Donald Eugene Cherry (November 18, 1936 – October 19, 1995) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist. 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 (1961). Cherry also collaborated separately with musicians including John Coltrane, Charlie Haden, Sun Ra, Ed Blackwell, the New York Contemporary Five, and Albert Ayler.
Cherry released his debut album as bandleader, Complete Communion, in 1966. In the 1970s, he became a pioneer in world fusion, with his work drawing on African, Middle Eastern, and Hindustani music, as heard on the 1975 release Brown Rice. He was a member of the ECM group Codona, along with percussionist Naná Vasconcelos and sitar and tabla player Collin Walcott. Chris Kelsey of AllMusic called Cherry "one of the most influential jazz musicians of the late 20th century."
Early life
Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to a mother of Choctaw descent and an African-American father. His mother and grandmother played piano and his father played trumpet. His father owned Oklahoma City's Cherry Blossom Club, which hosted performances by jazz musicians Charlie Christian and Fletcher Henderson. In 1940, Cherry moved with his family to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where his father tended bar at the Plantation Club on Central Avenue, at the time the center of a vibrant jazz scene. Cherry recalled skipping school at Fremont High School in order to play with the swing band at Jefferson High School.
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.
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."
thumb|left|Cherry at Park Le Cascine, [[Florence, Italy, September 1975]]
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 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.
Death and legacy
Cherry died of liver cancer in Málaga, Spain, on October 19, 1995, at the age of 58.
Family and personal life
Cherry was married to Monika Karlsson (Moki Cherry), a Swedish painter and textile artist, who also occasionally played tanpura with him. His stepdaughter Neneh Cherry,
Don Cherry practiced Vajrayana Buddhism.
Instruments
Cherry learned to play various brass instruments in high school. (though he identified this as a pocket trumpet), trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, and bugle.
Cherry began his career as a pianist, and continued playing piano and organ as secondary instruments throughout his career. while Ekkehard Jost cites Wild Bill Davison.
Discography
As leader or co-leader
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width:75%"
|-
! style="vertical-align:bottom; text-align:center; width:13%;"|Recording date
! style="vertical-align:bottom; text-align:center; width:12%;"|Release date
! style="vertical-align:bottom; text-align:center; width:35%;"|Album
! style="vertical-align:bottom; text-align:center; width:15%;"|Label
! style="vertical-align:bottom; text-align:center; width:25%;"|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
- 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)
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)