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
― sleeve, Monday, 21 July 2014 00:27 (ten years ago) link
Here's some Zam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjXnkPnVau4
― dow, Monday, 21 July 2014 00:35 (ten years ago) link
not Tubed by me
― dow, Monday, 21 July 2014 00:36 (ten years ago) link
That's Side 2, the 28" etc title track; you can prob find the rest, hither and yon.
― dow, Monday, 21 July 2014 00:38 (ten years ago) link
Prince of Peace from that album is always a go to christmastime cut
― Dokken played here for a Ribfest and people were total assholes (Sparkle Motion), Monday, 21 July 2014 03:59 (ten years ago) link
it's just a perfect album
and some of the best cover art ever too
― the late great, Monday, 21 July 2014 04:03 (ten years ago) link
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
― liam fennell, Monday, 21 July 2014 12:29 (ten years ago) link
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.
― Noel Emits, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 10:15 (ten years ago) link
I'm still torn, Summun Bukmun Umyun is really good and I need to re-listen to Village and Thembi
― sleeve, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 13:59 (ten years ago) link
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?
― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 14:11 (ten years ago) link
IZIPHO ZAM!!!
― the late great, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 18:40 (ten years ago) link
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
― marcos, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 18:42 (ten years ago) link
not a huge fan of izipho zam, think i ended up selling my copy? not sure. i can't really dig the yodelling
― marcos, Wednesday, 23 July 2014 18:43 (ten years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Friday, 25 July 2014 00:01 (ten years ago) link
Balance on Izipho Zam is astonishing IIRC. I don't have copy so I'm not all that familiar with the rest.
― Noel Emits, Friday, 25 July 2014 09:40 (ten years ago) link
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
― Three Word Username, Friday, 25 July 2014 19:40 (ten years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Saturday, 26 July 2014 00:01 (ten years ago) link
IMO more like a #5 or #6
would rate all these higher
izipho zamthembideaf dumb blind (summun bukmun umyun)tauhidjourney to the one
― the late great, Saturday, 26 July 2014 04:02 (ten years ago) link
I'm just happy Journey to the One didn't get shut-out of the love
― bernard snowy, Saturday, 26 July 2014 11:23 (ten years ago) link
Really, anyone who gets upset over the results of a Pharoah Sanders poll has missed the point of living
― bernard snowy, Saturday, 26 July 2014 11:24 (ten years ago) link
eh who's upset
― the late great, Saturday, 26 July 2014 17:26 (ten years ago) link
tauhid is so good!
― 3kDk (dog latin), Thursday, 14 August 2014 23:55 (ten years ago) link
sonny sharrock is next level on tauhid
― the late great, Friday, 15 August 2014 00:35 (ten years ago) link
sharrock's contribution to tauhid always sounds very velvet underground-y to me, not that i'm suggesting any direct 'influence' either way, more like there was something in the air
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Friday, 15 August 2014 08:16 (ten years ago) link
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2eZS5d_ng&list=ALBTKoXRg38BCu9wYhsitCuDWy26by2Gul
― andrew m., Friday, 15 August 2014 14:48 (ten years ago) link
love this tune
― Dokken played here for a Ribfest and people were total assholes (Sparkle Motion), Friday, 15 August 2014 16:15 (ten years ago) link
Oh, happens that our local weekly, Arkansas Times, in last week's issue, ran a nice article on his early life around here. He may be called Little Rock, but he grew up in NORTH Little Rock, about 3 miles from where I type. As a fellow North Little Rocker, makes me wonder if he ever corrected them when he got to California. "That's North Little Rock." "Whatever, Little Rock!"
http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/where-were-you-on-pharoah-sanders-day/Content?oid=3410064
― andrew m., Sunday, 17 August 2014 15:53 (ten years ago) link
This month's Wire has an in depth primer on Sanders
― Scary Darey (dog latin), Thursday, 21 August 2014 23:21 (ten years ago) link
I'll have to read that.
I love everything I've heard of Sanders, which amounts to all his records with Coltrane, "Preview" on The Jazz Composers Orchestra, and Ask the Ages. But I've never heard any of his solo records.
Recommendations on where to start?
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, 21 August 2014 23:45 (ten years ago) link
any of the first six at the top of the poll, really
― sleeve, Thursday, 21 August 2014 23:46 (ten years ago) link
otm
― the late great, Friday, 22 August 2014 01:09 (ten years ago) link
By me! Thanks for reading!
― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Friday, 22 August 2014 01:43 (ten years ago) link
And Burns, yeah, the top seven albums in the poll are all great, and so is Live at the East.
― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Friday, 22 August 2014 01:44 (ten years ago) link
Cool, thanks. I shall begin with Karma.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, 22 August 2014 02:17 (ten years ago) link
Omg you are gonna flip!!!
― cross over the mushroom circle (La Lechera), Friday, 22 August 2014 03:46 (ten years ago) link
Ah, horse, didn't realise this was by you. Seriously smashing stuff.
― Scary Darey (dog latin), Friday, 22 August 2014 09:39 (ten years ago) link
Karma is an excellent introduction. I raided my grandparents' (RIP) record collection while clearing out their flat in Paris earlier in the year. Huge jazz fans, and I managed to salvage copies of Tauhid and Jewels of Thought. I'd say Tauhid is fast becoming a favourite. Something so exuberant about Sanders' compositions; a joy and wonder I feel over and above a large majority of jazz players. Jewels of Thought is much more abstruse but not without its interesting parts.
― Scary Darey (dog latin), Friday, 22 August 2014 09:43 (ten years ago) link
last night's Global Village (good stream from Wichita) started off with title track from Brown Rice. perfectiy followed by some from last year's Beyond The Ragasphere. I got to thinking again about Cherry, Condona, Shakti, and Live At The East. looking for more like the last, came across this, by Allmusic's Thom Jurek:
The aesthetic and cultural merits of Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music cannot be overstated...one of the most obscure recordings in Blue Note's catalog -- paid for out of label co-founder Francis Wolff's own pocket...seamlessly blends the new jazz of the '60s -- Gale was a member of the Sun Ra Arkestra before and after these sides, and played on Cecil Taylor's Blue Note debut, Unit Structures -- with gospel, soul, and the blues. Gale's sextet included two bass players and two drummers -- in 1968 -- as well as a chorus of 11 voices, male and female...Soloists come and go, but modes, melodies, and harmonies remain firmly intact. The beautiful strains of African folk music and Latin jazz sounds in "Fulton Street," for example, create a veritable chromatic rainbow. "A Walk with Thee" is a spiritual written to a march tempo with drummers playing counterpoint to one another and the front line creating elongated melodic lines via an Eastern harmonic sensibility. Does it swing? Hell yeah! The final cut, "The Coming of Gwilu," moves from the tribal to the urban and everywhere in between using Jamaican thumb pianos, soaring vocals à la the Arkestra, polyrhythmic invention, and good, old-fashioned groove jazz, making something entirely new in the process...succeeds because it concentrates on creating a space for the myriad voices of an emerging African-American cultural force to be heard in a single architecture. This is militant music posessed by soul and spirit. All that??? Hope so!
― dow, Saturday, 23 August 2014 17:35 (ten years ago) link
Yeah that's a great album, especially love the song "The Rain" that starts like Linda Perhacs before heading into a Ra-like chant with horns blazing away
― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Saturday, 23 August 2014 18:02 (ten years ago) link
I'd say if you're looking for a starting point the 2cd Anthology: You've got To Have Freedom is a great place to start since it covers most of his best material in edited form.If you enjoy that you can go out and buy the individual lps. You'll probably want to hear the full length versions. But the shorter edits which are 9 minutes to about 15 is good starting point.
That Wire Primer does look like it'll help you get a grounding too.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 23 August 2014 22:17 (ten years ago) link
Oh yeah, just saw the new Jazzwise on the racks of the local chain newsagent yesterday and that's talking about a new John Coltrane Quintet release that's just come out. Sounds like it should be worth investigating. There's a several page article and a review in that magazinehttp://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/
― Stevolende, Saturday, 23 August 2014 22:20 (ten years ago) link
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).
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Saturday, 23 August 2014 22:23 (ten years ago) link
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.
― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Saturday, 23 August 2014 22:33 (ten years ago) link
Yeah that's the one.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 23 August 2014 23:35 (ten years ago) link
just got Elevation used from the local store. oh my god side 2.
― $80 is absurd and very ridiculous! (Sufjan Grafton), Sunday, 14 December 2014 01:30 (nine years ago) link
feels like a new experience outside of spotify+earbuds
― $80 is absurd and very ridiculous! (Sufjan Grafton), Sunday, 14 December 2014 01:34 (nine years ago) link
looks like Izipho Zam is getting reissued on LP via the Everland Jazz label
― sleeve, Friday, 23 June 2017 22:18 (seven years ago) link
finally!
― Max-Headroom-drops-a-deuce-while-shredding (Sparkle Motion), Saturday, 24 June 2017 04:41 (seven years ago) link
can anyone comment on the sound quality of the new reissues (tauhid / jewels of thought / summun bukmun umyun)?
i heard they were bad :-(
― the late great, Monday, 4 December 2017 19:14 (six years ago) link
They're not bad.
― bamcquern, Monday, 4 December 2017 22:02 (six years ago) link
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
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, January 1, 2020 11:49 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 03:12 (four years ago) link
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
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 03:13 (four years ago) link
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.
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 03:16 (four years ago) link
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.
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 03:25 (four years ago) link
Live in Paris (1975) is really good
― Brad C., Saturday, 21 March 2020 20:42 (four years ago) link
do go on !
― budo jeru, Saturday, 21 March 2020 21:57 (four years ago) link
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.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Saturday, 21 March 2020 23:41 (four years ago) link
do you know anything about the band ? i’m not sure i’m familiar with any of the other players.
― budo jeru, Saturday, 21 March 2020 23:48 (four years ago) link
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
― Brad C., Saturday, 21 March 2020 23:53 (four years ago) link
ORTF is the French equivalent to the BBC - it stands for Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, 22 March 2020 00:15 (four years ago) link
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.)
― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, 22 March 2020 00:18 (four years ago) link
kinda jazz critic are you anyway, no turntable !
― budo jeru, Sunday, 22 March 2020 00:21 (four years ago) link
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.
― Stevolende, Monday, 27 July 2020 13:47 (four years ago) link
Wow, good timing, I'm 1:43 into "Live at the East".
― Sonny Shamrock (Tom D.), Monday, 27 July 2020 13:54 (four years ago) link
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.
― Stevolende, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 19:41 (three years ago) link
BIt of him from 1968 toohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8rX54ZhweU
think I'd love to find stuff from 70-72 but these 2 will do for now maybe.
― Stevolende, Tuesday, 13 October 2020 19:43 (three years ago) link
Amazing videos, cheers Stevo
― Walter Draggedman (stevie), Tuesday, 13 October 2020 20:35 (three years ago) link
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
― Stevolende, Saturday, 24 September 2022 17:48 (one year ago) link
Tauhid deserves more attention, I'm pretty sure that's the one I've listened to the most overall.
― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:14 (one year ago) link
Everything from Elevation through Naima ranges from disappointing to dire.
What the hell, Elevation is awesome.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:28 (one year ago) link
JUst watched thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joieeBqeNoMI 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.
― Stevolende, Wednesday, 9 November 2022 23:06 (one year ago) link