Don Cherry

[Late]

The work of painter Jean Dubuffet, in some ways, reminds me of the music of Don Cherry. Dubuffet described the so-called "Art Brut" movement, which he is generally credited for giving rise to, as made up of "works executed by those immune to artistic culture in which imitation has no role; in which their creators take all (subjects, materials, transposition, rhythm, style, etc.) from their own individuality and not from the base of classical art or stylish trends." Would you agree, or disagree, that this could also stand as a description of Cherry's approach to music?

How would you describe Cherry's contribution to music? I'm interested in trying to discuss the mechanics of Cherry's playing, as it sometimes seems that the relative limitations of his "technique" as a trumpet player are criticized.

Edited October 21, 2004 by Late

[clifford_thornton]

That's an interesting comparison, Late, though I'd almost want to think of someone like Ayler as the true "Art Informel" of jazz. After all, Dubuffet could really paint just like Ayler and Cherry could play bebop in the league of Bird and Miles. Very cool observation -- thanks!

[JSngry]

I don't know about all those terms and stuff, but Cherry was actually very fluent, fingerwise, in the "bebop" vernacular. And he often enough displayed a decent range.

The only aspect of his playing that could be considered "homemade" from a traditional, academic standpoint would be his tone. And I wonder what part the pocket trumpet and/or smack played in that.

[Late]

After all, Dubuffet could really paint just like Ayler and Cherry could play bebop in the league of Bird and Miles.

I hear what you're saying. Almost as if some ostensible "un-learning" had to take place in order to achieve the musical results that Ayler and Cherry were after.

On record, the best example I could point to of Cherry's "bop" fluency would be on Ornette's first album for Contemporary. Still, Cherry — to my ears — doesn't harness the "linguistic" command, say, of a Blue Mitchell or Lee Morgan. His phraseology often seems clipped, or turned in on itself, tinkering with ideas rather than pushing them forward in a linear manner. This isn't a criticism necessarily, but I sometimes do hear a sort of struggle against the line that (using the same example) Mitchell and Morgan seem to make effortless in comparison. But, perhaps Cherry shouldn't be compared in such a way. I'm definitely a fan, but am still trying to understand for myself how he put together his conception.

I have a (classically trained) trumpet-playing friend, and he can't stand Cherry's playing ... and I've given up trying to convince him otherwise. On the other hand, he loves Lee Morgan.

About tone — my brother (an amateur musician) actually plays the pocket cornet, and when he goes back and forth between it and the standard trumpet, they sound relatively the same. The trumpet does sound, for lack of a better term, more "orchestral," or at least I can hear the overtones more readily. The pocket cornet is punchier, as if you were hearing it played directly against a wall. The tone, though, sounds the same to me.

[Alon Marcus]

I think that virtuosity means applying a certain skill to a certain task .

In that sense Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman are not in the league of Parker and Gillespie when playing fast bebop lines with chord changes. Their true virtuosity is in improvising in the context of "free jazz" the way it was designed by their end of the fifties group. Nobody ever discussed Dizzy's skills in that field cause probably he never tried to go there. Don and Ornette were obliged to go at least partially through the bop tradition.

Personally I like very much the quartet recordings from "Tomorrow is the question" to the Atlantic recordings. I find both Don's and Ornette's sound to be very pleasant and their improvisations are mostly melodic.

To sum what I was trying to say: Don could use more practice and experience to play like Dizzy but he was virtuoso when playing like himself.

Now these are some nice dialectics. B-)

[JSngry]

On record, the best example I could point to of Cherry's "bop" fluency would be on Ornette's first album for Contemporary. Still, Cherry — to my ears — doesn't harness the "linguistic" command, say, of a Blue Mitchell or Lee Morgan. His phraseology often seems clipped, or turned in on itself, tinkering with ideas rather than pushing them forward in a linear manner. This isn't a criticism necessarily, but I sometimes do hear a sort of struggle against the line that (using the same example) Mitchell and Morgan seem to make effortless in comparison.

Well, that's waht made Don Cherry Don Cherry instead of Blue Mitchell or Lee Morgan, I think, that willingness to take the boppish language and tinker with it, clip it, turn it inside out, change keys in the middle of a phrase, etc, and not play it straight.

I guess we'll never know how truly fluent Cherry was in that idiom unless and until somebody turns up some tapes or something from the mid-50s. But we do know that Cherry was a protege of James Clay, and James Clay could definitely play the bop idiom, to put it mildly. Now whther or not Clay viewed Cherry as a peer, a protege, or just a running buddy I don't know. But I do know that on those early Ornette sides, I hear a player conversant enough with the bop idiom to knowingly tamper with it, not just halfway take a stab at it.

I think that that's possibly a result of Cherry's having come into Ornette's world from "the outside", so to speak. Ornette's homegrown philosophy of life and theories about music drew from a lot of different areanas, but really existed in none of them. Haden's folksiness roots played to a part of it, probably moreso than did Cherry's urbane boppishness, which might be why there is an element of "strain" to Cherry's work in those days (a quality which, btw, was noted by several critics at the time who heard Cherry trying to "get to" where Ornette already was).

Good question!

[Late]

Almost two years have passed — time for another stab at this idea.

How do you all feel about the "strain" (mentioned above) in Cherry's playing? Sometimes (for me), it's just the ticket, and at other times it sounds like Don's chops are just falling apart.

Another question — do you hear trumpet players such as Bill Dixon and Alan Shorter in league with Cherry? Technically, or just conceptually? Or neither?

[clifford_thornton]

Dixon and Shorter have a completely different aesthetic, IMO.

Cherry was at heart a bebopper, a Fats Navarro-styled player and spewer of brittle shards for the "free" generation.

Dixon and Shorter were more Miles-esque, Shorter with the lesser chops but a wealth of ideas. Their music moves not at all like Cherry's. Dixon was inspired greatly by contemporary dance, and rhythmically his music operates in a unique area that doesn't appear to be occupied by many others. Dixon was also hugely influential on trumpeters like Joe McPhee and Marc Levin in sound, and their compositional debt to him is huge as well.

[ep1str0phy]

Excellent posts what, two years ago? Wasn't even on here then...

But I agree with Clifford on the Dixon-Shorter issue. There are some facile similarities (mainly in the way of timbral liberties--especially when Bill had his chops issues--that's no knock, just an observation--but then there are probably some rudimentary commonalities among all trumpet players trading on the liberties of the 60's), but, again, very diverse aesthetics here. Dixon is, one the one hand, more ingrained in a compositional ethos dervied from Western art music as well as rhythmic and group idiosyncrasies that (as stated above) few other so-called 'avant' trumpeters have followed up on. Shorter was something else altogether--to my ears, anyway, a perverse twisting of the hard bop vernacular with a more directly 'anarchic' intent (a total turn on his brother, who went in the opposite direction and got more harmonically complex). It's arguable that their respective trumpet sounds acted in service of these concepts.

As far as the 'strain' is concerned--any technical limitations immanent to Cherry's abilities are far, far more pronounced in the 80's, when leadership and multi-instrumentalist duties (among other things, including the obvious difficulty in maintaining brass chops) took their toll. 'Prime' Cherry's tone seems more like the result of accumulated liberties than faulty chops (to me, anyway). Regardless, when he was in the late 60's/early 70's and smoking, it's doubtful whether (tone control notwithstanding) any of the apparent school of early 'avant' trumpeters could diminish him in a harmonically free context--his later Ornette recordings (especially Science Fiction) and classic solo sides certainly reinforce the notion.

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a greater diversity among the earlier avant trumpeters (in addition to the above, I'm talking Eddie Gale, Dewey Johnson, Bobby Bradford... and later, Earl Cross, Jacques Coursil, Lester Bowie, etc.) than saxists. Just a thought.

On the first post--Steve Lacy once said something about Cherry being the more 'free' and unencumbered of the Ornette-DC dyad. It's always been a curious statement to me, and I'd love to hear more 'primary sources' speak up about the differences between Cherry's formative improvisational ethos and that of his former running parter.

[Rooster_Ties]

Found this thread searching for something else. Cool read, up for more eyeballs.

[Trumpet Guy]

Funny--just yesterday was listening to Don Cherry and Albert Ayler(CopenhagenTapes 64') and thought Don Cherry had influenced Bill Dixon! Don here was playing short lines--1, 2 or 3 notes--just letting them speak for themselves, rather than creating a "melodic line"--that took me to those 80's dates Bill Dixon did for Soul Note. I would not say Dixon was uninfluenced by Cherry.But Dixon did go his OWN way!

[clifford_thornton]

Shorter was something else altogether--to my ears, anyway, a perverse twisting of the hard bop vernacular with a more directly 'anarchic' intent (a total turn on his brother, who went in the opposite direction and got more harmonically complex).

Alan Shorter started out as a saxophonist and switched to trumpet. My "on-and-off-again," who digs on Wayne, observed very astutely how much Alan's trumpet playing has the same keen and a lot of the same phraseology as his brother. If only I could marry this girl... anyway, it was a good point.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Shorter was something else altogether--to my ears, anyway, a perverse twisting of the hard bop vernacular with a more directly 'anarchic' intent (a total turn on his brother, who went in the opposite direction and got more harmonically complex).

Alan Shorter started out as a saxophonist and switched to trumpet. My "on-and-off-again," who digs on Wayne, observed very astutely how much Alan's trumpet playing has the same keen and a lot of the same phraseology as his brother. If only I could marry this girl... anyway, it was a good point.

There are some very thoughtful reflections on Bill Dixon here!

[Lazaro Vega]

Don's improv's would sometimes take on an almost military pronouncement as with his entrance on The Relativity Suite. Throughout that long piece, too, he sings his own version of "scat," for lack of a better word, punctuating those flights with a great ability to play a single note in rhythm on the trumpet, again out of bugle tradition. How do you say this, because he wasn't playing on songs as much as his improvisations sounded like songs? He had an ability to lay just a few notes right into the rhythm that gave his melodies a singing quality. As far as his timbre, well, that's where it gets simultaneously "sloppy" and incredible. There's a flexibility to his playing sound which opened the trumpet up at a time when high octane saxophones were the dominant voice. He found affinity with Pharoah and Frank Lowe, screamers in the period, for instance.

checka checka bin and o so rin

[JSngry]

If only I could marry this girl...

Go for it with all you got, and then some.

[Late]

Funny -- just yesterday was listening to Don Cherry and Albert Ayler (Copenhagen Tapes '64), and thought Don Cherry had influenced Bill Dixon!

That actually makes a lot of sense to me. If you listen to Bill Dixon's first Savoy session with Archie Shepp, the influence nearly jumps out from the speakers at you. I know that Dixon went on to create his own musical aesthetic and philosophies, but at this stage, I think he was considerably under the spell of Don Cherry's phraseology vis a vis Ornette's group.

[Niko]

Alan Shorter started out as a saxophonist and switched to trumpet.

IIRC in Leroi Jones Black Music it says that Wayne and others from his school band took the mouthpieces from their saxophones to use them as brass instruments on some tunes...

good luck!

[clifford_thornton]

If only I could marry this girl...

Go for it with all you got, and then some.

I am, but it's complicated...

[JSngry]

It's always complicated.

[clifford_thornton]

Truer words have never been spoken.

[ep1str0phy]

Why did Alan switch instruments? Perhaps he had something different to say on the trumpet that just wouldn't come out in the sax--i.e., he was "searching" for that "awkward" sound.

From a sincere place and someone who can appreciate the position, best of luck, CT.

[Chuck Nessa]

Truer words have never been spoken.

Truer words have never been broken.

[clifford_thornton]

Why did Alan switch instruments? Perhaps he had something different to say on the trumpet that just wouldn't come out in the sax--i.e., he was "searching" for that "awkward" sound.

From a sincere place and someone who can appreciate the position, best of luck, CT.

Maybe I should just switch instruments!

[ep1str0phy]

*rim shot*

Edited February 18, 2007 by ep1str0phy

[Late]

I listened to this one twice today. Certainly not a "great" record, but not bad either. Curious might be more appropriate. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Having Percy Heath on board (for the tracks he's on) seems to change things up a fair amount. Overall, I like it.

What do you think?