Of all the musicians we’ve featured in this series, Don Cherry might be the most adventurous. From his early days in the late 1950s playing with the saxophonist Ornette Coleman to his tinkering with electronic funk and R&B in the ’80s, Cherry proved himself a worthy anarchist, broadening the depth of his art through the wind of his pocket cornet, an instrument he popularized. Though with Cherry, there was a sense that he didn’t want to shift the genre as a whole. Instead, his music felt innocent and voyeuristic, like he colored outside the lines just because.
Cherry grew up in a musical family; his grandmother played piano for silent films, and his mother played piano at home. His father owned a jazz club in Tulsa, Okla., then worked as a bartender at the Plantation Club, a jazz venue in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Cherry met Coleman around the mid-50s and started working with the bandleader; it was a creative partnership that spanned several albums. Coleman’s sound was so jarring that some called it “alien music.” But Cherry identified with Coleman’s atonality and dissonance, even if he himself played tight, expressive notes that didn’t inflict much chaos. When paired with Coleman’s saxophone, the whole thing felt tumultuous. “Some people loved it and some people hated it, didn’t like it, and there would be arguments and fights,” he once told NPR’s Terry Gross, referencing a famed 1959 show at the Five Spot Cafe that drew Leonard Bernstein and Thelonious Monk to the venue.
Though Cherry earned favor as a member of Coleman’s band and a featured player on the albums “Something Else!!!!” and “The Shape of Jazz to Come,” he soon established himself as a formidable bandleader or co-leader. In 1960, he and John Coltrane recorded a number of Coleman’s compositions as a homage to their peer. Six years later, Atlantic Records released this collaborative LP under the title “The Avant-Garde.” As the ’60s became the ’70s, Cherry turned his attention to funk and other cosmic soundscapes, much like other jazz musicians of the time.
In 1975, he released what might be the high-water mark of his solo discography, “Brown Rice,” a slight yet exhilarating blend of Indian raga and African rhythm with subtle electronic flourishes. Cherry spent the ’70s in Sweden with his partner, Moki, where the two would create what they called “organic music” with like-minded local artists. Then, on the 1985 album “Home Boy (Sister Out),” Cherry turned his attention to Paris. A downtown funk record influenced by that city’s sound, it achieved cult status there until the label WeWantSounds released it more widely in 2018.
By the time of Cherry’s death in 1995, he was considered a torchbearer for avant-garde jazz. Here, we spotlight his work with 13 selections that tell the story of his free-spirited brilliance. You can find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.
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Joy Guidry, musician
“Hope”
When thinking about Don Cherry’s music, his album “Organic Music Society” is always the first to come to mind. I often come back to this entire album for how it can always slow my breathing and open my soul to the other side. The colors he uses in this album paint a picture of many different forms of praise and worship, especially in the seventh track, “Hope.” There’s so much warmth and comfort throughout this entire song. I always see a ton of deep oranges, purples and yellows when listening to “Hope.” The singing, different percussion instruments, and the rhythm of the piano and flute come together to make an oasis of sounds for dancing, screaming or giving thanks and praise. “Hope” is a song that brings a lot of my deep emotions to the surface, and I come back to it a lot when I need to have a big release or when I’m feeling spiritually blocked up. “Organic Music Society” is one of the best master classes in improvisation I’ve ever run across.
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Eagle-Eye Cherry, musician
“Malkauns”
To pick one song by my father, Don Cherry, is no easy task. He had so many different phases in his musical life. But this track, “Malkauns,” is like the soundtrack of my young years. My whole childhood we traveled on the road as a family and music was a constant. Music was being played at all times not just at the gigs, but at home, anyone’s house we would visit or even on the subway. For Don there was no beginning, middle or end. So when I listen to the album “Brown Rice” it evokes so many memories from those times.
“Malkauns” is a magical 14-minute ride in Don’s universe. It starts with my mother, Moki Cherry, on tamboura droning away and Charlie Haden’s sublime bass; this goes on for several minutes. Then Don and Billy Higgins finally join in. Billy and Charlie play off each other while Don’s trumpet rides on top of the groove like a stone skipping on water. And then it ends right back where they started with Charlie and Moki. Perfection.
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Nailah Hunter, musician
“Luna Turca”
Don Cherry’s “Om Shanti Om” is one of my favorite records to play during my early morning yoga practice. While I do adore the beloved title track, which takes the listener on a sonic adventure through different shades of reverence featuring Cherry’s signature trumpet playing, I always come back to the first piece, “Luna Turca,” for a one-off listen. It feels both sunlit and somber at once — a contrast that I’ve always found to be enticing. Even in its fleeting, trumpet-less, four-chord simplicity, the song manages to drop the listener into a heart-space fit for worship or contemplation. The mesmerizing wordless melody, chanted in unison, serves as an invitation to clear the mind, opening the listener up to experience the essence of all that is sacred — celebrating the joy, beauty and grounding that can be found in each present moment.
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Lauren Du Graf, writer
“The Sphinx” by Ornette Coleman
Of the myriad sonic pathways Don Cherry traveled in his nearly five-decade-long career, the one that moves me the most is among his earliest. In the mid-1950s, Ornette Coleman had been depressed. “Nobody wanted to play with him,” recalled the drummer Ed Blackwell. Coleman’s ideas were too experimental for most musicians in Los Angeles, and he had few steady gigs.
Cherry was one of the few to make sense of Coleman’s abstractions. An open-minded spirit, Cherry affirmed the saxophonist’s direction, and was willing to rehearse endlessly without promise of a performance or a recording date. You can hear what they were up to on “Something Else!!!!,” the 1958 Coleman debut that had the distinction of being both Cherry and Coleman’s first recording. On “The Sphinx,” their two voices entwine in an off-kilter unison, Cherry’s pocket cornet doubling Coleman’s plastic saxophone. They barrel confidently through curious melodic sequences, their phrasing tightly cued from countless hours in the shed.
They would venture much further out on subsequent records. But on “The Sphinx,” you can hear it all crystallize, already escaping chord changes and meter in ways that few, if any, did in 1958. In Cherry, Coleman found a collaborative force powerful enough to push through the constant rejection. In 1958, the year “Something Else!!!!” was released, Cherry gave his newborn son the middle name “Ornette.” When Cherry passed, Coleman mourned the loss of the one who understood him better than anyone else.
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Hank Shteamer, writer
“Symphony for Improvisers”
“I was always interested in form,” Don Cherry told the drummer Arthur Taylor in a 1971 interview. On “Symphony for Improvisers,” the second of three brilliant albums Cherry recorded for Blue Note in the mid-1960s, he positively reveled in it, juxtaposing bursts of spontaneity with bold thematic signposts across two epic four-part medleys. In the opening section of the title track, recurring ensemble fanfares frame brief, breakneck solos by Pharoah Sanders (setting aside his signature tenor saxophone here for fluttering piccolo); Cherry on cornet; and two musicians Cherry had met during his recent European travels, the vibraphonist Karl Berger and the saxophonist Gato Barbieri, who wrings arresting squeals and roars from his tenor.
Cherry guides the band through three successive themes like a driver smoothly shifting gears. On “Nu Creative Love,” the drummer Ed Blackwell (Cherry’s compatriot from Ornette Coleman’s thrilling early ’60s band) and the bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark (taking over for Henry Grimes, who anchored the first section of the piece) dial in a gentler swing to accompany the leader’s relaxed musings, while on “What’s Not Serious,” a waltzing, almost parade-like line that clearly evokes Cherry’s close friend and collaborator Albert Ayler, Barbieri’s urgent cry rears up again as if in tribute. The sprightly “Infant Happiness” brings the band back to a brisk up-tempo that highlights Cherry and Blackwell’s hyper-alert rapport, later explored during frequent duo team-ups. Throughout the many chapters and episodes of this “Symphony,” you feel a cyclical, breath-like rhythm — form drawing in, freedom flowing out, and so on — that marks Cherry as one of the most ingenious bandleaders of the era.
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Mike Reed, drummer, composer and event producer
“Köln Improvisation” by Terry Riley and Don Cherry
Don Cherry is at his lyrical best on the “Köln Improvisation” with Terry Riley in 1975. Riley sets the stage with his iconic drones and patterns and Don Cherry slides in slowly, beautifully blowing some melodic lines on a muted trumpet that creates a fantastic interplay with the organ.
Riley’s work hearkens to Krautrock and what would be coming in post-rock. In comparison to other genre fusions of the time period (electric Miles, Mahavishnu, Headhunters), this blending seems to be of equal interplay and doesn’t rely too heavily on one genre hallmark. In this outing, Riley and Cherry explore the best parts of each “genre” in equal amounts, and seem to move in actual improvisational fashion and risk-taking.
It should come as no surprise that this collaboration would exist since the two artists were so committed to a fearless exploration of music. In more recent times, this live meeting should be of great interest to any music fan who has connected with the music of Rob Mazurek and Jaimie Branch, two brass players who were never afraid to mix genre ideas and incorporate propulsive arpeggiated synth ideas.
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Jeff Caltabiano, writer
“Utopia and Visions”
In 1963, Sonny Rollins took Don Cherry on a tour of Europe, which radically altered Cherry’s career and life trajectory. While in Europe, he met Albert Ayler, whom he’d later record with, and Moki Karlsson, his future wife. Cherry’s world opened up; he traveled and searched for enlightenment the rest of his life. He sought to understand the world by embracing it with visions of hope and utopia, despite its harsh realities. He and the percussionist Naná Vasconcelos had a deep connection over decades as itinerant musicians. Naná was from Recife, in Brazil’s northeast, a place steeped in musical traditions. Don and Naná’s collective, Organic Music Society, lived, traveled and made music together. Their self-titled album from 1972 is a communal record, including influences from Brazil, India, Turkey and South Africa, as well as American jazz and Minimalism. “Utopia and Visions” is the song I come back to most and is Cherry’s most potent statement. As it opens, I hear birdsong and the wind through the mango trees of Naná’s beloved Recife. The song shimmers for five-and-a-half minutes, then enters a most glorious bridge to an ecstatic climax of voice, flute and percussion. Soon the song fades out, but in my head its trance continues eternally. Play this at my funeral and turn it up.
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Adam Rudolph, composer and percussionist
“Brilliant Action”
The pleasure of being asked to choose a favorite track of Don Cherry’s music lies in the opportunity to listen again and reflect upon his great contributions. Don was a humble, studious, imaginative and courageous artist. He opened doors for so many of us, and we are still exploring what lay beyond them. Don was the first musician to take me on tour in Europe, when I was 22; it was a thrill to make music with him since I had loved and studied his music for years.
As a teenager, I heard “Brilliant Action,” the opening track of “‘Mu’ First Part,” Don’s groundbreaking duet recordings with the drummer Ed Blackwell. I had never heard anything like it. It is its own prototype. Whenever I listen to it I find new things to love and be inspired by. With their relaxed virtuosity and alchemical connection, Don and Blackwell touch upon the roots of blues and (so-called) jazz while pointing toward the wide-open creative space of tuning in to music from around the world. That future is now.
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Kieran Hebden, D.J. and producer
“Brown Rice”
All-time great essential Don Cherry banger. Bell-like electric pianos and wah-wah bass sounds combined with whispers and chants about brown rice all over a deep repetitive groove. It’s unlike any other record I know, but instant human music that it’s hard not to connect with. It’s the best song I know about rice. It can bliss you out listening at home or blow your mind when heard loud in a club. I find it’s a good record to play to people who say they can’t get with jazz because it pushes into other dimensions and is not what someone may expect. The Italian first vinyl pressing has beautiful Moki Cherry artwork and is probably the one to try and get, but Don looks so cool in the photo on the cover of the U.S. pressing and the design is so great that I recommend getting both.
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Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic
“Trayra Boia” by Codona
You can tell Don Cherry wasn’t wedded to any one instrument, from the way he played the trumpet. OK, that sounds like faint praise, or arch — but it’s not. Sound came out of his horn in splatters and whistles, with a blend of playfulness and deep spirit that made it clear that the vessel he used mattered little. By the late 1960s, Cherry was playing flutes, keyboards, percussion instruments — anything he could get his hands or his lungs on. In 1978 he formed Codona with Collin Walcott and Naná Vasconcelos, multi-instrumentalists who were on a similar mission. Like Cherry, both sought to trace folk music traditions back far enough — and blend enough of them together — to find something like a universal language. That is certainly the idea on “Trayra Boia,” from “Codona 3” (1983), a smoke bath of half-whispered voices repeating a mysterious chant. The only instrument we hear is Cherry’s trumpet, in serene and simple harmony with another falsetto voice. Toward the end of the track, the trumpet goes away for a moment and a louder, brighter vocalist comes in, with that familiar playful spirit: Clearly, it’s Cherry — the voice that was behind that trumpet, all along.
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Dr. JoVia Armstrong, percussionist and composer
“Eternal Rhythm Part I”
As I was researching spiritual jazz artists, I came across Don Cherry’s two-part “Eternal Rhythm” album. The first few seconds of “Part 1” felt like a type of calling: one where Cherry was calling for my attention and my patience, which then triggered curiosity and calmness. It was probably the drone on the vibraphone and the birdlike chirping on flutes that induced me into a trance. The flutes were having a conversation with each other. I assume that Cherry was playing both flutes simultaneously. Therefore, it was like listening to him have a conversation with himself.
I had high hopes of finding video footage of this session online so that I could see exactly who was playing what. I tried rewinding the audio over and over again to understand this sonic puzzle. Some of the sounds mimicked electronics, but there weren’t any listed. The electric guitar was the only electric instrument being played, according to the liner notes. And the prepared piano added an interesting timbre. Cherry was able to bring technology into this brilliant piece with acoustic instruments somehow. Years later, I’m still wondering about the process.
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John Morrison, writer
“Universal Mother”
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, the debate around fusion brought up questions about the future of jazz itself. For many on both sides of this debate, fusion was an uneasy proposition to navigate. Would the incorporation of electronic instruments and rock aesthetics into jazz erode the genre, or could fusion open new possibilities that would carry the music into the future? In a way, Don Cherry’s 1976 recording “Universal Mother” would answer the latter part of this question with a resounding “yes.”
On top of a soaring electric guitar, harp and a funky, syncopated groove by Neil Jason on bass and Steve Jordan on drums, Cherry holds down the center of “Universal Mother” with a sweet and playful spoken-word delivery. Shouting out the women in his family who came before him and the Watts, Los Angeles, community that raised him, Cherry offers a colorful and playful ode to motherhood, community and the karmic ties that bind all living beings. For 1976, the tune sounds surprisingly modern and could be posited as a precursor to genres like acid jazz and hip-hop. Today, the debate about the merits of fusion have largely receded into the past, and “Universal Mother” remains as a reminder of how fruitful the music was in the hands of a master like Don Cherry.
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Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer
“Summer House Sessions Side A”
By the time Don Cherry and Moki Karlsson settled in Sweden in the late 1960s, Cherry had gotten away from what some would consider jazz. Sure, it had the genre’s rhythmic and harmonic textures, but the music felt free — unencumbered by arbitrary titles. Don and Moki hosted improvised performances in an old schoolhouse they lived in. So when I hear “Summer House Sessions Side A,” I hear liberated adults playing gleefully with toys. One can hear actual children in the mix, cooing gently at the beginning, then fading away as the composition grows more intense. But even as the tune unfolds, picking up steam and settling into a raucous groove around the 14-minute mark, the proceedings never feel serious. Instead, it all feels light and carefree, like the sun peeking through the window. Ultimately, I think that’s the key to Cherry’s greatness: Just see what happens; let it be what it is.
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