Don Cherry - 'Cherry Jam' Japanese Edition CD

Cherry Jam

GB1559CDOBI
Release date: 26 February, 2021
Mini-Vinyl replica style Compact Disc with Obi strip
Digital download available with purchase!

Get the Vinyl

"Hip as hell" - The Wire

"Their output doesn’t suggest an incendiary avant-garde so much as an extended post-bop language, cool-tempered and abidingly hip." - WBGO

"It captures a really interesting period in his career... This is my favorite sound. It is just so chill and smart and just cool."
- Robin Hilton, NPR Music

After having released Don Cherry's Cherry Jam as a limited Record Store Day title in the Autumn of 2020, Gearbox presents this essential release on specialist Japanese Edition vinyl and CD.

‘Cherry Jam’ sets the scene in Copenhagen, a city which proved instrumental in the hosting and development of jazz musicians both local and American. Cherry had performed and recorded there with Archie Shepp in 1963, toured with Albert Ayler in the autumn of 1964, and would go on to have a residency at the hip Cafe Montmartre in 1966.

Our recording is taken from the original tape of a 1965 radio broadcast, programmed by Denmark’s national radio station (Danmarks Radio.) It was in this same year that Cherry
 would record his landmark Blue Note recording, ‘Complete Communion’, with Leandro 'Gato' Barbieri on tenor saxophone, Henry Grimes on double bass, and Edward Blackwell on drums, as well as feature on fellow American expatriate George Russell’s live album ‘George Russell Sextet at Beethoven Hall’. This particular line-up however, consisting of Danish musicians, has never been heard after its original broadcast date, and neither have the three original Don Cherry compositions that are featured on the recording credits.

Tracklist

1 The Ambassador from Greenland
2 You Took Advantage of Me
3 Priceless
4 Nigeria

Credits

Don Cherry - cornet
Mogens Bollerup - tenor saxophone
Atli Bjørn - piano
Benny Nielsen - bass
Simon Koppel - drums

Recorded at Danmarks Radio Studio 2, Copenhagen, October 1965
Mastered in-house at Gearbox Records
Artwork photograph by Riccardo Schwamenthal