Next month, London analogue specialists Gearbox Records will unearth yet another lost gem having just announced the release of rare material from the legendary trumpeter and cornet-player, Don Cherry.
The release entitled ‘Cherry Jam’ was previously only available as a Record Store Day release and features new unheard recordings by Don Cherry. The EP is to be released as part of the label’s Official Japanese Edition series with a unique obi strip and Japanese liner notes.
Taken from a 1965 pre-record for Danish national radio, the line-up consists of Cherry on cornet, Mogens Bollerup on tenor saxophone, Atli Bjørn on piano, Benny Nielsen on double bass, and Simon Koppel on drums. The record features 3 new original compositions of Cherry’s, as well as a classic standard. Alongside the announcement of the release, the label has shared one of it’s new original compositions “The Ambassador from Greenland”.
We owe a great debt to Don Cherry, whose radical approach to playing and improvising influenced music as we know it to an incalculable extent. Whilst a somewhat removed figure within the annals of jazz history, Cherry’s impact is clear. In the same decade as this particular recording, ‘Cherry Jam’, he would partner with such giants of the saxophone as Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. Most celebrated of all was his participation in Ornette Coleman’s revolutionary first quartet, which, as the album title promised, showed “the shape of jazz to come.”
Despite being a jazz man at heart, Cherry was often dubbed a “musical Marco Polo” for his restlessly nomadic lifestyle. From the late ‘60s onwards, the great trumpeter and musical innovator travelled the world far and wide, from Turkey to Morocco to Japan, seeking multicultural, open musical exploration. A pioneer of what is now known as “world music”, his musical associates included South Africans-in-exile Johnny Dyani, Dudu Pukwana, and Abdullah Ibrahim, Panamanian-born reedist Carlos Ward, Turkish percussionist Okay Temiz, and even the Chilean-French filmmaker Alexander Jodorowsky of El Topo fame.
‘Cherry Jam’ sets the scene in Copenhagen, a city which proved instrumental in the hosting and development of jazz musicians both local and American. Cherry had performed and recorded there with Archie Shepp in 1963, toured with Albert Ayler in the autumn of 1964, and would go on to have a residency at the hip Cafe Montmartre in 1966.
Don Cherry and pianist Atli Bjørn had been collaborating regularly on a jam session basis, leading to Danmarks Radio’s decision to record and share these experiments with the Danish public. Tenor saxophonist Mogens Bollerup, bassist Benny Nielsen, and drummer Simon Koppel, all from Copenhagen’s jazz scene, would form the rest of the line-up.
The first piece, ‘The Ambassador from Greenland’, reportedly written by Don Cherry in his youth, is characterised by a descending, bluesy bassline. The tune is playful and witty, with Cherry’s soloing alternating between clear riff patterns and more rapid streams of consciousness. The soulful ballad ‘You Took Advantage of Me’ by Richard Rodgers comes next, with Cherry playing a Miles Davis-like mute and beginning, unorthodoxly, with the melody from the middle eight. The band slows down to accommodate Bollerup’s rendition of the head, which is almost heart-wrenching, and maintains the same pace and sense of gravitas throughout.
The third track is another original Cherry composition, ‘Priceless’. The melody, doubled by Cherry and Nielsen, mixes together harmonised, boppish lines with the yearning of ‘Lonely Woman’. Finally, the group takes on a lyrical blues pattern that Cherry worked on with New York clarinettist Alvin Batiste. Titled ‘Nigeria’, the melody is distinctly underscored by Koppel switching between Afro-Cuban and swing rhythms, though the furious soloing from Nielsen, Cherry and Bollerup pulls it into the realm of hard bop.
These four pieces show Don Cherry in the midst of his transformation from pivotal sideman in New York’s avant-garde jazz scene to leader of his own groups and world traveller.
His endless curiosity, free-thinking openness to different cultures, and rejection of musical boundaries paved the way for future creators in jazz, world music, and beyond.