Don Cherry
From the very beginning, Los Angeles-raised Don Cherry (1936) displayed an anti-virtuoso attitude that contrasted with the ruling dogmas of jazz music. Cherry shunned both acrobatic exhibitions and radical experiments in favor of humility and pathos (thus appealing more to the rock crowd than to the jazz crowd). His style focused on the idiosyncratic timbres of his pocket trumpet and on languid phrases that evoked ancestral worlds via the abstraction of exotic styles, predating Jon Hassell's "fourth world" music (and the whole world-music bandwagon) by more than a decade.
From the very beginning, Los Angeles-raised Don Cherry (1936) displayed an anti-virtuoso attitude that contrasted with the ruling dogmas of jazz music. Cherry shunned both acrobatic exhibitions and radical experiments in favor of humility and pathos (thus appealing more to the rock crowd than to the jazz crowd). His style focused on the idiosyncratic timbres of his pocket trumpet and on languid phrases that evoked ancestral worlds via the abstraction of exotic styles, predating Jon Hassell's "fourth world" music (and the whole world-music bandwagon) by more than a decade.
Brown Rice (LP)
Original Italian and first edition on EMI of the 1975 album featuring Charlie Haden and Frank Lowe.
At The Beethoven Hall (2LP)
Original edition of the 1971 Japan-only double-album on MPS' "W Punch Series" with a live recording from 1965 featuring Don Cherry. With insert and obi.
Eternal Rhythm: Conversations and Travelations with Don Cherry and Graeme Ewens (Book)
Eternal Rhythm: Conversations and Travelations with Don Cherry and Graeme Ewens is the book on Don Cherry we have been waiting for - not a biography written from the outside, but a portrait built from the inside, from hours of cassette-taped conversations recorded since 1979 by writer Graeme Ewens, a confidant, travel companion, and close friend of Cherry. Published by Ars Nova Workshop, this is an intimate, free-flowing document of one of the most unique and innovative voices to emerge from the…
Free Jazz (LP)
1970's US re-issue on Atlantic with laminated and die-cut gatefold sleeve with embossed blue stereo, of the 1961 album featuring Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Haden, Freddie Hubbard and Ed Blackwell. With original innersleeve.
Free Jazz (LP)
1974 US re-issue on Atlantic with un-laminated and no die-cut gatefold sleeve of the 1961 album featuring Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Haden, Freddie Hubbard and Ed Blackwell. With original innersleeve.
Ornette (LP)
1986 US re-issue on Atlantic's "Jazzlore" series of the 1962 album featuring Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell.
The Art Of The Improvisers (LP)
1990's US re-issue on Atlantic of the 1970 album recorded in 1959/1961 featuring Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell.
Twins (LP)
1981 US re-issue on Atlantic's "Jazzlore" series of the 1971 album with recordings from 1959/1960 featuring Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Haden, Freddie Hubbard and Ed Blackwell.
The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (2LP)
1980 re-issue on JCOA Records of the 1968 double-album by Michael Mantler's big band featuring Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Lyons, Alan Silva, Charlie Haden, Kent Carter, Andrew Cyrille, Carla Bley, Steve Lacy and Gato Barbieri and many others.
The Jazz Composer's Orchestra (2LP)
1980 re-issue on JCOA Records of the 1968 double-album by Michael Mantler's big band featuring Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Lyons, Alan Silva, Charlie Haden, Kent Carter, Andrew Cyrille, Carla Bley, Steve Lacy and Gato Barbieri and many others.
Predetermination + Beautiful United Harmony Happening (2LP Bundle)
Two sunken treasures from the same Copenhagen underground, gathered here as a pair. On one LP, Predetermination: The Contemporary Jazz Quartet caught in 1964 alongside Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock - the rhythm section of Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity - on music that stayed hidden for sixty years. Free jazz before the norm was set, exploding out of Denmark years ahead of the rest of Scandinavia.
On the other, Beautiful United Harmony Happening / The Education of an Amphibian: John Tchicai at hi…
Beautiful United Harmony Happening, The Education of an Amphibian
* 150 copies Small repress* “Beautiful United Harmony Happening” / “The Education of an Amphibian” - the second release by Alga Marghen’s brand new free jazz imprint, Formalibera - is also dedicated to the output of John Tchicai following his return to Copenhagen during the mid 1960s. Comprising two pieces, remarkably, this single LP effectively bookends a rich period of activity for the saxophonist, capturing one of his earliest group formations as a leader from 1966, as well as one of his last…
Ghosts (LP)
1975 Japanese re-issue on Trio/Freedom's "Freedom Discover The '60's Series" with different cover of the 1965 album featuring Gary Peacock, Don Cherry and Sunny Murray. With insert.
The Hilversum Session (LP)
Original 1980 Dutch LP on Osmosis with recordings from 1964 featuring Gary Peacock, Don Cherry and Sunny Murray.
New York Eye And Ear Control (CD)
First 1992 CD re-issue from ESP-Disk' / ZYX Music of the 1964 LP with the soundtrack to the Michael Snow film.
The Third World-Underground
CD edition. A title like a manifesto, and music with the conviction to carry it. For a few nights at the close of 1972, the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen held a trio that would barely survive the season. Abdullah Ibrahim - then still recording as Dollar Brand - sat at the piano; Don Cherry stood with his trumpet; Carlos Ward raised his alto. From the performance of November 14 came The Third World-Underground, a record that surfaced only in Japan, on Trio Records' Nadja imprint in 1974, and t…
Blue Lake
On Blue Lake, Don Cherry dissolves borders in real time: a transcendent 1971 Paris trio set with Johnny Dyani and Okay Temiz, now restored by Charly and BYG, where flute, bass and percussion spiral through Native American echoes, Far‑Eastern tonalities and two sprawling, ecstatic journeys past the twenty‑five‑minute mark.
Complete Communion
Complete Communion marks the stunning 1965 Blue Note debut of Don Cherry, the visionary cornetist best known for his work alongside Ornette Coleman in the late 1950s. This landmark session captures Cherry at a creative peak, leading a fiery quartet featuring Gato Barbieri on tenor saxophone, Henry Grimes on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums. Together, they explore the outer edges of post-bop and free jazz, building long-form compositions that seamlessly weave multiple themes into unified, evolving…
Togetherness
Recorded in Paris in 1965, Don Cherry’s Togetherness is a five‑part live suite where pocket‑trumpet chants, Gato Barbieri’s searing tenor, vibes and a dancing rhythm section turn early free jazz into something fiercely open yet strangely joyful.
Europe 1964
Super tip! Holy ghost music. The real deal. The sound of four men tearing a hole in the fabric of what jazz was supposed to be and letting something else pour through - something ancient and raw and utterly new. In their short time together, Albert Ayler and Don Cherry created a body of music that genuinely exists in the moment. Oblivious to rules and aesthetic boundaries, they played what they felt on their nerve-ends, embracing mistakes and wrong turns as part of the experience of making art i…