See you in a minute!
The Don Cherry Book Project is a mailing list and website regarding my work with writing an extended biography of Don Cherry. Here you will be able to read bits and pieces from unique written chapters in the coming book, extracts from nearly 200 interviews I have made with fellow musicians, friends, writers, managers and of course family to Don Cherry, plus new and unique articles about the the things he did, and also the things surrounding the extraordinary world of Don Cherry. Maybe also some old stuff that already been published in different magazines.
It's been an extraordinary time to work with this book. And fascinating. I started already in 2012, but still I get surprises about Cherrys music and whereabouts. It's taken me to Tågarp of course, the old school house the Cherry family bought in the south of Sweden in 1970. In Tågarp I have had the opportunity to search through the archive, not always ordered in an easy way I can tell. And still there is no heat in the house, I was there a week in November some years ago. Outside it was cold, below zero, and a lot of the time went to feed the hungry wood stove... But the chance to be there, feel the creative atmosphere was mind-blowing. I'm so grateful for moments like this, the trust the Cherry family have been giving me is very precious to me.
Early on in the project I traveled to Los Angeles, Eagle-Eye was there at the same time and I had the chance to meet Don's sister Barbara Lawrence in Compton. To meet up with the family was extraordinary, and I felt very welcomed. Talking to Ernest "Uncle Ernie" Meadows was a bliss. It was him and Don's father Ulysses Cherry who went from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles in 1938, all the way on Road 66, to see if it was possible to live there.
I remember David Ornette, Don's son, called me a low rider when we drove through Compton and the Watts area, where he and also his father grew up. We got a close look at his parents former house on 119th Street, we sat talking in front of the Watts Towers, visited Gompers Junior High School where Don was starting out. To visit the music room at Gompers, where he had been sitting with the school orchestra like 80 years ago, was of course something else. Sadly David Ornette passed away in 2012.
But this project also has brought me to New York, to Woodstock, to Paris, London, Copenhagen, Berlin, meeting people like Sunny Murray, Karl Berger, Carla Bley, Hamid Drake, Bo Stief, Carlos Ward, Peter Apfelbaum, and many many others. Just to hear them tell their stories about Don Cherry have been a travel in itself.
During the years my work regarding Don Cherry has been published in different places. I was co-editing the Blank Forms book Organic Societies and was also writing the liner notes for the two albums of Cherry they released: The Summer House Sessions and Organic Music Theatre - Festival de jazz de Chateauvallon 1972. I've also been published in the Finnish We Jazz Magazine (in English) with pieces about the album Organic Music Society and the time Cherry spent in Turkey in 1969.
I started this project because of my love of Don Cherrys music, but also out of an interest in his person and life. And it has occupied a lot of my time and thinking ever since. My intention is now to get finished with this extended biography. By the end of 2026 it shall have been written. And I'm now, in February 2026, in negotiations with a Swedish publisher (and I now have one, Modernista). Let's hope for the best! But of course I will work hard for getting it published also in English.
I'm happy you want to join me during this time, being a subscriber to The Don Cherry Book Project. You are most welcome!
You can either be a free member, or a paid one. As a paid one you will get access to everything I publish here. You also have the possibility to donate.
Magnus Nygren
Magnus Nygren
