In Memoriam…Pharoah Sanders

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Oliver Abels (SBT), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Pharoah Sanders; Frankfurt, 2013.

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…..The passing of the great saxophonist Pharoah Sanders is being felt all over the jazz world (and beyond).  He was a soaring giant of the 1960’s and 70’s, a key voice of Impulse Records and the Black Arts Movement, and who is also remembered for contributing to John Coltrane’s groundbreaking work just prior to his death.

…..There are many tributes online to Sanders.  My own is very personal, and three events come to mind.

…..-While living in Berkeley in the mid-to-late-1970’s, along with Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Pharoah’s music was at the center of my curiosity about where jazz was headed.  While his notion of oneness with the “Creator” as a “spiritual” experience was challenging for someone in the midst of a youthful rebellion that especially repelled “spirituality” (which to me at the time simply meant “religion’), the liner notes to his album Black Unity were eye-opening.  In the notes attributed to his son, Thembi Sanders writes that “[Pharoah] always claimed that black music is the music of black folks and therefore is an impression and expression of their life…Black music is the life style of black people as expressed in sound rather than words.”  This description helped me hear Pharoah’s (and Coltrane’s)  music in ways I could comprehend, experiencing it as if listening to a musical biography, or a soundtrack to a movement.

…..-I owned only a couple of Pharoah Sanders albums before expanding my collection when ABC/Impulse – for whom he recorded between 1966 and 1973 – was sold to MCA Records in 1979, causing them to cut-out many of the albums in their catalog.  I was in the record business at the time and had the benefit of being able to buy these overstocked recordings for 50 cents apiece.  (Many were unavailable until the CD era emerged years later).  I still recall the thrill of going through this stack of over 100 records I brought home with me – several of which were by Pharoah, who occupied a place on my turntable for months, and remain a cherished part of my collection.

…..-More recently, during my time as board chair of PDX Jazz, our artistic director Don Lucoff assembled an ambitious “For Portland Only” program honoring the work of Alice Coltrane and featuring Ravi Coltrane and the harpist Brandee Younger.  Advanced ticket sales were not quite what we had hoped, so Don contracted Pharoah to play.  Within a day or two of the announcement, the 800 seat venue was sold out.  I will always recall the energy in the audience when Pharoah was introduced, his blusey-shriek on tenor, and the emotional interplay between Pharoah and Ravi.  It was, I could finally acknowledge, a “spiritual” experience.

Joe Maita
Editor/Publisher

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Click here to read Nate Chinen and Andrew Flanagan’s obituary of Sanders on NPR

Click here to read Jon Pareles’ obituary of Sanders in the New York Times

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Listen to the 1969 recording of Pharoah Sanders playing “The Creator Has A Master Plan,” perhaps his best-known recording [Universal Music Group]

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