Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday September 9th, 2015 with Bernard Stepien
Don Cherry, Complete Communion, 1965

Don Cherry, Complete Communion, 1965 The outstanding cornetist and composer Don Cherry started like many musician as a sideman to a star. In this case, Free Jazz stars Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins. At first glance, this is the way it looks like but the reality is quite different. It turns out that when Cherry met Coleman in 1957, it was Coleman that was integrated into Cherry’s band. They produced separate records under each one’s name but with the same band. But once Don Cherry started to lead his own bands, mostly with members of the aforementioned bands, all of a sudden, people realized that Don Cherry’s ideas and sound were also a major contribution and this despite the fact that Cherry declared officially that Coleman was his guru. Soon thereafter he co-signed a record with John Coltrane and founded the New York Contemporary Five with Archie Shepp another giant of Free Jazz history. The rest of his career consisted in an explosion of associations with various musicians and from all kinds of cultures. He settled in northern Europe even marrying a Lap (the people of northern Norway). All of this soon consecrated with three ECM records. Tonight we will sample the 1965 Complete Communion recording that many consider as his first significant recording of his own and that features heavyweight musicians Gato Barbieri, Henry Grimes and drummer Ed Blackwell, a cornerstone of the bands of Ornette Coleman. This, in a way, this is an extension of the tribute to Ornette Coleman that we have been running over the last three months and that you could re-listen to fully understand the osmosis between Coleman and Cherry. They are available from the CKCU archives on the following links: Town hall 1962: http://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/95/23178.html the shape of Jazz to come: http://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/95/22767.html complete science fiction sessions: http://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/95/22559.html