Pharoah Sanders, John Coltrane and Me...

Pharoah is a man of large spiritual reservoir. He's always reaching out to truth. He's trying to allow his spiritual self to be his guide. He's dealing, among other things, in energy, in integrity, in essences. I so much like the strength of his playing. Furthermore, he is one of the innovators, and it's been my pleasure and privilege that he's been willing to help me, that he is part of the group.
John Coltrane, liner notes, Live At The Village Vanguard Again! (1966)

***Live At The Village Vanguard Again! (1966) signed by Pharoah***

John always loved to play ballads. He played some ballads when I was working with him, when he kind of opened up more freely. On some jobs I did with him, he played a ballad every now and then. Then he got back in his spaceship and took off again. That's where he was. You never knew what he was going to do next until he did it. He just started playing himself, and we all just started coming in. Whatever time we felt like we were needed, we came in.
Pharoah Sanders

A lot of time I don't know what I want to play. So I just started playing, and try to make it right, and make it join to some other kind of feeling in the music. Like I play one note, maybe that one note might mean love, and another note might mean something else. Keep on going like that until it develops into, maybe, something beautiful.
Pharoah Sanders

***Karma (1969) signed by Pharoah, Billy Hart, Reggie Workman***

I play very free. Other saxophone players, they know I don't even worry about chord progressions or anything like that. I use my ear and I just play what I want to play, even now.
Pharoah Sanders

***Jewels Of Thought (1969) signed by Pharoah***

He always had some kind of a way of looking to the future, like a kaleidoscope. He saw himself playing something different. And it seemed like he wanted to get to that level of playing. I don't know if it was a dream that came to him, but that's what he wanted to do. I couldn't figure out why he wanted to play with him, because I didn't feel like, at the time, that I was ready to play with John Coltrane. Being around him was almost like 'Well, what do you want me to do? I don't know what I'm supposed to do.' He always told me, "Play." That's what I did.
Pharoah Sanders

***Deaf Dumb Blind (1970) signed by Pharoah, Cecil McBee***

Ferrell “Pharoah” Sanders, an acclaimed tenor saxophonist, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1940. Steeped in the tradition of church and gospel music, Pharoah started on drums, then switched to alto saxophone before settling on tenor. It was a rough experience for Pharoah (and others) growing up in Arkansas in the 1940s and 1950s. He recalled leaving Little Rock in 1959, “Arkansas was so racist, I had to get out of there. It wasn’t too good for people like me...In Arkansas, you had to play behind a curtain, they didn’t want to see black people. They fed us, we had our little place where we ate, but they didn’t allow white people in there. Most of the jobs I played, a lot of parties and weddings, that’s how it was.”

So Pharoah left Little Rock to move in with his aunts and uncles in Oakland who enjoyed living in the more welcoming Bay Area. Pharoah stayed there for two years but became disenchanted with the local music scene, “In Oakland, there’s a good time, but all they wanted to do was drink and smoke. I wasn’t really into it. A friend of mine, Smiley Winters, a left handed drummer, had to work tarring parking lots. He told me, ‘Yeah, man, with your sound, you don’t need to be here, you need to go to New York City.’ And I listened to him.”

***Thembi (1971) signed by Pharoah, Cecil McBee***

Virtually penniless, Pharoah hitchhiked from Oakland to New York City where he slept on park benches, clutching his saxophone tightly to make sure it wasn’t stolen. It was a meager existence which he barely survived, scavenging and selling his blood for ten or fifteen dollars, all the while searching for places to play in and around Greenwich Village which was littered with jazz clubs. Finally, he found the Five Spot, which was showcasing the inimitable Thelonious Monk. By his own account, Pharoah looked pretty rough and he wasn’t ready to enter any clubs because his appearance was so disheveled. However, hearing Monk’s transcendent music from his perch on the sidewalk gave him hope. Soon, he was able to enlist other musicians, including the great drummer Billy Higgins who was also similarly housing challenged, bassist Wilbur Ware and John Hicks on piano, to form his initial quartet.

***Black Unity (1971) signed by Pharoah, Billy Hart, Stanley Clarke***

With these stalwart players, Pharoah began to attract attention, and, in a scant four years, found himself recruited to play with John Coltrane, one of the most influential jazz artists of the day, or any day! Pharoah would go on to record ten albums with Coltrane - many were released posthumously - and it is some of Coltrane’s finest and most challenging work. With characteristic modesty, Pharoah said that Coltrane didn’t really need him to play what he wanted to play, but the depth and quality of their recordings suggest otherwise. When Trane died rather suddenly of liver cancer in 1967, Pharoah began his solo career which continues uninterrupted to this day. Releasing more than thirty albums, Pharoah has become as influential as a solo act as he was complementing the redoubtable John Coltrane. As the noted saxophonist Albert Ayler once said, "Trane is the Father, Pharoah is the Son, and I am the Holy Ghost."

***Love Will Find A Way (1977) signed by Pharoah, Lenny White***

I have been blessed to see Pharoah a bunch of times through the years, including shows at Birdland, the old Iridium when it was located near Lincoln Center, and an extraordinary show at the Knitting Factory in the late 1990s when Pharoah was joined by the renowned Bangladeshi tabla master and percussionist Badal Roy and the incredible bassist Alex Blake. It was a wall of sound and rhythm that was as enveloping as it was infectious.

Recently, I saw Pharoah at an intimate show at the Iridium near Times Square in New York City in December 2019. The show started with an unaccompanied piano intro by Benito Gonzalez, a ten minute excursion that was melodic and ruminative. As Benito deftly wove in various themes, the other members of the band joined him on stage and began in full flight. The gorgeous, plaintive wail of Pharoah's tenor saxophone was buttressed by the sturdy bass of Nathaniel Reeves and the impeccable time of Johnathan Blake on drums. For the next hour, the audience was spellbound as Pharoah took us on a space ship hurtling through time, exploring galaxies previously unknown. At times his playing was frenetic and dissonant, other times gentle and soothing, as he and his band touched all our emotions. For the last song, Pharoah led the band in his epic “The Creator Has A Master Plan”, not the thirty-three minute version that appears on his 1968 masterpiece Karma, but a more subdued, though no less moving, fifteen minute version, which included some call and response with the audience as he intoned, “The creator has a master plan, peace and happiness for all throughout the land.” A noble mantra, if only it were true!

***Pharoah blowing at Iridium 28 December 2019 photo by me***

Now it was time to meet Pharoah. On my way back stage, I met the pianist Benito Gonzalez and thanked him for his virtuoso performance. I mentioned that I recognized “The Creator Has A Master Plan”, ‘What were the three other tunes?’ “Yeah, thanks that was a lot of fun. Well, we started with a jazz standard, and the other two pieces were completely improvised.” I was shocked, ‘Really? You sounded so tight.’ “Yes, that’s the way he likes to play, always free and searching.” I thanked Benito for his amazing artistry and went in search of Pharoah.

***Pharoah in deep bliss, Iridium 28 December 2019, photo by me***

When I met Pharoah I thanked him for his stunning music, the torrents and sheets of sound were remarkable. He was bemused and taciturn, happy to sign, but probably happier when I left. I was reminded of a recent New Yorker interview in which he explained his simpatico with John Coltrane: ”I liked being around him because I didn’t talk that much either. It was just good vibes between us both. We were just very quiet... He would never start some sort of conversation, he would say something, but it wouldn’t last that long. He would never elaborate or go deep into it. He said a few words and that was it.” They could sit in silence and not suffer, pretty cool and pretty zen. I need to get a whole lot better at that!

Pharoah Sanders has an impressive Jazz legacy for sure, and, thankfully, he is still adding to it. Long may he roar!

***Oh Lord, Let Me Do No Wrong (1987) signed by Pharoah***

Choice Pharoah Sanders Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ6lB7FKxi8&t=47s
“The Creator Has A Master Plan “ Karma 1969
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhDcb9YaliM
“The Creator Has A Master Plan “ live in Germany 1999
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii63fKLTSuU&t=82s
”Harvest Time” Pharoah (1977)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8rX54ZhweU
“A Love Supreme” live in 1968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTmdp0KYUpY
Upper Egypt” Jewels Of Thought 1969; sampled by J. Dilla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzLDOaS1Otw
Oh Lord, Let Me Do No Wrong” (1987)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk_laphkAXY
After The Rain” live with John Hicks 1986https
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNW-xNWCvB0
The Christmas Song “ Mel Torme wrote it, Nat King Cole sang it, but no one sounds like Pharoah!

***Reunited (1987) signed by Pharoah, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Richard Davis***