Ed Cherry: Always Groovin’

"I liked the look of it—I like the sound—the feel," says renowned guitarist Ed Cherry about the guitar, an instrument he has been playing for more than half a century. He long ago became a first-rate player with a warm sound and joyous approach.

He is also diverse. He's played a myriad of styles ranging from the driving bebop of Dizzy Gillespie (with whom he played for over a decade) to the free jazz explorations of Henry Threadgill and Hamiet Bluiett, to Latin gigs with Paquito D'Rivera and Roy Hargrove's Crisol band, to playing with monster Hammond B3 players, young and old—Jimmy Smith, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Jared Gold, and Brian Charette.

"I just like the whole thing. I was just drawn to the guitar. The feel of it against my body. And the sound of it. I was drawn to the sound," says Cherry, recently returned to his New York City home following a tour that took him to Italy and Poland. "One of the things that I focused on when I first started playing the guitar was listening to the sound that different players produced. The sound of the guitarist in James Brown's band. The sound of Booker T and the MGs' guitarist, Steve Cropper. I zoned in on that. I was a tone freak, even back then. I was really discerning about Albert King's tone, different from B.B. King's tone."

Cherry has been one of the strong voices on the Big Apple scene since the 1970s. He started out listening to rock. He is open to playing in most any genre.

Cherry's sense of tone and style is on display again on his new recording Are We There Yet (Cellar Music Group, 2023), a delightful romp through music penned from a variety of sources, like Cedar Walton and a couple of his guitar heroes, Grant Green and Wes Montgomery, whose influences can be heard in Cherry's delivery. Cherry also contributes as a writer, including the title cut.

The opener, "Jean/Pauline," the guitarist wrote for his two daughters. It sets the stage, with Cherry channeling Green, Montgomery, and Kenny Burrell that formulates his style. "Japanese Folk Song" has an understated swing. Cherry's stellar band—Kyle Koehler on organ, Monte Croft on vibes and Bryon Landham (longtime drummer with Joey DeFrancesco) providing superb support. Koehler is particularly sharp, almost a co-star of the proceedings with his strong groove and sensibility to Cherry's moods and movements.

"Kyle Koehler and I have been playing together for at least 20 years. He's a world-class player," Cherry says. "Monte Croft, we did a couple of gigs together. But I've always enjoyed his playing. Byron Landham I've played with off and on for the past few years."

He's happy with the album and says it's getting good airplay on jazz radio, which he modestly says is a bit of a surprise. The groove and the sense of joy put forth in the music, in addition to the expertise that is on display, are sure to attract listeners. "That's my personality. Your personality comes out in your playing, your writing, your arranging. So if it sounds happy, then I guess I'm happy. Groove is the thing for me."

But guitar wasn't the first thing Cherry played growing up in New Haven, CT. He played clarinet for a few years and he got to the seventh grade before he first grasped a guitar. He sought out the instrument because of the dominant presence of guitar-driven rock and roll music on radio in America.

"At that time, there were a lot of rock bands on television. I was looking at the bands playing and the girls screaming, and I said 'Hmm. I want to do that,'" he says with a chuckle. "So I asked my parents for a guitar for Christmas. And Santa brought one. And the rest is history. I just started playing continuously."

Cherry took some early lessons but abandoned them in favor of playing with friends in the neighborhood, running through the popular songs of the day. He and his cohorts played school dances and similar gigs. In 1972, he went to the Berklee College of Music, but his stay was very brief. While still learning (something he says he does to this day), he was a strong player and good enough to take a job and hit the road.

The road still beckons.

His first experience was with Fred Paris and the Five Satins, best known for the 1956 mega-hit "In the Still of the Night."

"It was an oldies group and that was my first road experience. I am glad I did it, because they were great guys. Fred was a great band leader. He had a great band—young guys, just like me—and they could all play. And it was fun," he recalls. "Back in the early '70s, there was a resurgence of doo-wop. And there were a lot of festivals going on, in a lot of the major cities. We did a lot of those. People like The Drifters, The Platters. They all had a second chance. So they were all working. That whole resurgence thing lasted a couple of years until people got tired of it. Then they kind of disappeared."

"During that time I was listening to Miles Davis and George Benson and Larry Coryell, Art Blakey, and Wayne Shorter and all of those people. But I didn't really have any jazz playing experience. Finally, around 1973-74, I started working with this organ player named Bobby Buster and his brother Eddie Buster. They were B3 players that had moved to New Haven from Chicago. They were on the scene in Chicago in the 1960s. And they were playing with Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons and people like that."

It was Cherry's first experience not just with jazz, but with the Hammond B3. It's something he has incorporated ever since.

"It was great. I had fun. They were good guys. I was lucky. I was always associated with good band leaders, older guys who never took advantage of me. They were very helpful," says Cherry.

"My entree into jazz was playing with the B3. I really am drawn to that, for sentimental as well as sonic reasons. I love the sound of the B3. Plus it kind of takes me back to my youth a little bit. It's a nice instrument," he says. "But I also enjoy playing with piano and bass. I have a trio now with piano and bass, no drums. I also enjoy playing with bass and drums, no piano. I've done the occasional solo guitar thing, but not too often. But I enjoy that too. I enjoy playing in all types of situations."

While playing with the Buster brothers was his first foray into performing jazz, Cherry was not ignorant of the art form. His father was a jazz fan so it was heard regularly in the New Haven household. "I remember hearing Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, and Wes Montgomery—I knew who they were. But when I started playing the guitar, I was a rock and roll guy. I was into Jimi Hendrix. And I also like blues. All the Kings—Freddie King, B.B. King and Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells. All of that stuff. I liked I liked the electric players who could really play. Also the Chicago players who were also good entertainers. They can play and they could sing and they they put on a good show. I was drawn to those types of blues players."

Eventually, Cherry made it to New York City where young musicians went to make a name for themselves and begin forging careers. In his early 20s, he worked day jobs and gigged at night, doing what he could to survive in the world's most famous city. Then he was fortunate to land a job with one of the titans—Dizzy Gillespie. "Then everything changed," he says succinctly.

"My first trip to Europe was that same year. I don't think I'd ever been on an airplane until I started playing with Dizzy. It was a completely different world for me."

He got the job through a friend, Rodney Jones, who was actually playing guitar with Gillespie. Cherry met him at a concert. He would go to catch the Gillespie band in clubs and hang out with Jones and some others in the band. He even asked Jones for lessons, but his friend didn't have the time to do it. Jones recommended another teacher, with whom Cherry took lessons for awhile. Eventually, Jones was ready to leave Gillespie. He recommended Cherry to take the guitar chair.

"I went to the auditions/rehearsal and wondered if Dizzy would recognize me. He says, 'Oh, yeah, I know you.' So he hired me right away for two or three gigs," Cherry says. "I thought I'd make those gigs, and that would be it. I never thought that I'd stay as long as I did. But I ended up in this band for more than 10 years."

Playing with a man of that stature was a learning experience for the young guitarist. And not just from a musical standpoint.

"You watch how he interacts with people that he doesn't know. His old friends. I saw how many of his old of his peers," Cherry recalls, with an air of awe and respect. "They would come see him and really respected him. It was an eye-opening experience. He was as nice to the hotel maid as he was to the president of the United States. He was nice to everyone. That was a good lesson for a young kid that had never been off the farm, so to speak. It was great."

Cherry has vast sideman experience over the years and cites Sam Rivers, Henry Threadgill, and organist John Patton as some of the standout gigs. It took him a bit of time to play alongside Dr. Lonnie Smith, but that was a feather in his cap as well.

Says Cherry, "We did a recording a couple of years before the pandemic. And that was quite popular. That was a fun band. It was an octet. It was great. I knew Lonnie even before I moved to New York. A friend of mine was playing in his band. Lonnie was, at that time, looking for a guitarist. And my friend recommended me and I drove to New York to jam with Lonnie at a club in Harlem. Lonnie was great. But I wasn't ready. But he was very nice. We just stayed in touch through the years and every now and then he would call me for little gigs. I finally got the gig with him with In the Beginning (MRI/Pilgrimage, 2013)

Cherry got the job with Roy Hargrove and his Latin jazz project after Russell Malone left the trumpeter to take the gig with Diana Krall.

"I like all of it," he says. "Latin, blues, swing, free, whatever. I've been in all of those situations. And I just enjoy doing it all."

The common thread in all his experiences?

"They were all master musicians," Cherry says. "They all had clear concepts about what they wanted. And they all hired great musicians. So playing with them was easy. They were all focused on what they wanted to have happen. That's kind of the common thread. The music may have been different, but they were all focused people who knew what they wanted and knew how to articulate it in one way or another. It's great that way."

His career as a band leader began to take off in the mid-1990s. It was 1993 when he released his first record, First Take (Groovin High, 1993). He did another for that label, A Second Look, which came out in 1995, before he moved on to Justin Time records with the album The Spirits Speak (Justin Time, 1995).

He's recorded steadily ever since and has led groups in various formats.

"I have the piano-bass trio. And I've been doing gigs off and on over the years with Peter Bernstein in a two-guitar band. I would like to maybe get that recorded at some point. And maybe do another organ trio record somewhere down the road," he says.

"I met Peter 1985 or 86. He came to see Dizzy play. And he introduced himself to me and I didn't even know he played guitar. I didn't know how great he was. He was just this shy kid who came up and introduced himself. And so we stayed in touch and we've played together off and on over the years. It's always fun with him."

So Cherry will continue to groove on, to swing on, with that luscious tone and phrasing that is always buoyant.

"The intimacy and the swing," is what he likes about jazz, he says. "I enjoy hearing voices, like the sounds of the instruments, the different arrangements, the swing, the blues. The whole history of black music is all in there. And that's kind of what attracted me to jazz. And my dad's influence. Growing up with it in the house. I knew about Charlie Parker was when I was 10. I knew who he was. He wasn't one of my favorites, but I knew who he was. I was probably the only kid in my whole area, who, at that time, at that age, knew who Charlie Parker was. I grew up with it. I understand it. I appreciate what it takes to become a masterful musician. And yeah, so that's about it."

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