Pharoah Sanders
'Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, and I am the Holy Ghost.' — Albert Ayler
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Collaborators ⏳🌊
- PatronageSun Ra
When he was struggling in New York, he brought him into the Arkestra and urged him to go by the name Pharoah.
- MentorJohn Coltrane
A bond that began in a San Francisco pawnshop led him to bring Sanders into his band, and they played together from 1965 to 1967.
- FriendshipAlbert Ayler
A fellow New York free-jazz player of the same era, he left behind a remark likening Coltrane to the Father and Sanders to the Son.
- ColleagueAlice Coltrane
The pianist in Coltrane's band, she carried spiritual jazz forward with him after Coltrane was gone, on records such as “Journey in Satchidananda.”
- ColleagueLeon Thomas
The singer who made “The Creator Has a Master Plan” with him, his vocals laced with yodeling.
- ColleagueFloating Points
The British electronic musician Sam Shepherd, with whom he made the great late-career work “Promises.”
I. The boy from Little Rock · 1940–1959 (age 0–19)
(Birth) He was born in October 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas. His given name was Ferrell Lee Sanders. He was an only child; his mother is said to have cooked in a school cafeteria and his father to have worked for the city. It was a Southern city where Black and white lives were divided by law and custom. (Church) His music began in church. He grew up hearing hymns, and the first instrument he held was the clarinet. When he joined the high school band, he borrowed a school-owned tenor saxophone, because he could not afford one of his own. He recalled that from the band director, Jimmy Cannon, he learned the fundamentals of the instrument and had his first lessons in the music called jazz. (Blues) In his late teens he earned money sitting in with blues and rhythm-and-blues bands in Little Rock's clubs. He is said to have backed blues singers touring the South as well. It was music for dancing crowds, and there he learned to fill a hall with a thick tone and a big sound. The cry of the blues that later ran beneath his playing came from these years. (Segregation) In 1957, while he was still a teenager, nine Black students entered Little Rock Central High School under the escort of federal troops. The stages open to Black musicians were few, and so were the paths to studying jazz in any systematic way. In 1959, when he finished high school, he left home and headed west.
II. Earning a name · 1959–1965 (age 19–25)
(Oakland) In 1959 he moved to Oakland, California, and studied art and music at Oakland Junior College. His peers called him “Little Rock,” after his hometown. He played in Bay Area clubs, moving between rhythm and blues and bebop. (Pawnshop) Around this time he met John Coltrane, who had come to San Francisco to perform. Sanders recalled taking Coltrane, who was looking for a mouthpiece, around to pawnshops. It was a brief encounter, but each man remembered the other. (New York) In 1961 he went to New York. Life was hard. With no work, he sometimes slept on the subway and in stairwells, and he recalled selling his blood to eat and pawning his horn. He got by working as a cook in a Greenwich Village restaurant. (Sun Ra) Among those who took him in was Sun Ra. Sun Ra invited him to Arkestra rehearsals, and the story goes that he found clothes for the ragged young man. Above all, it was Sun Ra who urged him to go by the name “Pharoah.” On the last day of 1964 he took the stage with the Arkestra at a concert at Judson Hall. In the same period he also fell in with trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins. (Debut) In September 1964 he recorded his first album as a leader, “Pharoah's First,” for ESP-Disk. It was tidy playing close to hard bop, and Sanders himself is said to have been dissatisfied with the result. He was still searching for his own sound.
III. At Coltrane's side · 1965–1967 (age 25–27)
(Ascension) In June 1965 Coltrane called him in to record “Ascension.” In this work (free jazz), in which seven horn players improvise all at once with no set chord progression or meter, he was the one making the roughest sounds. That fall Coltrane brought him into the band as a full member. (Sound) Sanders's tenor went past notes into sounds close to screams and wails. He drove his breath hard to pull out high overtones (overblowing) and sounded several notes at once on a single horn (multiphonics). Coltrane is said to have remarked, in effect, that Sanders was a man with a deep wellspring of spirit who always strove to be true to himself. (Reshaping) On “Meditations,” in November 1965, drummer Rashied Ali was added alongside Elvin Jones. Amid this new direction in which the beat came apart, pianist McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones left the band before long, and Alice Coltrane took over the piano. Bassist Jimmy Garrison held his place. When he was not soloing, Sanders took up bells and tambourine to support Coltrane's playing. (Japan) In July 1966 the band toured Japan. That November he recorded “Tauhid” for Impulse!. Even in Coltrane's shadow, as a leader he was beginning a different music, one that leaned less on the scream than on long breaths and repeating rhythms. (Farewell) In July 1967 Coltrane died of liver cancer. Their time together had lasted a little over two years. Saxophonist Albert Ayler, a friend of his in these years, left behind a remark likening Coltrane to the Father and Sanders to the Son. For a long time afterward, Sanders carried the label of Coltrane's heir.
A studio recording made just after Coltrane brought him into the band as a full member, it captures intact the new direction of two tenors and two drummers colliding head-on. That direction led to the departures of Tyner and Jones.
- The suite opens with “The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,” erupting straight away. Instead of a beat you can count, waves of sound roll in, because the two drummers, Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali, each strike the drums with a different grain, scattering the pulse.
- Sanders's solo speaks through the texture of sound more than through pitch. The sound of high overtones tearing loose as he drives his breath hard (overblowing) and the sound of several notes ringing at once (multiphonics) stand in sharp contrast to Coltrane's long, densely woven lines.
- “Love” opens with a solo by Jimmy Garrison on bass, then passes into a ballad-like lyricism from Coltrane. Coming after the fury of the preceding movement, this calm is where the suite catches its breath.
- Recorded on November 23, 1965, at Rudy Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey. Because it is a suite that runs without pause from start to finish, it is best heard as a whole album, beginning to end, rather than track by track.
His first album as a leader for Impulse!, released while he was still in Coltrane's band, it marked the first appearance of his own music, which leaned on long breaths and repeating rhythms rather than the scream.
- The opening track, “Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt,” begins with a long introduction in which bells, percussion and Sonny Sharrock's guitar spread like a mist. It is built to make you wait several minutes before a beat or melody comes into focus.
- At length Henry Grimes's bass sets up a groove by repeating a short figure (ostinato), and Sanders's tenor enters late above it. Follow the rising arc of the solo as it begins in song and grows ever rougher until it reaches a wail.
- On this album Sanders plays not only tenor but alto and piccolo. On the short piece “Japan” he sings a simple tune himself; it is another face of the player who tore sound apart.
- Recorded on November 15, 1966, at Rudy Van Gelder Studio. It was a few months after his return from the Japan tour.
IV. The Creator's plan · 1967–1974 (age 27–34)
(Impulse) After Coltrane's death, Impulse! made Sanders the new face of the label. Producer Bob Thiele, and then Ed Michel, oversaw his recordings. He broadened his standing by playing on other musicians' records as well, such as Don Cherry's “Symphony for Improvisers.” (Karma) In February 1969 he recorded “Karma.” On “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” a single piece running 32 minutes across both sides of the LP, singer Leon Thomas's yodel-laced vocals and pianist Lonnie Liston Smith's rolling chords wound around his tenor. The piece spread by way of FM radio and college towns, carrying a man known only as a firebrand of free jazz to a far wider audience. (Fellowship) He also played on Alice Coltrane's “Ptah, the El Daoud” and “Journey in Satchidananda” (1970). In effect, he was carrying on the music his mentor had left behind, together with his mentor's widow. (Spirituality) The titles of his albums from this period mixed Islamic, Hindu and African vocabularies. Such were titles like “Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah” and “Sumun Bukmun Umyun.” Rather than binding himself to a single faith, he drew the spirituality of many traditions into sound, and this current would later be called spiritual jazz. Over a foundation in which the bass repeats the same figure endlessly (ostinato), bells, harmonium and assorted percussion were layered. (The times) On “Black Unity” (1971), two bassists, Stanley Clarke and Cecil McBee, stood side by side. The era's fervor for Black civil rights and pride rode in the title and in the sound. Around 1974 his relationship with Impulse! came to an end, and with it his most brilliant period.
Two years after Coltrane's death, this is the signature work in which he turned his mentor's legacy into a language of his own. A sprawling piece filling both sides of an album spread over the radio.
- It is widely noted that the short motif heard in the opening of “The Creator Has a Master Plan” recalls Coltrane's “A Love Supreme.” The piece, in effect, opens with a salute to his mentor.
- Rather than a complex chord progression, the piece rests on a simple framework shifting among a few chords, closer to an approach that lingers over it and plays at length (modal jazz). The two bassists repeat the same figure while Lonnie Liston Smith's piano fills in the harmony with rolling chords.
- Leon Thomas's vocals move between a low voice and a yodel that flips the throat into a high break. The lyrics turn on the Creator, peace and love, in a voice of calm confession and invitation.
- Midway, the piece suddenly erupts into collective improvisation, Sanders's screaming tenor whipping up a maelstrom, before returning to the serene groove of the opening. This structure of storm and return is the force that carries it through 32 minutes.
An album by Alice Coltrane, on which Sanders played soprano saxophone, joining his mentor's widow in shaping the spiritual jazz that came after Coltrane.
- The title track begins with a short figure repeated by Cecil McBee's bass and flows over it to the end. Beneath it lies the sound of the tamboura, an Indian string instrument, sustaining a single note (drone).
- Alice Coltrane's harp sweeps across the notes like a ripple, and Sanders, on soprano saxophone instead of tenor, plays an Eastern-tinged melody that rolls with ornaments. It is a far more restrained sound than his other recordings.
- Rashied Ali's drums don't strike the beat hard; they fill the air with cymbals. Drums that make atmosphere rather than rhythm are what give this record its meditative character.
V. Years on small labels · 1975–1993 (age 35–53)
(Wandering) After he left Impulse!, his recordings drifted from label to label. “Pharoah,” released on India Navigation in 1977, included “Harvest Time,” which flows slowly for more than 20 minutes. “Love Will Find a Way,” released on Arista in 1978, was aimed at a rhythm-and-blues audience. (Theresa) In the 1980s he worked for a long stretch with Theresa Records, a small Bay Area label. Founded by Allen Pittman and Kazuko Ishida, it put out his “Journey to the One” (1980), “Rejoice” (1981), and the live album “Heart Is a Melody” (1982). Pianist John Hicks and drummer Idris Muhammad were often at his side. (Turning) In this period he leaned away from the scream and toward song. He often played ballads, standards, and Coltrane's tunes, and his thick, warm tone came to the fore. Among critics who remembered him from the 1960s, opinion split between those who saw this as a retreat and those who saw it as maturity. (Livelihood) Once the backing of the major labels fell away, his living depended on touring. He made the rounds of small clubs and European festivals, and recorded “Africa” (1987) for the Dutch label Timeless. These were not years of big money, but he never stopped playing. (Rediscovery) Meanwhile, across the ocean in Britain, DJs at jazz dance clubs began spinning “You've Got to Have Freedom” in the late 1980s. Through the DJs of the British jazz dance scene of the late 1980s, his music is said to have reached a new, young audience that danced. It happened just when the American jazz press was paying him less attention.
A track from “Journey to the One,” released on the small label Theresa, this is the tune that British club DJs brought back to life in the years when he was out of the spotlight in America.
- Over a fast, galloping groove, a short riff (a brief repeated phrase) recurs as the theme. The arrangement pulls the listener straight in through the body, which hints at why it was loved in clubs where people danced.
- Pianist John Hicks's solo pounds the keys with force, driving the harmonies forward. As befits a colleague who had long played alongside Sanders, he takes up the heat the tenor leaves behind and carries it on.
- Sanders's tenor now and then mixes in the screams of the 1960s, but at its core it is a thick, singing sound. Listen for the point where the expressiveness of free jazz and groove music meet within a single tune.
VI. Sounds from Morocco · 1994–2014 (age 54–74)
(Gnawa) In 1994, through the arrangement of bassist and producer Bill Laswell, he recorded “The Trance of Seven Colors” with Maleem Mahmoud Guinia, a master of Moroccan Gnawa music. Gnawa is a healing ritual music preserved by the descendants of slaves brought from sub-Saharan Africa. It was a recording in which a man who had long put Africa in his titles at last sat down with Africa's own ritual music. (Verve) He then signed with Verve and released “Message from Home” (1996) and “Save Our Children” (1998). Shaped by Laswell, these records mixed African rhythms with electronic sounds. It was his last journey with a major label. (Touring) In the 2000s he mostly led a quartet around the world. On stage he brought back old pieces such as “The Creator Has a Master Plan” and played them at length, sometimes trading songs back and forth with the audience. (Temperament) He was a man of few words. His answers in interviews were short, and he often let a question pass with a laugh. Instead, he is known to have spent long hours choosing and shaping reeds and mouthpieces. His obsession with sound showed itself not in words but in that kind of handiwork. (Esteem) The respect of younger generations kept growing. Alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett invited him onto his 2006 album “Beyond the Wall,” and the two toured together. In 2016 he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). A player who had started out on a school instrument in Little Rock had reached the highest honor American jazz bestows.
This is the recording in which a man who had long put Africa in his album titles actually sat down with a master of Moroccan Gnawa.
- The gimbri (a three-stringed bass lute covered with camel skin) played by Maleem Mahmoud Guinia repeats short figures endlessly, like a bass, laying down the floor of the piece.
- The krakebs, castanets made of iron, pack the rhythm densely with their clatter, and the singing proceeds with one voice leading and many answering (call and response). The aim of this music is to carry the listener, as the repetitions build, into a state of self-forgetting (trance).
- Sanders weaves melody into the gaps of that repetition. It is worth listening closely to how jazz improvisation rests on top of the ritual music's cyclical structure without breaking it.
- It was produced by Bill Laswell and is said to have been recorded in Morocco. Some tracks are filled by the Gnawa musicians alone, without Sanders.
VII. Promises · 2015–2022 (age 75–82)
(Meeting) In 2015, the story goes, Sanders heard “Elaenia,” the album by the British electronic musician Floating Points (real name Sam Shepherd), and wanted to meet him. Shepherd, born in 1986, was more than forty years his junior. The two differed in generation and in the instruments they played, but they decided to work together. (Making) The work stretched over several years. Sanders blew his tenor over short motifs that Shepherd wove on piano, harpsichord, and synthesizers, and the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra were added. His sound, remembered from his youth as a scream, became here a low, slow breath. (Release) In March 2021, the year he turned eighty, “Promises” came out. Its nine movements flowing on without a break, the album went to the top of many publications' year-end lists. A generation that listens to music by streaming came to know his name anew. (Death) On September 24, 2022, he died in Los Angeles at the age of 81. His label, Luaka Bop, announced that he had passed peacefully, surrounded by family and friends. Among his survivors, his son Tomoki Sanders is a tenor saxophonist like his father. (Legacy) His career began with screams at Coltrane's side and ended in the stillness of “Promises.” In between lay the sound of blues clubs, the spirituality of Africa and Asia, and a groove revived by club DJs. He almost never explained his music at length; he left that task to the recordings.
The last major work of his life, made by the eighty-year-old Sanders with an electronic musician more than forty years his junior and the London Symphony Orchestra. A career that began with a scream came to a close in a sound like breath.
- Floating Points repeats a short motif on harpsichord, piano, and celesta from the very beginning of the album to its end. As the nine movements unfold without a break, this small figure runs through the whole like a thread.
- Sanders's tenor is low and slow, heavily mixed with breath. Set beside the Sanders of the 1960s, it is a strikingly restrained sound, holding a single note for a long time and letting it slowly fade away.
- In the middle section he sets the instrument down and hums the melody without words, and it sounds like the most private moment of all.
- In the latter part, the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra slowly swell to a climax, then the sound all but vanishes, leaving only the lingering resonance of organ and synthesizer. This silence is the album's last word.
Lesser-known stories
(Art) When Sanders first went to Oakland, music was not the only thing he studied. At Oakland Junior College he studied art as well. The fact usually passes as a single line in his biography, but it becomes intriguing when set beside the care his later albums took with the color and texture of sound and with a weave like that of a painted canvas. It is mentioned less only because it is overshadowed by the story of his success as a player. (Percussion) Sanders in the Coltrane band years is usually remembered only as the screaming tenor. Yet listen to the live recordings of that period and you hear that when he wasn't soloing he took up percussion such as bells and tambourine to support Coltrane's playing, and on his own “Tauhid” he played piccolo and even sang. With only the dramatic solos being talked about, this side of him survived only in the record. (Reputation) A story circulates among musicians that Ornette Coleman once said Sanders was probably the best tenor player in the world. Even when the American jazz press, from the 1980s on, treated him as merely a figure of the 1960s, his fellow musicians held him in this kind of esteem. It is a case showing that critical attention and reputation among musicians do not always move in the same direction.
Terminology notes 📚🔎
Free jazz
(In jazz) Jazz in which the players set aside agreements such as a fixed chord progression, a steady meter, and a set form, and freely trade sounds on the spot. In the 1960s Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Coltrane in his late period opened this path. It is like improvising a play with friends with no script. There is no fixed plot, but the story only goes on if everyone listens carefully to one another's lines. Free jazz, too, isn't done any which way; it is music that demands that the players listen to one another even more deeply.
Spiritual jazz
(The word) Spiritual means of the soul, of the spirit. Its root, the Latin spiritus, originally meant breath, which makes it a curiously fitting name for the music of wind instruments, which sound when breath is blown into them. (In jazz) From the late 1960s, in the wake of Coltrane's “A Love Supreme,” the term refers to jazz that seeks to lift the mind to a higher place, like prayer or meditation. It often draws in instruments and words from Africa, India, and Islam and repeats the same rhythm at length. Sit in a circle at a retreat and sing the same song slowly over and over, and your mind grows calm — that is the effect this music aims for.
Overblowing
(The word) A combination of the English over (too much) and blowing (the act of blowing), meaning to blow too hard. (In jazz) A technique in which the player drives far more breath than usual into a wind instrument such as the saxophone, drawing out a higher sound (an overtone) than the note the fingers are actually pressing. Sanders used it to make sounds like a human scream or wail. You may have blown hard on a recorder and suddenly heard a high squeak. That sound, usually taken as a mistake, he deliberately tamed and used as expression.
Multiphonics
(The word) From the English multi (many) and the Greek phōnē (sound), meaning many sounds. (In jazz) A technique for sounding two or more notes at once on a wind instrument, such as the saxophone, that normally produces only one note at a time. With special fingerings and control of the lips, the sound splits and the notes stack up like a chord. Try whistling while humming in your throat at the same time and the two sounds overlap in a buzz; this is making that kind of overlap with a single instrument. The rough, thick grain of Sanders's tone comes from here.
Modal jazz
(The word) In Korean, mode is called seonbeop (旋法, 'melody method'): the method (法) for making a melody (旋), that is, the rule that sets which notes a melody will be built from. The Latin modus means manner or measure. (In jazz) Rather than following a chord progression whose harmonies change rapidly, it is jazz that holds on to a single scale for a long time and improvises at length within it. Miles Davis's “Kind of Blue” and Coltrane are the prime examples. In gaming terms, instead of hopping from map to map, you explore one wide map for a long time and discover every corner of it. (Elsewhere) Mode is commonly used for machines and games to mean a way of operating. As in power-saving mode or hard mode.
Ostinato
(The word) Italian for stubborn. The name comes from stubbornly repeating the same figure. (In jazz) The bass or piano repeating a short melody or rhythm endlessly to lay down the floor of a piece. Over it the soloist can improvise freely. Sanders's “Karma” and Alice Coltrane's “Journey in Satchidananda” stand on this kind of repetition. It's like long-rope jumping: if the two people turning the rope keep it going at exactly the same beat, the jumper in the middle can relax and pull off all sorts of tricks.
Gnawa
(In jazz) Not jazz, but the traditional ritual music of Morocco. It has been kept alive by the descendants of people brought as slaves from sub-Saharan Africa, and it is played at all-night ceremonies meant to heal the sick and soothe the spirit. With the guembri, a three-stringed bass lute, the krakeb, iron castanets, and songs in which one voice calls and many answer, it repeats the same rhythm at length until listeners are drawn into a trance. It is like the stands at a stadium: one person shouts a chant, everyone shouts it back, and after dozens of rounds you suddenly feel that the whole crowd has become one. Jazz musicians such as Pharoah Sanders and Randy Weston have recorded alongside this music.