Don Cherry (trumpeter)

Don Cherry
Cherry in Münster, 1987
Background information
Birth name	Donald Eugene Cherry
Born	(1936-11-18)November 18, 1936 Oklahoma City, U.S.
Died	October 19, 1995(1995-10-19) (aged 58) Málaga, Spain
Genres	Free jazz, world fusion, avant-garde jazz
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instrument(s)	Cornet, trumpet, wood flute, tambura, gamelan

Donald Eugene Cherry (November 18, 1936 – October 19, 1995) ^[1] was an American jazz trumpeter. Beginning in the late 1950s, he had a long tenure performing in the bands of saxophonist Ornette Coleman, including on the pioneering free jazz albums The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) and Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960). Cherry also collaborated separately with musicians such as John Coltrane, Charlie Haden, Sun Ra, Ed Blackwell, the New York Contemporary Five, and Albert Ayler.

Contents

• Early life
• Career
• Death and legacy
• Family
• Instruments
• Technique and style
• Discography
• As sideman
• References
• External links

Cherry released his debut album as bandleader, Complete Communion , in 1966. In the 1970s, he became a pioneer in world fusion music, drawing on traditional African, Middle Eastern, and Hindustani music. He was a member of the ECM group Codona, along with percussionist Naná Vasconcelos and sitar and tabla player Collin Walcott. ^[2] AllMusic called Cherry "one of the most influential jazz musicians of the late 20th century." ^[3]

Early life

Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to a mother of Choctaw descent and an African-American father. ^[4] His mother and grandmother played piano and his father played trumpet. ^[5] His father owned Oklahoma City's Cherry Blossom Club, which hosted performances by Charlie Christian and Fletcher Henderson. ^[6] In 1940, Cherry moved with his family to Los Angeles, California. ^[6] He lived in the Watts neighborhood, and his father tended bar at the Plantation Club on Central Avenue, which at the time was the center of a vibrant jazz scene. ^{[7] [8]} Cherry recalled skipping school at Fremont High School in order to play with the swing band at Jefferson High School. ^[7] This resulted in his transfer to Jacob Riis High School, a reform school, ^[7] where he first met drummer Billy Higgins. ^{[9] [10]}

Career

By the early 1950s Cherry was playing with jazz musicians in Los Angeles, sometimes acting as pianist in Art Farmer's group. ^{[11] : 134} 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. ^[7] He also toured with saxophonist James Clay. ^{[12] : 45}

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 what became the predominantly piano-less quartet which recorded for Atlantic Records. During this period, "his lines ... gathered much of their freedom of motion from the free harmonic structures." ^{[12] : 289} 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. ^[13]

After a departure from 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 Tagarp, 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 Tagarp, 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 beat poet Allen Ginsberg's 1970 LP Songs of Innocence and Experience , a musical adaptation of William Blake's poetry collection of the same name. ^[14] He appeared on Coleman's 1971 LP Science Fiction , and from 1976 to 1987 reunited with Coleman alumni Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Blackwell in the band Old And New Dreams, ^[15] recording four albums with them, two for ECM and two for Black Saint, where his "subtlety of rhythmic expansion and contraction" was noted. ^{[12] : 290}

In the 1970s he ventured into the developing genre of world fusion music. Cherry incorporated influences of Middle Eastern, traditional 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. ^[9]

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 Ronald Frangipane and Jodorowsky.

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.

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

Other playing opportunities in his career came with Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill project, and as a sideman on recordings by Lou Reed, Ian Dury, Rip Rig + Panic and Sun Ra.

In 1994, Cherry appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation CD, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool , on a track titled "Apprehension", alongside The Watts Prophets. ^[16] The album, meant to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic in African-American society, was named "Album of the Year" by Time .

Death and legacy

Cherry died on October 19, 1995, at the age of 58 from liver cancer in Málaga, Spain. ^[5]

Cherry was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 2011. ^[17]

Family

He was married to Monika Karlsson (Moki Cherry), a Swedish painter and textile artist, who also occasionally played tamboura drone on his recordings and jams. ^[18] His stepdaughter, Neneh Cherry, ^[18] his step-granddaughters Mabel and Tyson and his sons, David Ornette Cherry, Christian Cherry, and Eagle-Eye Cherry, are also musicians. David Ornette Cherry died from an asthma attack at the age of 64 on November 20, 2022. ^[19]

Instruments

Cherry learned to play various brass instruments in high school. ^{[11] : 134} Throughout his career, he played pocket cornet (though he identified this as a pocket trumpet), trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, and bugle. ^{[20] [21]}

Cherry began his career as a pianist, and would continue playing piano and organ. ^[20]

After returning from a musical and cultural journey through Africa, he often played the donso ngoni, a harp-lute with a gourd body originating from West Africa (see ngoni ). During his international journeys, Cherry also collected a variety of non-Western instruments, which he mastered and often played in performances and on recordings. Among these instruments were berimbau, bamboo flutes and assorted percussion instruments. ^[20]

Technique and style

Cherry's trumpet influences included Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, and Harry Edison. ^[20] Journalist Howard Mandel suggests Henry "Red" Allen as a precedent (given Allen's "blustery rather than Armstrong-brazen brass sound, jauntily unpredictable melodic streams, squeezed-off and/or half-valve effects and repertoire including novelty vocals") ^[22] while Ekkehard Jost cites Wild Bill Davison. ^{[11] : 138}

Some critics have noted shortcomings in Cherry's technique. ^{[9] [11] : 137  [20]} Ron Wynn writes that "[Cherry's] technique isn't always the most efficient; frequently, his rapid-fired solos contain numerous missed or muffed notes. But he's a master at exploring the trumpet and cornet's expressive, voice-like properties; he bends notes and adds slurs and smears, and his twisting solos are tightly constructed and executed regardless of their flaws." ^[20] Jost notes the tendency for writers to focus on Cherry's "technical insecurity", but asserts that "the problem lies elsewhere. Perfect technical control in extremely fast tempos was more or less risk-free as long as the improviser had to deal with standard changes that were familiar to him from years of working with them.... In the music of the Ornette Coleman Quartet—a 'new-found-land' where the laws and habits of functional harmony do not apply—there is no use for patterns that had been worked out on that basis." ^{[11] : 137}

Miles Davis was initially dismissive of Cherry's playing, claiming that "anyone can tell that guy's not a trumpet player—it's just notes that come out, and every note he plays he looks serious about, and people will go for that, especially white people." ^[22] According to Cherry, however, when Davis attended an Ornette Coleman performance at the Five Spot, he was impressed with Cherry's playing and sat in with the group using Cherry's pocket trumpet. ^[22] Later, in a 1964 DownBeat blindfold test, Davis indicated that he liked Cherry's playing. ^[23]

Discography

As leader or co-leader

With Old and New Dreams

• Old and New Dreams (Black Saint, 1976)
• Old and New Dreams (ECM, 1979)
• Playing (ECM, 1980)
• A Tribute to Blackwell (Black Saint, 1987)

With Codona

• Codona (ECM, 1979)
• Codona 2 (ECM, 1981)
• Codona 3 (ECM, 1983)

Related Research Articles

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His pioneering works often abandoned the harmony-based composition, tonality, chord changes, and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms. Instead, Coleman emphasized an experimental approach to improvisation, rooted in ensemble playing and blues phrasing. AllMusic called him "one of the most beloved and polarizing figures in jazz history," noting that while "now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, he was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud."

Charles Edward Haden was an American jazz double bass player, bandleader, composer and educator whose career spanned more than 50 years. Building on the work of predecessors such as Jimmy Blanton and Charles Mingus, Haden helped to revolutionize the harmonic concept of bass playing in jazz, evolving a style that sometimes complemented the soloist, and other times moved independently, liberating bassists from a strictly accompanying role, to allow more direct participation in group improvisation.

Edward Joseph Blackwell was an American jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for his extensive, influential work with Ornette Coleman.

The Shape of Jazz to Come is the third album by jazz musician Ornette Coleman. Released on Atlantic Records in 1959, it was his debut on the label and his first album featuring the working quartet including himself, trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins. The recording session for the album took place on May 22, 1959, at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California. Although Coleman initially wished for the album to be titled Focus on Sanity after the LP's fourth track, Atlantic producer Nesuhi Ertegun suggested the final title, feeling that it would give consumers "an idea about the uniqueness of the LP."

Walter Dewey Redman was an American saxophonist who performed free jazz as a bandleader and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett.

Old and New Dreams was an American jazz group that was active from 1976 to 1987. The group was composed of tenor saxophone player Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden, trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell. All of the members were former sidemen of free jazz progenitor and alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, and the group played a mix of Coleman's compositions and originals by the band members.

This Is Our Music is the fifth album by saxophonist Ornette Coleman, recorded in 1960 and released on Atlantic Records in March 1961. It is the first with drummer Ed Blackwell replacing his predecessor Billy Higgins in the Coleman Quartet, and is the only one of Coleman's Atlantic albums to include a standard, in this case a version of "Embraceable You" by George and Ira Gershwin.

Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation is the sixth album by jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, released on Atlantic Records in September 1961: the fourth of Coleman's six albums for the label. Its title named the then-nascent free jazz movement. The recording session took place on December 21, 1960, at A&R Studios in New York City. The sole outtake from the album session, "First Take," was later released on the 1971 compilation Twins and subsequent CD reissues of Free Jazz.

Carlos Ward is a funk and jazz alto saxophonist and flautist. He is best known as a member of the Funk and disco band BT Express as well as a jazz sideman.

The Avant-Garde is an album credited to jazz musicians John Coltrane and Don Cherry that was released in 1966 by Atlantic Records. It features Coltrane playing several compositions by Ornette Coleman accompanied by the members of Coleman's quartet: Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell. The album was assembled from two unissued recording sessions at Atlantic Studios in New York City in 1960.

The New York Contemporary Five was an avant-garde jazz ensemble active from the summer of 1963 to the spring of 1964. It has been described as "a particularly noteworthy group during its year of existence -- a pioneering avant-garde combo" and "a group which, despite its... short lease on life, has considerable historical significance." Author Bill Shoemaker wrote that the NYCF was "one of the more consequential ensembles of the early 1960s." John Garratt described them as "a meteor that streaked by too fast."

Codona was a free jazz and world fusion group which released three self-titled albums on the ECM label in 1979, 1981 and 1983. The trio consisted of multi-instrumentalists Don Cherry, Collin Walcott, and Nana Vasconcelos. The name of the group was derived from the first two letters of the musicians' first names.

Ornette! is the seventh album by alto saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, released in February 1962 on Atlantic Records. The album features Scott LaFaro in place of Charlie Haden, who had left the Quartet but would work again with Coleman in the future.

Old and New Dreams is the debut album by the jazz quartet Old and New Dreams. The record features trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell and was recorded in 1976 for the Italian Black Saint label. It is not to be confused with their 1979 album of the same name for ECM.

Old and New Dreams is the self-titled second album by jazz quartet Old and New Dreams, recorded in 1979 and released on ECM later that year. The quintet features trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonist Dewey Redman, and rhythms section Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell—their debut, released on Black Saint, was also self titled.

Playing is a live album by American jazz quartet Old and New Dreams recorded at the Cornmarket Theater in Austria and released on ECM the following year. The quartet consists brass section Don Cherry and Dewey Redman and rhythm section Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell.

Codona is an album by American sitarist and tabla player Collin Walcott, American jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Brazilian jazz percussionist Naná Vasconcelos recorded in September 1978 and released on ECM the following year—the first of three self-titled albums by the trio.

Ornette on Tenor is the eighth album by the American jazz composer and saxophonist Ornette Coleman, released in 1962 on Atlantic Records, his sixth and final one for the label. It features Coleman playing tenor saxophone rather than his usual alto, and bassist Jimmy Garrison before he joined the John Coltrane Quartet. This would be the last record by the Coleman Quartet started in the 1950s; he would disband this group and form the Coleman Trio later in the year. Recording sessions took place on March 22 and 27, 1961, at Atlantic Studios in New York City. One outtake from the March 27 session, "Harlem's Manhattan," would appear on the 1970 compilation The Art of the Improvisers.

Beauty Is a Rare Thing: The Complete Atlantic Recordings is a box set by American jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman compiling his master recordings made for Atlantic between 1959 and 1961, released on Rhino Records on November 16, 1993.

Coleman Classics Volume 1 is a live album by pianist Paul Bley, saxophonist Ornette Coleman, trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Charlie Haden recorded in California in 1958 and released Bley's on the Improvising Artists label in 1977. The album is an early live recording of Ornette Coleman, made shortly after his first album, Something Else!!!! and featuring the group that would soon record the Atlantic albums The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) and Change of the Century (1960).

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Don Cherry (jazz) .

• The Slits' memoirs of Don Cherry, 3:AM Magazine
• Discography at eagle-eye-cherry.com
• Discography
• Don Cherry biography (in German and English) and bibliography (in English)