere to explore and play with a variety of musicians. In the late 1960s he settled in Tågarp, Sweden with his wife, Swedish designer and textile artist Moki Cherry. In 1968, Don Cherry taught music classes with guest lecturers, performance collaborators, and workshop leaders from around the world at Arbetarnas bildningsförbund (ABF) House, a Swedish labor movement-run education center. For ten years, Don and Moki Cherry lived and worked collaboratively in an abandoned schoolhouse in Tågarp, holding classes and performances, hosting guests and collaborators, and exploring their concept of Organic Music Society.

In 1969, Cherry played trumpet and other instruments for poet Allen Ginsberg's 1970 LP Songs of Innocence and Experience, a musical adaptation of William Blake's poetry collection of the same name. He appeared on Coleman's 1971 LP Science Fiction, and from 1976 to 1987 reunited with Blackwell and fellow Coleman alumni Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden as Old and New Dreams. Old and New Dreams recorded four albums (two for ECM and two for Black Saint) where Cherry's "subtlety of rhythmic expansion and contraction" was noted.

In the 1970s, Cherry ventured into the developing genre of world fusion music. Cherry incorporated influences of Middle Eastern, African, and Indian music into his playing. He studied Indian music with Vasant Rai in the early seventies. From 1978 to 1982, he recorded three albums for ECM with "world jazz" group Codona, consisting of Cherry, percussionist Naná Vasconcelos and sitar and tabla player Collin Walcott.

Cherry also collaborated with classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki on the 1971 album Actions. In 1973, he co-composed the score for Alejandro Jodorowsky's film The Holy Mountain, together with Jodorowsky and Ronald Frangipane.

At the end of the 1970s, the trio Organic Music Theater (with Gian Piero Pramaggiore and Naná Vasconcelos) had an intense live activity in Italy and France.

In 1982, Cherry released the duet album El Corazon with Ed Blackwell. He also released two albums as a bandleader in the 1980s: Home Boy (Sister Out) in 1985 and Art Deco in 1988. He recorded again with the original Ornette Coleman Quartet on the first disc of Coleman's 1987 album In All Languages.

Other playing opportunities in his career came with Carla Bley's 1971 opera Escalator over the Hill and as a sideman on recordings by Lou Reed, Ian Dury, Rip Rig + Panic, and Sun Ra. Cherry played with Ian Dury and the Blockheads on their 1980 tour, including the final gig on Christmas Eve, which was broadcast live by the BBC, from the Dominion Theatre in London, on The Old Grey Whistle Test. He also toured UK and Europe with the band in 1981.

In 1992, Don Cherry was invited by renowned Indian violinist L. Shankar to perform in Mumbai, India. This interaction was captured in a documentary film titled "Rhythms of the World: Bombay and all the Jazz". In 1994, Cherry appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool, on a track titled "Apprehension", alongside the Watts Prophets. This album, meant to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic among African-Americans, was named "Album of the Year" by Time.

As sideman

With Ornette Coleman

Something Else!!!! (Contemporary, 1958)

Tomorrow Is the Question! (Contemporary, 1959)

The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959)

Change of the Century (Atlantic, 1960)

Twins (Atlantic, 1959–60 [1971])

The Art of the Improvisers (Atlantic, 1959–61 [1970])

To Whom Who Keeps a Record (Atlantic, 1959–60 [1975])

This is our Music (Atlantic, 1960)

Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1960)

Ornette! (Atlantic, 1961)

Ornette on Tenor (Atlantic, 1961)

Crisis (Impulse!, 1969)

Science Fiction (Columbia, 1971)

Broken Shadows (Columbia, 1971 [1982])

The Complete Science Fiction Sessions (Columbia, 1971–1972 [2000])

In All Languages (Caravan of Dreams, 1987)

With the New York Contemporary Five

Consequences (Fontana, 1963)

New York Contemporary Five Vol. 1 (Sonet, 1963)

New York Contemporary Five Vol. 2 (Sonet, 1963)

Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary Five (Savoy, 1964)

With Albert Ayler

Ghosts (Debut, 1964)

The Hilversum Session (Osmosis, 1964)

New York Eye and Ear Control (ESP, 1965)

The Copenhagen Tapes (Ayler, 2002)

With Ed Blackwell

Shades of Edward Blackwell (recorded 1968; Mosaic, 2014, The Complete Clifford Jordan Strata-East Sessions)

What It Be Like? Ed Blackwell Project Vol. 2 (Enja, 1992) (one track)

With Carla Bley

Escalator over the Hill (JCOA, 1971)

With Paul Bley

Live at the Hilcrest Club 1958 (Inner City, 1958 [1976])

Coleman Classics Volume 1 (Improvising Artists, 1958 [1977])

With Bongwater

Double Bummer (Shimmy-Disc [1988])

With Charles Brackeen

Rhythm X (Strata-East, 1973)

With Allen Ginsberg

Songs of Innocence and Experience (MGM, 1970)

With Charlie Haden

Liberation Music Orchestra (Impulse!, 1969)

The Golden Number (1976) (one track)

The Ballad of the Fallen (ECM, 1986)

The Montreal Tapes: with Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell (Verve, 1989 [1994])

With Abdullah Ibrahim

The Journey (Chiaroscuro, 1977)

With Clifford Jordan

In the World (Strata-East, 1969 [1972])

With Steve Lacy

Evidence (New Jazz, 1962)

With Michael Mantler

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (ECM, 1968)

No Answer (WATT/ECM 1973)

With Sunny Murray

Sonny's Time Now (Jihad, 1965)

With Jim Pepper

Comin' and Goin' (Europa, 1983)

With Sonny Rollins

Our Man in Jazz (RCA Victor, 1962)

With George Russell

George Russell Sextet at Beethoven Hall (MPS, 1965)

With Sun Ra

Hiroshima (1983)

Stars That Shine Darkly (1983)

Purple Night (A&M, 1990)

Somewhere Else (Rounder, 1993)

With Lou Reed

The Bells (Arista, 1979)

With Charlie Rouse

Epistrophy (Landmark, 1989)

With others

Wilbur Ware – Super Bass (Wilbur Ware Institute, recorded 1968, released 2012)

Albert Heath and James Mtume along with Herbie Hancock and Ed Blackwell – Kawaida (1969)

Alejandro Jodorowsky - The Holy Mountain Soundtrack (1973)

Terry Riley – Terry Riley and Don Cherry Duo (B.Free, 1975)

Steve Hillage – L (1976)

Collin Walcott – Grazing Dreams (ECM, 1977)

Latif Khan – Music/Sangam (1978)

Johnny Dyani – Song for Biko (1978)

Masahiko Togashi - Session In Paris, Vol. 1 "Song Of Soil" (Take One/King, 1979)

Bengt Berger – Bitter Funeral Beer (ECM, 1981)

Rip Rig + Panic – I Am Cold (1982)

Bengt Berger Bitter Funeral Beer Band – Live in Frankfurt (1982)

Billy Bang – Untitled Gift (Anima, 1982)

Dag Vag – Almanacka (1983)

Frank Lowe – Decision in Paradise (Soul Note, 1984)

Jai Uttal – Footprints (1990)