The Creator makes but one demand: vote for your favorite Pharoah Sanders album

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

IMO more like a #5 or #6

would rate all these higher

izipho zam
thembi
deaf dumb blind (summun bukmun umyun)
tauhid
journey to the one

I'm just happy Journey to the One didn't get shut-out of the love

Really, anyone who gets upset over the results of a Pharoah Sanders poll has missed the point of living

eh who's upset

tauhid is so good!

sonny sharrock is next level on tauhid

sharrock's contribution to tauhid always sounds very velvet underground-y to me, not that i'm suggesting any direct 'influence' either way, more like there was something in the air

One of those gems drizzled among lesser albums, I am in love with this song right now. The way the harmony horns emerge to complete and resolve the main melodic phrase just KILLS me every time. Chills for real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2eZS5d_ng&list=ALBTKoXRg38BCu9wYhsitCuDWy26by2Gul

love this tune

Oh, happens that our local weekly, Arkansas Times, in last week's issue, ran a nice article on his early life around here. He may be called Little Rock, but he grew up in NORTH Little Rock, about 3 miles from where I type. As a fellow North Little Rocker, makes me wonder if he ever corrected them when he got to California. "That's North Little Rock." "Whatever, Little Rock!"

http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/where-were-you-on-pharoah-sanders-day/Content?oid=3410064

This month's Wire has an in depth primer on Sanders

I'll have to read that.

I love everything I've heard of Sanders, which amounts to all his records with Coltrane, "Preview" on The Jazz Composers Orchestra, and Ask the Ages. But I've never heard any of his solo records.

Recommendations on where to start?

any of the first six at the top of the poll, really

otm

This month's Wire has an in depth primer on Sanders

By me! Thanks for reading!

And Burns, yeah, the top seven albums in the poll are all great, and so is Live at the East.

Cool, thanks. I shall begin with Karma.

Omg you are gonna flip!!!

Ah, horse, didn't realise this was by you. Seriously smashing stuff.

Karma is an excellent introduction. I raided my grandparents' (RIP) record collection while clearing out their flat in Paris earlier in the year. Huge jazz fans, and I managed to salvage copies of Tauhid and Jewels of Thought. I'd say Tauhid is fast becoming a favourite. Something so exuberant about Sanders' compositions; a joy and wonder I feel over and above a large majority of jazz players. Jewels of Thought is much more abstruse but not without its interesting parts.

last night's Global Village (good stream from Wichita) started off with title track from Brown Rice. perfectiy followed by some from last year's Beyond The Ragasphere. I got to thinking again about Cherry, Condona, Shakti, and Live At The East. looking for more like the last, came across this, by Allmusic's Thom Jurek:

The aesthetic and cultural merits of Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music cannot be overstated...one of the most obscure recordings in Blue Note's catalog -- paid for out of label co-founder Francis Wolff's own pocket...seamlessly blends the new jazz of the '60s -- Gale was a member of the Sun Ra Arkestra before and after these sides, and played on Cecil Taylor's Blue Note debut, Unit Structures -- with gospel, soul, and the blues. Gale's sextet included two bass players and two drummers -- in 1968 -- as well as a chorus of 11 voices, male and female...Soloists come and go, but modes, melodies, and harmonies remain firmly intact. The beautiful strains of African folk music and Latin jazz sounds in "Fulton Street," for example, create a veritable chromatic rainbow. "A Walk with Thee" is a spiritual written to a march tempo with drummers playing counterpoint to one another and the front line creating elongated melodic lines via an Eastern harmonic sensibility. Does it swing? Hell yeah! The final cut, "The Coming of Gwilu," moves from the tribal to the urban and everywhere in between using Jamaican thumb pianos, soaring vocals à la the Arkestra, polyrhythmic invention, and good, old-fashioned groove jazz, making something entirely new in the process...succeeds because it concentrates on creating a space for the myriad voices of an emerging African-American cultural force to be heard in a single architecture. This is militant music posessed by soul and spirit. All that??? Hope so!

Yeah that's a great album, especially love the song "The Rain" that starts like Linda Perhacs before heading into a Ra-like chant with horns blazing away

I'd say if you're looking for a starting point the 2cd Anthology: You've got To Have Freedom is a great place to start since it covers most of his best material in edited form.
If you enjoy that you can go out and buy the individual lps. You'll probably want to hear the full length versions. But the shorter edits which are 9 minutes to about 15 is good starting point.

That Wire Primer does look like it'll help you get a grounding too.

Oh yeah, just saw the new Jazzwise on the racks of the local chain newsagent yesterday and that's talking about a new John Coltrane Quintet release that's just come out. Sounds like it should be worth investigating. There's a several page article and a review in that magazine
http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/

Do you mean Offering?
http://www.resonancerecords.org/release.php?cat=B0019632-02

I have the grey-market release of (part of) this show, and it's tremendous, easily on par with Live in Japan (and maybe better).

Yeah, Offering is really great. I'm particularly amazed by the sound quality they were able to achieve, considering they were working off a two-track tape recorded with a single mic positioned center stage. Granted, Coltrane drowns everybody out when he's soloing, but you get to hear way more of the band than I expected to be able to hear. It's definitely worth picking up if you're a late-Coltrane obsessive. Shouldn't be anybody's first (or even fifteenth) purchase, though.

Yeah that's the one.

just got Elevation used from the local store. oh my god side 2.

feels like a new experience outside of spotify+earbuds

looks like Izipho Zam is getting reissued on LP via the Everland Jazz label

finally!

can anyone comment on the sound quality of the new reissues (tauhid / jewels of thought / summun bukmun umyun)?

i heard they were bad :-(

They're not bad.

i don't know, tauhid sounded okay but the sax on the title track from summun bukmun umyun seems a little ... strangled

i'm going to A/B it with a CD but i'm not sure that's a fair comparison

Re the above - I got the Thembi / Black Unity (2015). Thembi is much more... forthright than the 1998 digipak version which gently wafts out of the speakers.

I don't know if it's bad, I kind of like it but it's very different and probably not at all like the original record.

CD by the way. "Dynamic range" number freaks will no doubt consider it a travesty and sometimes I'm in line with that but tastes change and this stuff is close-miced and mixed anyway so not like it ever had the verisimilitude of a room sound.

I just spun Black Unity the other day for the first time in a long while. Like Live at the East it's another one where S2 goes into this deep, mellow harmonium-driven drone. What a sound!

Since Black Unity is just one pauseless track, how does that work on vinyl? Does it fade out at the end of side 1 and fade back in on side 2?

yeah all the big epics are that way

One of those gems drizzled among lesser albums, I am in love with this song right now. The way the harmony horns emerge to complete and resolve the main melodic phrase just KILLS me every time. Chills for real.

― andrew m., Friday, August 15, 2014 10:48 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

love this tune

― Dokken played here for a Ribfest and people were total assholes (Sparkle Motion), Friday, August 15, 2014 12:15 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

anyone remember what this was? Link is long gone

Dunno, but I just heard Wisdom Through Music for the first time and the opening track is the nuts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zbKjU5te2k

The Pharoah & the Underground albums (Sanders guesting with a one-off combination of Rob Mazurek's Chicago and São Paulo Underground groups) are pretty amazing. They're on Clean Feed; one is CD-only, the other LP-only, with completely different music on each.

Just bought a ticket to see him next Saturday at Iridium in NYC. I have no idea who's playing with him. The last time I saw him was also at Iridium, when it was uptown by Lincoln Center. That time, he had Ron Carter on bass and Cindy Blackman on drums. I can't remember who was on piano.

briefly considered flying out to catch one of those shows. couldn’t swing it bc of work. last time he was in minneapolis was 2016 and i doubt he’ll ever make it back. let me know how it goes ? would def be into coming out in spring or summer if he ends up playing some more shows.

lost out on an eBay auction for a vinyl copy of Wisdom Through Music recently, it's a great record

Damn went to finally buy a copy of elevation from Honest John's cos they've had it every time I've been in over the last couple of years and they didn't have it. Shame was looking forward to getting that.
Are all the late 60s lps now available as 2fer cds cos I still need a couple.

The anthology is a good starting point anyway.

Humorist wrote this above in 2014: "Live at the East is also one of the great fake live albums; the story is, bringing recording equipment to the actual East (a performance space and African cultural center in Brooklyn) was prohibitively expensive, so they brought an audience into the studio. There's also applause at the end of Black Unity, which always blows my mind—imagine being in the room for that."

On that subject, I just read this post on the Steve Hoffman Forums:
https://www.forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/pharoah-sanders-how-to-start-collecting.689253/page-6#post-22822977

"Pharoah's performance at the East was recorded for an intended live album. Unfortunately, the recording was quickly recognized as being flawed in such a way as to make it unusable. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, management immediately decided to bring the band and its family members into A&R Studios in Manhattan to record what ended up being a live-in-the-studio album with faux club ambiance. The released recording was made hours after the show at The East. [Note that there is another version of this story in which the album was recorded at A&R Studios because Impulse never had any intention of recording the show at The East.]

Given that Black Unity has the exact same lineup of musicians [including two bassists (Clarke & McBee) and two drummers (Hart & Connors)] as the Live at the East recording, one might conclude that Black Unity (recorded 11/24/71) was recorded in the same session as Live at the East (recording date is listed as November 1971). If so, the band's family and friends were not a part of the recording for Black Unity."

But as noted by Humorist, there IS applause at the end of "Black Unity," giving more credence to the theory that "Live at the East" and "Black Unity" were recorded at the same session.

I emailed Johnathan Blake to see if he'd be on drums; he will. The rest of the band is Benito Gonzalez on piano and Nat Reeves on bass.

That's interesting about Live at the East... I always assumed it was one of those typical live recordings where it sounds like there are about a dozen people in the audience, and in a way I guess that still holds.

It's come to be one of my very favorite Pharoah albums, mostly for S2 and the extended harmonium drone.

Amazing videos, cheers Stevo

Shame looks like that video from Montreux in 1978 has gone

Was looking for it to share in tribute to him since he just died

Tauhid deserves more attention, I'm pretty sure that's the one I've listened to the most overall.

Everything from Elevation through Naima ranges from disappointing to dire.

What the hell, Elevation is awesome.

JUst watched this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joieeBqeNoM
I think I saw a 10 minute section a while back but this has an hour and 20 minutes and cuts out a couple of times so it's difficult to see how much could still be missing. From the footage itself anyway,
Very good stuff.

Do wish that Montreux 78 thing would reappear cos that was amazing. THis is Antibes.