With Pharoah Sanders, Henry Grimes and Ed Blackwell, in 1966.
‘Sanders’ mix of Coltrane’s yearning long notes, Ayler’s ghostly, fluttering wail, Coleman’s fast, bumpy phrasing and his own manic bagpipe screams certainly separates the faint-hearted from the stayers on the opening Awake Nu. But the conversation between Sanders and Cherry is light, lyrical and engaging on The Thing, and the saxophonist even gets into a stubborn, Sonny Rollins-like repeating Latin vamp on There Is the Bomb. An unflinchingly quirky classic’ (The Guardian).

With Gato Barbieri, Karl Berger, Bo Stief and Aldo Romano, showcasing his new Blue Note album — still powerful, joyous, inspired.

DC’s first album as leader, after leaving the Ornette Coleman Quartet. Two side-long suites, recorded in single takes on Christmas Eve, 1965. Bristling with creativity, rammed with great tunes and brilliant solo spots. Cherry plays cornet, alongside Gato Barbieri, Henry Grimes and Ed Blackwell. In the same year as his own debut as leader — The Call for ESP — Grimes is terrific.

Numinous outernational jazz recorded in Stockholm in 1972 — DC originals, and covers of Terry Riley, Nana Vasconcelos, Abdullah Ibrahim, Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas. Wonderful stuff; strenuously recommended.

Previously unreleased music from 1968 and 1971 — with Maffy Falay, Bernt Rosengren, Okay Temiz, Torbjorn Hultcrantz, Tommy Koverhult, Leif Wennerstrom and Rolf Olsson.

The Organic Music Society in super-quality audio, recorded by RAI in 1976 for Italian TV.
Ecstatic, bare-naked, free-as-the-birds music, with Cherry playing pocket-trumpet, the great Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, the Italian guitar of Gian Piero Pramaggiore, and the tanpura drone of Moki.
‘A pure hippie aesthetic, like in an intimate ceremony, filters a magical encounter between Eastern and Western civiliziations, offering different suggestions of sound mysticism: natural acoustics in which individual instruments and voices are part of a wider pan-tribal consciousness. A desert Western landscape marries Asian and Latin atmospheres. Indigenous contributions with berimbau explorations find fossil sounds of rattles and clap-hands invocations. Influences of Indian mantra singing are combined with eternal African voices or with folkish-Latin guitar rhythms, while flute and drums evoke distant dances.’
Interviewing Shirley Collins recently, Stewart Lee noted how so many of her songs are ‘stories that go back hundreds of years, and that suggests there’s a continuity to existence, which means we don’t have to worry.’ Quite different music, obviously, but Om Shanti Om is the same kind of miracle medicine.
It’s a must.

Good old-fashioned bopping out at Van Gelder’s in 1989 with chums Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins from early Ornette days; and sensationally bringing back Texas Tenorman James Clay, DC’s spar in late-50s California, and avowedly a key musical influence. It’s a celebratory, self-affirming set: three OCs, Bemsha Swing, a rootical solo Haden and a sparkling solo Cherry, Body And Soul, I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face… Look back in love. Everyone plays masterfully.
‘Verve By Request’.

The trumpeter in particular thriving in the strangeness of the set-up — Trane with Ornette’s band, on soprano, playing three Colemans, a Monk and a Cherry.
Superior 180g vinyl via Rhino, in mono.

Ayler at his most intense, with Sonny Murray and Gary Peacock in Copenhagen.
This is the 1964 recording entitled Ghosts for its original release on Debut.

Don Cherry meets the Groupe de Recherches Musicales!
Recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival organised by INA grm and hosted by François Bayle, this is a terrific, deeply congruent, soulful encounter.
Cherry plays pocket trumpet extensively and beautifully (also n’goni and whistles), with characteristically unguarded, elemental sublimity; Nana Vasconcelos is dazzlingly, hypnotically grooving. Electro-acoustic pioneer Jean Schwarz — a collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard — contributes elegant tape-work, synths, and treatments; his long-time associates Michel Portal and JF Jenny-Clark are highly accomplished European jazz legends. (Feted recently by Souffle Continu, the clarinettist is a mainstay of the Jef Gilson set-up, who recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sunny Murray; the bassist played on DC’s 1965 Blue Note classic Symphony For Improvisers… not to mention Brigitte Fontaine’s Comme à la Radio).
Remastered from the original master tapes; out here for the first time.
It’s a must.

Luminessence Series.