Don Cherry stands in a doorway, one foot in, one foot out of
his Las Vegas
ranch house. He’s tapping his toe. His hands fidget in the pockets of his
windsuit. The sun shines. His golf cart is loaded. We’re waiting on his wife,
Francine. Cherry rocks on his heels. Outside, then in again. He wants to get
going. The threshold between
indoors and out seems the ideal spot to take a snapshot of this man who has
lived life with his feet firmly planted in two spheres: golf and show business.
He had the after-hours escape any pro golfer might have longed for—paying gigs
as a crooner of the first order, an honorary member of the Rat Pack who sang his
way to a gold record. Then again, Cherry enjoyed the sunshine heroics any singer
in smoky lounges might envy—as a golfer who competed with the world’s best on
the game’s grandest stages, playing the PGA Tour and teeing it up in 17 major
championships.
He is the music-making golfer who knocked ’em dead at the
Desert Inn for years, whom Vic Damone dubbed the “singer’s singer,” who traveled
with Dean Martin and Buddy Hackett from one high-profile booking to another
throughout the ’60s and ’70s. But he’s also the singer who happened to be
undefeated in Walker Cup play, who played in the Masters as an amateur for the
better part of a decade, who played himself to within one shot of the lead with
two holes to play in the 1960 U.S. Open at (coincidentally) Cherry Hills.
Looking at Cherry now, it’s not hard to see either version of
him. At 78, he’s still at home on a golf course; he isn’t as long as he once
was, but his shots fly as straight as a microphone stand and he putts like a
champ. He plays golf better than most men sing, but the truth is, he still sings
better than, well, just about anybody. He’s still recording, even during one of
the toughest periods of his life, having lost his son Stephen in the World Trade Center massacre.
So why don’t more people know him as the golfer or the
singer? It’s a question he’s been asked a thousand times before. “I made
choices. I could always play golf and I could always sing. For a long time, one
complemented the other. I loved them both; I just never gave one up to devote
myself fully to the other. I didn’t feel I had to.”
Now, at the age when most men are well into their retirement,
Cherry is considering his next CD (a collaboration with Willie Nelson), and his
next benefit concert, all the while editing the final drafts of his memoir,
“Cherry’s Jubilee: I Never Played the Game.”
The subtitle is puzzling since Cherry did play the game—and
played it with style.
