Don Cherry - s/d

Currently on a bit of Steve Lacy kick and the other day I was listening to 'Evidence' (1961) [Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Carl Brown, Billy Higgins] - a selection of Monk and Duke tunes - reading around I didn't realise they were tight and it was Don that really introduced Lacy to a more improv/free way of playing:

Cherry's arrival in New York with Ornette in 1959 bowled [Steve Lacy] over.

"To me, he was the vanguard of the vanguard - the freest edge of the free thing they had going then. We got to be fast friends and sort of brothers, and we spent a lot of time playing together in my house in New York.

"He'd say 'Well - let's play', and I'd say 'OK - what do you want to play?' - and he'd say, 'No, let's just play'. This was revolutionary to me at the time because I was into Monk tunes, and thought you had to have a tune, a structure and chord changes, the whole thing. He didn't have any problem that way. He'd just play, and when he played it was really alive.

"This started me thinking a lot, and it took me over five years before I reached that point myself, and a lot of hard work and struggle to break the shackles. His way of going into the beyond and just taking off - to not worry about where you were coming from, but just to go - I wanted to be able to do that myself. It had something to do with my own concepts of life and death and music."

I can only see a couple more recordings with the two of them together - the recently released 'New York Total Music Co Frankfurt 1968' [Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Kent Carter, Karl Berger, Jacques Thollot] and Masahiko Togashi's 'Bura Bura' (1986) [Masahiko Togashi, Dave Holland, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry]. Need to check both out.

Brian Case interview extract from 1979 btw

Thanks,I did not know about that! Always assumed that Lacy was always free. Reminds me of another one via the ESP-Disk bandcamp (if you've heard the original !967 release, and thought the sound was off, Bernard Stollman says here that he subnitted it for remastering in '92, whereupon the engineer observed that it was "out of phase," and corrected that--did Stollman not ever listen to it? Claimed Lacy's price for the master was "exorbitant," but maybe Stollman didn't actually pay enough to listen, or maybe he couldn't tell the diff)

"Broken into two thematic extrapolations, the work functions in a similar manner as Don Cherry's Complete Communion (Blue Note, 1965) effort from a year earlier..."(Henry Smith, All Abot Jazz)
eleased January 2, 1967

Enrico Rava: trumpet
Steve Lacy: soprano saxophone
Johnny Dyani: bass
Louis T. Moholo: drums

Recorded in concert, October 8, 1966 at Institute di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Nobody had told me about death metal drumming on Malkauns !
It's probably high time I get into his discography past Eternal rhythm / Mu

And since I see the name of Enrico Rava just up from my post, I'll say that I really enjoyed The Pilgrim and the Stars, and was wondering if any other ECM jazz is in that vein.

The Pilgrim and the Stars doesn't seem too different from some of the Terje Rypdal records from the same period, of course Rypdal plays guitar on the Rava album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95yHWVVwBJg

https://i.discogs.com/uHjJPpuj9kui121Q7o0ORioQ-zqrip7iXozwdsL1l5g/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:592/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI1OTM0/OTY4LTE2NzYwNjE3/NTYtNTYwMC5qcGVn.jpeg

Here's a new disc from Transversales featuring synth from French sound collage guy Jean Schwarz. Recorded in 1977. Roughly in the same universe as other recent archival releases like 2014's MODERN ART, 2020's OM SHANTI OM, and 2021's ORGANIC MUSIC THEATRE. The biggest difference being that I would describe this as being more on the sparse / arty end of things, as opposed to deep and groovy. But it does have plenty of literal bells and includes Don's tunes BROWN RICE and HOPE (aka ORIENT). I think the real star here is double bassist J-F Jenny-Clark (who of course was on one of Don's earliest records as leader back in '66). His bass really comes through on this recording and sounds so very rich and full. My feeling upon first listen is that the music feels exploratory and hesitant and unfortunately they never really seem to get down to business. Maybe that'll change with repeated listening.

^ this is my blurb, in case it wasn't clear. an ILM exclusive!

here's a profile of don i found in an old issue of DOWNBEAT (oct. 1975):

https://i.imgur.com/iiuPDmN.png

https://i.imgur.com/GRrduJx.png
https://i.imgur.com/AjCQN7K.png

Thanks to the death of Swedish saxophonist Bernt Rosengren, who worked a lot with Cherry in the early 70s, I've been revisiting Eternal Rhythm today and checking out two other albums I wasn't that familiar with, Brotherhood Suite (recordings from 1968-74, released in 1997) and The Summer House Sessions (recordings from 1972-74, released in 2021).

RIP Bernt!

i have always intended to track down a copy of BROTHERHOOD SUITE! will report back.

that article is awesome, thank you for sharing it ...

It doesn't look like Don ever recorded with the Mellotron that he wanted, although Eagle-Eye used a Chamberlin once.

The mention of heroin in that article, as a youthful "phase" outgrown after a few years, reminds me of something I read, probably in one of the books about Ornette Coleman. It said something about how Ornette despaired of Don Cherry ever escaping from addiction in the last decades of his life. I haven't read anywhere else of his addiction being an ongoing struggle or problem, though, so I wonder where the truth lies.

In one of her memoirs Viv Albertine talks about touring with Don Cherry in the 1970s and upsetting him by saying "I hate junkies", not knowing that Cherry was himself an addict (Cherry apparently replied, "I hate hate"). So I certainly think his addiction was more than a youthful phase, sadly.

this right here's the stuff, featuring the cherry/dyani/temiz line-up:

https://www.strandedrecords.com/cdn/shop/files/don-cherry-trio-the-ortf-recordings-paris-1971-lp_1024x1024.jpg
Don Cherry Trio - The ORTF Recordings Paris 1971 LP

https://www.strandedrecords.com/collections/newsletter/products/don-cherry-trio-the-ortf-recordings-paris-1971-lp

don cherry at sandy bull's wedding

https://i.imgur.com/yDj15NG.png

In one of her memoirs Viv Albertine talks about touring with Don Cherry in the 1970s…

Slight derail: with the first memoir I really liked or admired who I thought she was, the second memoir I cooled on that considerably.

nice roundup from last year over at the free jazz blog, focusing on don cherry reissues and related material:

https://www.freejazzblog.org/2023/09/don-cherry-archives-tributes-and-re.html