The Face of the Bass

Ornette Coleman (alto sax), Don Cherry (pocket trumpet), Charlie Haden (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums). From the album Change of the Century (1960).

Don Cherry was an American jazz trumpeter known for his partnership with Ornette Coleman and for being a world music pioneer in the 1970s. He first played jazz in Los Angeles in the early 1950s, but he didn’t launch his professional career until 1958. That year he started playing and recording with Coleman, first in a quintet with Paul Bley and then as part of the piano-less quartet that recorded the six most important albums of the saxophonist for Atlantic Records from 1959 to 1961. Cherry normally played a pocket trumpet, which had a slightly more nasal sound than a conventional trumpet, but sometimes he also played the cornet. In 1960 he published The Avant-Garde with John Coltrane. After leaving Coleman’s quartet he recorded and toured with George Russell, Albert Ayler and Sonny Rollins, co-directed the New York Contemporary Five with Archie Shepp and recorded with Steve Lacy.

In 1965 he released his first album as a leader entitled Complete Communion for the Blue Note label with a group that included Gato Barbieri. During the 1970s he became involved in the development of the world music blending traditional music from India, Africa and the Middle East, and learned to play a number of native musical instruments. From 1978 to 1982 he recorded three albums for ECM Records with the cooperative group Codona and when it was dissolved he formed the band Nu. In 1987 he participated again in Coleman’s original quartet, which appeared on the first of the double album In All Languages. Cherry died of liver cancer in 1995 at the age of 58.

The theme is very short and sounds strangely traditional, and after having being exposed, Haden plays a concise passage. Then Cherry plays several phrases and then Coleman does the same to give way to Haden, who makes a well thought out solo with silences and double notes. All of a sudden Cherry enters making a determined, but casual solo that then complicates using different motifs. Now it’s Coleman’s turn, who offers a changing and interesting speech with unusual and surprising phrases. Next Haden intervenes again and Coleman and Cherry play a final sentence.