Don Cherry: Where Is Brooklyn? (Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series) LP

Blue Note, 1969

Blue Note founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff had open ears and open minds, as they proved time and time again through the early-1960s as they documented some of the most adventurous players of the modern jazz scene like Andrew Hill, Eric Dolphy, and Tony Williams. But it wasn’t until they brought Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry to Blue Note in 1965 that they dove headfirst into the avant-garde. Coleman and Cherry had of course made history together years prior as half of Coleman’s revolutionary quartet that put the NYC jazz world on notice that there was a new thing in town with their 1959 arrival at the Five Spot Café. Though Cherry co-led the album The Avant-Garde with John Coltrane in 1961, his career as a bandleader began with his bold Blue Note debut Complete Communion recorded in December 1965 (Coleman had documented his new trio live at the Golden Circle in Stockholm for his own Blue Note debut just weeks before). Cherry returned to Van Gelder Studio twice in the Fall of 1966, first to record his expansive Symphony for Improvisers and again for the fiery Where Is Brooklyn? The latter was a highly interactive quartet session featuring Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone and piccolo, Henry Grimes on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums that presented five Cherry originals including “Awake Nu” and “The Thing.”