Pharoah Sanders

Pharoah Sanders (born Ferrell Lee Sanders on October 13, 1940, in Little Rock, Arkansas; died September 24, 2022, in Los Angeles) was an American tenor saxophonist. As a child, he accompanied hymns on clarinet at church. At Scipio Jones High School in North Little Rock he switched to tenor saxophone. After graduating in 1959, he moved to Oakland, California, to live with relatives and briefly studied art and music at Oakland City College.

Sanders moved to New York in 1962. During a period when he was homeless, Sun Ra gave him a place to stay and clothes, and encouraged him to use the name “Pharoah.” Sanders later said that his grandmother had wanted to name him after the biblical Pharaoh, but the family chose Ferrell; he adopted the stage name himself when joining the New York musicians’ union. By 1963 he was working with Billy Higgins and Don Cherry and had attracted the attention of Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. He joined Coltrane’s group in 1965, appearing on recordings including Ascension, Meditations, and Live at the Village Vanguard Again!; Coltrane’s late style also reflected Sanders’s influence.

Sanders signed with Impulse! in 1966 and released his first album as a leader, Tauhid, in 1967. The nearly 30-minute “The Creator Has a Master Plan” on 1969’s Karma combined vocalist Leon Thomas’s yodeling with pianist Lonnie Liston Smith’s harmonies and became a touchstone of spiritual jazz. Albums such as Jewels of Thought (1970), Thembi (1971), Black Unity (1972), Village of the Pharoahs (1973), and Elevation (1974) continued his explorations of African rhythms and extended collective improvisation.

Around 1970 he recorded with Alice Coltrane on Ptah, the El Daoud and Journey in Satchidananda. After leaving Impulse! in 1973, he recorded for labels including Theresa and explored R&B and modal jazz in the 1980s. In 1994 he made The Trance of Seven Colors with Moroccan Gnawa musician Mahmoud Guinia; he returned to Verve with Message from Home in 1995. Sanders was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2016. His 2021 collaboration with British electronic musician Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra, Promises, was widely acclaimed and became his final album released during his lifetime.

The two albums featured here are Tauhid (1967, Impulse! AS-9138) and Karma (1969, AS-9181). On the former, guitar and percussion shape long, developing lines that already reveal Sanders’s distinctive approach. The latter is his most influential recording and a landmark of spiritual jazz.