Don Cherry (trumpeter)

Donald Eugene Cherry (November 18, 1936 – October 19, 1995) was an American jazz trumpeter.

In 1940, Cherry moved with his family to Los Angeles, California.

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.

Cherry recalled skipping school at Fremont High School in order to play with the swing band at Jefferson High School.

This resulted in his transfer to Jacob Riis High School, a reform school, where he first met drummer Billy Higgins.

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.

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 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."

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.

In the late 1960s he settled in Tagarp, Sweden with his wife, Swedish designer and textile artist Moki Cherry.

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 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.

Cherry released his debut album as bandleader, Complete Communion, in 1966.

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.

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.

AllMusic called Cherry "one of the most influential jazz musicians of the late 20th century."

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 Charlie Christian and Fletcher Henderson.

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.

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.

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, recording four albums with them, two for ECM and two for Black Saint, where his "subtlety of rhythmic expansion and contraction" was noted.

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.

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.

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.