TS: pharoah sanders vs. sun ra vs. john coltrane

oh, wait, misread that.

Sanders. The solo on "Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah" makes me want to be a better person, something that JC & SR, although each is realy really awesome, just haven't done for me - in their defense, few musicians have. Sanders's got catchier tunes, too, for the most part.

i would pick pharoah sanders over john or alice coltrane.

http://www.summerstage.org/index.aspx?summerstagesearchevents=yes&lobid=842&month=6&day=17&year=2005

pdf - (did you do that Billy Bang/Sirone review in the "Humor" Wire? Love it.) As for Sun Ra, I think you'd really like the Pathways/Friendly Love twofer. (From that week back in Jan. that I decided I was going to do a blog.)

Would you say it was a Free Jazz concert?

Coltrane. Always Coltrane.

nah, it's not that, it's just that you can't really evaluate sun ra's work without looking at the aspect of performance, the dense layers of wordplay and allusion, the spectacle of his live shows, the communitarian aspect of the arkestra, etc.

pharoah and the coltranes were working in a much more traditional "jazz" mode, even if at times the sounds were the same ...

Yup.

I'd probably rank them (wrt how much I listen to them) Sanders > Sun Ra > Coltrane. Have to say, though, Interstellar Space is the greatest trump card -- but that's almost the only Coltrane I regularly listen to.

Coltrane vs. Coleman would be a more interesting question, I think, and I'd definitely side with Ornette.

Coletrane was definitely influenced by Sun Ra (or more specifically John Gilmore). I can't believe so many people here are placing Coletrane last! WTF?

Anyway, Coletrane is obviously the best but if I could only pick one I would go with Ra for the sheer volume and diversity of his work.

i don't think eastern music was a big factor in sun ra's work.

if you want to talk about large and cosmic sounding records we can add some people to the list: ornette coleman, archie shepp, don cherry, alan silva, charlie haden, etc

Coltrane wins probably on "Chasin' the Trane" alone!

He does not.
-- RS (Catalino) LaRue (Al__sucar@go.com), June 8th, 2005 3:56 PM. (RSLaRue)

"nuclear war, they're talking about nuclear war
it's a motherfuckerer, don't you know?
if they push that button, your ass gotta go
and whatcha gonna do without your ass?"

That's one song with ass in it. I don't think it's a particularly Sun Ra song.

Point taken, and it's a good one. I like maybe the Art Ensemble comparison.

I guess Sun Ra is considered one of the harbingers or diplomats of the new thing. He's certainly a starting point for a lot of rock fans, I know that. As are Coltrane and Sanders. Maintaining a narrow scope of Sun Ra's, and Coltrane's and Sanders's, output (maybe '60s & '70s).

I don't think it makes sense to draw a dividing line between the serious interest in Eastern music that people like Coltrane and Sanders pursued and the stylistic Easternisms of Sun Ra because the serious explorations directly grew out of the earlier pseudo-eastern flirtations. The line can be drawn from Fletcher Henderson through Sun Ra to Pharoah Sanders, with the earlier surface style turning into a deeper understanding of Eastern music by the later 60s, possibly due to better access to recordings and performances of Indian music.

the other thread so we don't get lost.

Don't quite see the interest in eastern music re: john (Alice, otoh...) was just as interested in African music, and v much into using improvisation to tap into a world music as something truly international -- beyond mere labels such as jazz, or drone, or whatever. The 'last concert' def points in that direction.

I'm not gonna choose but maybe the last quintet (john/alice/sanders among 'em) vs ra in the mid-60s is a comparison I could get into...

I'd say vahid's Ra - art ensemble works in so far as both groups were working with ideas from the classical avant-garde, not only the partch-lou harrison end but thinking of 12-tone's re-organization of the orchestra and the break into the smaller sized ensemble (the trombone trio in 'other planes' is u+k here) as well as -- applies more to art ensemble -- working at the near-silence end.

Dude, India!

Dude, India!

Also "A Love Supreme" from Newport '63.

So what is it exactly that you do like, then? Giant Steps & My Favorite Things?

I totally love the last seven minutes of Sanders' "Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt"--exactly the kind of trance-out I'm always hoping to find when I listen to something from that era for the first time. If it were a song unto itself, I'd put it right up there with "My Favorite Things" and "Stolen Moments" and Grachan Moncur's "When." Unfortunately, it takes them over nine minutes to get to that section.