Don cherry trumpet biography of william

“No man is an island.” —John Donne

It’s an axiom, and one that is ultimately relatable to this issue’s central figure, Don Cherry.

Don cherry trumpet biography of william

But, before we go any further, I want to present a separate axiomatic phrase that envelops the broader working philosophy of Sound American, this time from Benjamin Disraeli:

“Change is inevitable.

Change is constant.”

In order to quickly veer away from the territory of the precocious teen using his sister’s copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations to pad out a five-page paper on the Marshall Plan, let’s explore how these two postulates relate to the pages within Sound American Issue 14.

Trumpet player, improviser, and world-music iconoclast Don Cherry was easily my least favorite artist on the instrument when I was growing up.

Preferring the more conservative and controlled frenetic style of the late Miles Davis or Booker Little, I couldn’t hear past the lack of definition