1976 – time for a new transformation
At the later part of 1976. That's where I've been lately. My mind has travelled to Italy, New York City, to Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and California. Just to follow the magic whereabouts of Don Cherry, trying to write his story. Quite fascinating that you can do this from an apartment just south of Stockholm, Sweden.
At the time, Don and Mokis extensive touring in Italy had come to an end. For some years they had been driving back and forth through the country, performing at the great festivals that was offered during the time. It was the way of the Organic Music Theatre, the Cherry family, living in a bus, camping, playing music, being together, living their lives.
In Parco Lambro in Milano in late June 1976, nearly a hundred thousand – 100 000! – attended their concert. Unfortunately it went out of hands, police doing as they usually did, shooting teargas at people, but also some people in the audience just couldn't let be of harassing others, fighting and looting. In an extraordinary way Don Cherry succeeded in calming the audience, paving the way to a great concert.
Cherry again was in a state of transforming. When coming to the US in late October, he went into the electrified world of folky funkjazz on the Hear and Now album, and also returned to the jazz scene with the recording of the first Old and New Dreams album with Charlie Haden, Edward Blackwell and Dewey Redman. But also he was at the Tibetan buddhist center at Naropa where he had a talk with Allen Ginsberg and musician Peter Rowan about bringing buddhist mantras into music, and then meeting Lou Reed at the airport in Los Angeles and at the same night performing with him and his band at the Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica. That would be enough for a whole career, wouldn't it? But no way in the life of Don Cherry. As the icing of the cake, he also made an unreleased studio recording with the original quartet of Ornette Coleman. Some heavy months, or what do you say?
The Hear and Now album was produced by Narada Michael Walden, and actually it was the first album he ever produced, later came Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston and Maria Carey. Some months ago I was fortunate enough to get an interview with Walden. Wow! A cosmic experience for sure. Among the things he said was that the label Atlantic had been asking him to do kind of a Bitches Brew, but of course filtered through Cherry. And he did, he thought.
On March 9 Ornette Coleman (1930–2015) would have turned 96 years old. In honoring him, today I have also published an extract (in Swedish) where I write about the time for the recording of the Coleman album Crisis in 1969. It was the first time Cherry recorded with Coleman since the days with the quartet. In 2017 I met with Denardo Coleman, who as a 12 year old also participated on the album, and of course he had some interesting things to say. This one is only for paid members.
