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

I've heard nearly all of these up to Africa, and all have good material for sure.
Save our Children is the Laswell one right? If so it's not good.

I have at least a dozen, but it's hard to beat Karma

good excuse to re-listen

Can't believe this poll is popping up now—I literally spent the last 3 weeks or so listening to his entire catalog for an upcoming magazine article. Everything on this list from Tauhid through Izipho Zam is glorious and totally essential. Everything from Elevation through Naima ranges from disappointing to dire. (A Prayer Before Dawn includes a sax-and-synth version of "The Greatest Love Of All.") This poll should have included Trance Of Seven Colors, which was co-billed to Sanders and Maleem Mahmoud Ghania—it's him blowing totally over-the-top rawness with traditional North African musicians backing him, and it's fucking awesome.

super otm!! trance of 7 colors is in my top 5 sanders

probably karma though bc of complete transcendence

it could be one of many but today it is Elevation

Deaf Dumb Blind is sounding good right now, but not as good as Karma

killer piano though

one of the pretty tracks on Thembi would probably be my fave single pick, but this is albums

I'm a big fan of Pharaoh (aka Harvest Time) tho it is much different than the Impulse stuff.

Between Tauhid and Thembi for me

IZIPHO ZAM!!!

big fan of "Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord", the other side of Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun) - the way the chords just hang there shimmering while the horns circle around.

deaf dumb blind also great

this thread has reminded me of this incredible footage of Pharaoh playing in an abandoned tunnel in San Francisco 1982 - when he goes into the circular breathing section in the middle, my god

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7EGQzn8e1k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYKHCvmu1z4

sorry this is the one i wanted to post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFUDrK9GLaQ

I love that footage in the tunnel and wish the version on Journey to the One was as good

Just inherited a bwun of sanders LPs from my grandparents but won't get to hear them till I'm back in the UK so sadly can't vote for any of them this time. Will report back.

IZIPHO ZAM!!!

― the late great, Saturday, July 19, 2014 10:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, can't beat the Sharrock/Sanders combo. Would've voted for Ask the Ages if eligible. And Divine Raidance, the rec he made w/ Tisziji Munoz, Rashied Ali, Ravi Coltrane and erm Paul Shaffer, is a more interesting alb than anything he's released under his own name in years.

Black Unity! Love when the group just jam at the end after all the skronking. I think I got this and <i>Sun Ship</i> the same day.

Obviously I love all the early Impulse stuff, but I gotta go for Journey to One, because it shows that besides the free, over-blowing stuff he's best known for, he's also very good in a more restrained setting. I have no problem with the fusion-y vocal stuff on that album either, because I love that kind of jazz, and Pharoah with Idris Muhammad is simply a combo that cannot be beaten. It's true that the version of "Kazuko" on Journey to One isn't as jaw-dropping as that live version in the tunnel (which apparently has never been released on record?), but it's still among his 10 best tunes, such meditational beauty!

Meant to pick up a load of Pharaoh on my last London trip and only got Tauhid. THis after getting a new copy of that You've Got To have Freedom set at the end of last year. & that's got edited versions of some of the longer tracks on it like a 9 minute Creator and a couple of other 1/2 hour tracks cut to around 2 minutes.
Might have something to do with me only hitting Honest john's when I'd been up all night after getting hammered at a Cosmic Dead show. Should have made another trip

Did get that Leon Thomas compilation that came out last year though which is really great.

Stevo

Really a tough call: Live At The East's evolutionary groove, with the sax thread and two bass hings, was my first, but then several others were equally affecting, each in its own way. Some mentions of Tauhid and Izipho Zam from the Sonny Sharrock--Ask The Ages thread:

Spotify has Ask The Ages, also Pharoah's much earlier Tauhid, where Mr. SS is the beep-beep roadrunner, goading the leader's sunrise-on-the-Nile song into a water buffalo bellow (if the Nile didn't have such critters before, it does now). He's also the team provocateur on the first two tracks of Pharoah's Ipzopho Zam, then, on the 28 minute-and change title track, comes up with what I think of an African-Caribbean riff--rippling, tensile, succinct--which turns out to be his iteration, or maybe invention, of the group theme (gliding and boiling through sunburst saxes, lattices of percussion, bass, keys, Leon Thomas yodeling in tongues, but also in tune, and not too much, honest!). Spotify doesn't have that one, but they have a bunch of others Sharrock played on, incl ones they list, and others here (with a few more in Allmusic, like a couple more Herbie Mann albums)
http://www.sonnysharrock.com/info.asp?pgs=discography

― dow, Wednesday, 3 July 2013 00:54 (1 year ago) Permalink

He's also the team provocateur on the first two tracks--emphasis on "team" here: mostly discreet, sometimes sneaky--listen on headphones.

― dow, Wednesday, 3 July 2013 01:00 (1 year ago) Permalink

Last Exit's stuff really holds up, especially the live albums—Iron Path, their only studio record, is a little tame. When I interviewed Laswell a year or two ago, I briefly brought up the idea of assembling a Last Exit box, and he said it could definitely be done, and that there were plenty of other unreleased recordings, but that it would be very labor intensive to find and organize the tapes. I think if I ever launched a Kickstarter project, that would be it—a massive Last Exit box with as much unreleased stuff as could be unearthed.

― 誤訳侮辱, Wednesday, 3 July 2013 02:04 (1 year ago) Permalink

Yeah man--still a lot of incredible Sharrock here and there in the Interweb universes---recently heard Pharoah with Sonny and the dual-drummer combo in Japan: robust vocal intro (not Leon-style yodeling)maybe Sonny, who was a singer way before starting over as a guitarist. It's wordless at first then, "My mother's son/My father's son", and onto the guitar (sounds like another guitar behind his solo; Nicky S., perhaps?), sax, bass drums--9 minutes rolling like 3.

― dow, Thursday, 4 July 2013 14:53 (1 year ago) Permalink

"two-bass *hinge*" that is.

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.

This could do with being a ballot poll IMO. I'd imagine a lot of top 5 picks won't be that far behind 'favourite'. I know it's extra effort.

i hope the results are inconclusive nothing should ever be decided

I wish there was an intermediate polling type between single choice radio-button polls and ballot polls -- like being able to spread 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices among the poll options. I've mentioned that on the "Ideas for ILX" thread, but stet and Keith didn't comment. I guess it would be possible to code...? I don't think it would even put a big drain on the database, just one calculation when the poll ends. It would be great for occasions that are a little more complex than POO but wouldn't attract enough voters for a ballot poll. xp

don't know how elevation could be disappointing or dire

Disappointing because it's not as good as the string from Karma through Wisdom Through Music.

btw I have still never heard Izipho Zam b/c it is expensive, but my ILX mail works if some nice person just happens to have mp3s lying around (it's not on Spotify either(

listened to Jewels Of Thought today, good but not the best

Here's some Zam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjXnkPnVau4

not Tubed by me

That's Side 2, the 28" etc title track; you can prob find the rest, hither and yon.

Prince of Peace from that album is always a go to christmastime cut

it's just a perfect album

and some of the best cover art ever too

I have the Impulse! albums and always find Black Unity to be the best! The two basses taking center stage, on a cushion of dense percussion, really make it... and the studio audience applause at the end really is hilarious. There is a mostly lame book about Impulse! records that has some good Pharaoh stories. I guess after Karma was an unexpectedly hit he ends up with a huge entourage of camp followers and his album sessions were overflowing with people, performing and not.

Side one of Village of the Pharaohs would be my second favorite thing - it is one long wigged out caveman/jazz/psychedelic tune and is built on what has to be one of the most badass bass ostinato figures ever set against a tambura drone. Cecil Mcbee is just unreal and the music just levitates whenever he is in the group. It's a shame the rest of the album is sorta a grab bag of random stuff not really thematically related to the main suite!

All the Impulse! albums have a lot to recommend and each has its own flavor. Tauhid is wonderful, very evocative and primitive in the best possible way. It feels like a reaction to the late Coltrane stuff, Pharaoh going in the opposite direction of his mentor, very restrained and evocative stuff. Deaf, Dumb, Blind is joyous and energetic percussion-overload. Thembi is introspective, mellow and beautiful, a real hidden jewel... and so on!

Never really did a close listen to anything post-Impulse! I have a lot of time for Elevation but the songs seem to be getting shorter and more smoothed out at that point which is less interesting to me than what he'd been doing up until then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y6JFM5B5lw

Yeah a top 3/5 poll or something. Just seemed like this could end up looking more conclusive than it really is. But going by the responses perhaps not.

I'm still torn, Summun Bukmun Umyun is really good and I need to re-listen to Village and Thembi

Ha, I can't vote for my favorite Pharoah records! Don Cherry's Where is Brooklyn, Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard Again! and Sharrock's Ask the Ages...hmmm I'm not sure what my fave leader record of his is...maybe Tauhid?

IZIPHO ZAM!!!

tauhid v thembi for me.

though to be 100% honest i think 'journey to satchidinanda' is the best work pharoah ever did. possibly his most lyrical playing

not a huge fan of izipho zam, think i ended up selling my copy? not sure. i can't really dig the yodelling

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Balance on Izipho Zam is astonishing IIRC. I don't have copy so I'm not all that familiar with the rest.

The thread-relevant material is at 12 minutes (smooth jazz era Pharaoh with a smooth jazz all-star band playing Thembi and sounding gorgeous) but watch the whole video because it's amazing This show used to be onAmerican network television. I was late for class every Monday morning because I went to school on it every Sunday night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STxPWECmOGo

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

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.

man I really need to re-listen to that one, I have the LP but have neglected it

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/if-youre-in-the-song-keep-on-playing-pharoah-sanders-interview

The big takeaway from that interview is just how much Pharoah Sanders hates being interviewed. (Something I already knew from personal experience.)

Just bought a ticket to see him next Saturday at Iridium in NYC.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Sunday, December 22, 2019 1:39 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

How was this? Would have loved to have seen him with Johnathan Blake. My friend saw Blake perform a few years ago somewhere in Chicago (Hype Park Festival?) and raved about him, so he's been on my radar.

paul, this is unperson's post from the rolling jazz thread:

I went to see Pharoah Sanders at Iridium this past weekend, with Benito Gonzalez on piano, Nat Reeves on bass, and Johnathan Blake on drums. They played three pieces, each one 15-20 minutes long, and honestly, for a lot of it it was the Benito Gonzalez Trio featuring special guest Pharoah Sanders. But when Pharoah was actually playing, he was on. Not doing the whole T. Rex-roaring thing but digging deep into hard bop language, like Coltrane in 1958. On the last number, his son Tomoki came out, also playing tenor, and took a decent solo that was more in a '60s Fire Music vein. I hadn't seen Sanders live in about 25 years, and/but I'm glad I went.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, January 1, 2020 11:49 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

The big takeaway from that interview is just how much Pharoah Sanders hates being interviewed.

strongly disagree with this. not sure what your experience was like, but i feel as if he had a lot of really insightful things to say here

e.g. i found this really interesting:

Would the label give you any direction, or were they hands-off?

They tried to let you know how many songs to play. I just kind of ignored it. Sometimes, I would just play one tune for the whole side. I just kept on playing, like it was a suite. Looking from one thing to another. If you’re in the song, keep on playing.

Did you rehearse?

No, we never rehearsed.

Did you ever do more than one take?

Maybe on a few things we did, something where I didn’t really like the way I first got started up and started out playing. But whenever I heard it back, I kind of liked it, so I said, “Well, I should have kept it.” Anyways, it’s too late now.

It kind of taught me something else. It made me think, Why do I have to do it this way? Let’s keep on playing until it all comes together. That’s what we did. That’s what I always do. You know, try to keep on creating.

also this is a pretty amazing quote

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.

Live in Paris (1975) is really good

do go on !

Yeah, I went in with low expectations 'cause it's "just" a quartet rather than the two basses and however many percussionists of Live at the East, but it's really, really good. The pianist/organist is great.

do you know anything about the band ? i’m not sure i’m familiar with any of the other players.

it just came out last week, I'm surprised it hasn't been released before

the sound is much better than I expected, even on Spotify ... it's subtitled "The Lost ORTF Recordings" which I guess refers to this miking method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORTF_stereo_technique

I found it very soothing earlier today, I think it's time to play it again

ORTF is the French equivalent to the BBC - it stands for Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française.

I find it almost nihilistic, by the way, that it's on Spotify but the label won't sell the digital files - you have to buy the LP or you get nothing:

https://transversales.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-paris-1975

(As a non-turntable-owner, I got it by other means, obviously.)

kinda jazz critic are you anyway, no turntable !

what was the mini book that came iwth teh 2013 edition of teh Elevation cd like?
I just picked up a cheap copy of the previous release I think and wonder if it is still something I would find essential to get for the book thing. Haven't been able to find a phot of it online that shows contents.

Wow, good timing, I'm 1:43 into "Live at the East".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SvS_Yi6_IQ

Pharoah is 80 today so here's a levitatinng track from Montreux in 1978. Not sure if its quite as good as he was earlier in the decade but it's getting there.

BIt of him from 1968 too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8rX54ZhweU

think I'd love to find stuff from 70-72 but these 2 will do for now maybe.

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.