Don Cherry

The Jazz Giant With a Little Horn: Gone but Not Forgotten

Michael L. Maliner

Several years back, a friend of mine sat me between his stereo speakers, started his turntable, and challenged me to name the musician. The sound of a beautifully played muted trumpet filled my ears. The tone, at once subdued and resonant, was such that it clearly was the work of a master. The phrasing was equally expert, flowing with the kind of the nuance and subtlety attainable only by the most sensitive and capable of musicians. But it was the articulation that was the dead give away. Only Miles Davis could squeeze out so many notes sound and still so mellow, so cool.

"Wrong," said my triumphant friend. Wrong? I was incredulous. Who else could play with such a sense of understated technical mastery? What other jazz trumpeter had such a command of the instrument's tone color, could alternately make the instrument sound dark and almost muddy, and then bright and brassy?

That was the first time I heard the music of the jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. Later, I was to learn that the range of tone color was a result not only of Cherry's impeccable technique, but also attributable, in part, to his instrument of choice: the pocket trumpet, a miniature trumpet no more than eight inches in length.

Don Cherry left this world for the next this past October nineteenth. Though his death has left a void as palpable as that left by the deaths of Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane, the mark that he left upon jazz music is indelible.

Already a professional musician by the time he was in his teens, Cherry's career began in earnest when, in the late 1950's, he met the saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Together, the two forged that unique sort of musical union that occurs only once in a generation, and forever changes the course of all music to follow. In 1958, after playing numerous club dates together, Cherry and Mr. Coleman recorded the album "Something Else", under Mr. Coleman's leadership, for the now defunct Contemporary Records label. "Something Else" not only marked Cherry's first record date, but marked the beginning of what came to be known as avant-garde jazz. With its emphasis on long, free flowing melodic shapes and at times meterless rhythms, avant-garde jazz is the musical antithesis to the be-bop tradition out of which it developed. Later that year, Mr. Coleman and Cherry again entered the recording studio, joined by Charlie Haden on bass and Billy Higgins on drums, to record "The Shape of Jazz to Come" for the Atlantic label. With "The Shape of Jazz to Come", the Ornette Coleman quartet was born. Many successful albums followed, each of which contributed to the development of the avant-garde jazz language.

Avant-garde jazz reached its pinnacle with the album "Free Jazz", recorded for Atlantic in 1961 under the direction of Mr. Coleman and featuring the trumpet of Don Cherry. Reminiscent of the aleatory music written by such twentieth-century classical composers as Charles Ives and John Cage, the extended and open ended improvisational nature of "Free Jazz" epitomized the musical language that Mr. Coleman and Don Cherry had worked to develop over the course of their many recordings and live appearances together.

After the original Ornette Coleman quartet disbanded, Cherry continued playing in the avant-garde style, most notably on the recordings of Ed Blackwell and Charlie Haden, the most recent of which, "The Montreal Tapes", was released in 1994. "The Montreal Tapes" showcases the full range of Cherry's technical proficiency, from the lyrical muted trumpet to the hard hitting, rapid fire post-be-bop phrase.

If art is either innovative or plagiaristic, then Don Cherry was an artist in the truest sense of the word. Trained in the jazz tradition, he was able to challenge everything that was known, to infuse the jazz vocabulary with new and unfamiliar sounds, and to leave a completely new musical language in his wake. Though his life was short, his influence upon the direction of music is forever. Rest in peace, Don, the jazz giant with the little horn: gone but not forgotten.