Don Cherry (trumpeter)
Don Cherry | |
---|---|
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.
Cherry released his debut album as bandleader,
Early life
Cherry was born in
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
In the 1970s he ventured into the developing genre of
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
Other playing opportunities in his career came with
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
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."
Discography
As leader or co-leader
Recording date | Release date | Album | Label | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
1960 | 1966 | The Avant-Garde | Atlantic | With John Coltrane |
1965 | 1966 | Togetherness | Durium | Also released as Gato Barbieri & Don Cherry |
1965 | 2020 | Cherry Jam | Gearbox | EP |
1965 | 1966 | Complete Communion | Blue Note | |
1966 | 2007 | Live at Cafe Montmartre 1966 Volume 1 | ESP-Disk | |
1966 | 2008 | Live at Cafe Montmartre 1966 Volume 2 | ESP-Disk | |
1966 | 2009 | Live at Cafe Montmartre 1966 Volume 3 | ESP-Disk | |
1966 | 1967 | Symphony for Improvisers | Blue Note | |
1966 | 1969 | Where Is Brooklyn? | Blue Note | |
1968 | 2021 | The Summer House Sessions | Blank Forms | |
1968/1971 | 2013 | Live In Stockholm | Caprice | |
1968 | 1969 | Eternal Rhythm | MPS | |
1969 | 1969 | Mu First Part | BYG Records | With Ed Blackwell |
1969 | 1970 | Mu Second Part | BYG Records | With Ed Blackwell |
1969 | 1978 | Live Ankara | Sonet | |
1969-1970 | 1970 | Human Music | Flying Dutchman | With Jon Appleton |
1971 | 1971 | Actions | Philips | With Krzysztof Penderecki |
1971 | 1974 | Orient | BYG Records | |
1971 | 1974 | Blue Lake | BYG Records | |
1972 | 1972 | Organic Music Society | Caprice | |
1972 | 2019 | Universal Silence | Lepo Glasbo | With Carlos Ward and Dollar Brand |
1972 | 2021 | Organic Music Theatre Festival De Jazz De Chateauvallon 1972 | Blank Forms | With Naná Vasconcelos |
1973 | 1973 | Relativity Suite | JCOA | With the Jazz Composer's Orchestra |
1973 | 1974 | Eternal Now | Sonet | |
1975 | 1975 | Brown Rice | Horizon | Also released as Don Cherry |
1976 | 1977 | Hear & Now | Atlantic | |
1976 | 2020 | Om Shanti Om | Black Sweat | |
1977 | 2014 | Modern Art | Mellotronen | |
1982 | 1982 | El Corazón | ECM | With Ed Blackwell |
1985 | 1985 | Home Boy (Sister Out) | Barclay
|
|
1986 | 2002 | Nu: Live at the Bracknell Jazz Festival, 1986 | Barclay | |
1987 | 2021 | Nu: Live in Glasgow | Mark Helias self-released | |
1988 | 1989 | Art Deco | A&M | |
1988-1990 | 1990 | Multikulti | A&M | |
1993 | 1994 | Dona Nostra | ECM |
With 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
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 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
- Strata-East, 1973)
With Allen Ginsberg
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
- 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
- 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
- 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)
- Soul Note, 1984)
- Jai Uttal – Footprints (1990)
- Ed Blackwell Project – What It Be Like? Ed Blackwell Project Vol. 2 (1992) (one track)
References
- ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
- New York Review of Books. LXVI (10): 30–32.
- ^ Kelsey, Chris. "Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
- ISBN 0826418155. Retrieved March 12, 2019.
- ^ a b Olsher, Dean (1995-10-20). "The Jazz World Remembers Trumpeter Don Cherry". All Things Considered. NPR. Archived from the original on 2013-11-05. Retrieved 2012-09-28 – via HighBeam Research.
- ^ a b Feather, Leonard; Gitler, Ira (1999). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford: Oxford UP. p. 124. Archived from the original on 2018-07-16.
- ^ ISSN 0162-6973.
- ISBN 0-681-03179-4
- ^ a b c Voce, Steve (1995-10-21). "Obituary: Don Cherry". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2013-11-05. Retrieved 2012-09-28 – via HighBeam Research.
- ^ Crouch, Stanley (1976). "Biography". Brown Rice (Media notes). Don Cherry. Los Angeles: A&M. 397 001-2.
- ^ ISBN 0-306-80556-1.
- ^ ISBN 0-306-80377-1.
- ^ "Discography – Henry Grimes". Henrygrimes.com. Retrieved 2016-08-19.
- ^ a b Jurek, Thom (2017). "The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience - Allen Ginsberg". AllMusic. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- AllMusic
- ^ "Stolen Moments: Red Hot & Cool: Various Artists: Music". Amazon. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
- ^ "Don Cherry". okjazz.org. 2019. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
- ^ a b Johnson, Martin (June 18, 2021). "Don And Moki Cherry's Organic Dreams Made Real". NPR. Retrieved June 18, 2021.
- ^ "Oregon music giants Tomas Svoboda, David Ornette Cherry die". Oregon ArtsWatch. November 22, 2022. Retrieved December 21, 2022.
- ^ ISBN 0-87930-308-5
- ^ "Pocket Players". Pocketcornets.com. Retrieved 2016-08-19.
- ^ ISSN 0952-0686.
- ISBN 978-1-4234-3076-6. Retrieved 2012-09-28.