The Complete Pharoah Sanders Theresa Recordings Limited Edition Box Set (#282 – 7 CDs)

The Complete Pharoah Sanders
Theresa Records Limited Edition Box Set
(#282 – 7 CDs)

In your earliest years of performing, you’re called in downbeat magazine “the damnest tenor player in the English language” by A. B. Spellman, one of the country’s top critics, who 57 years later still recalled the “sounds that he had made on his horn that wouldn’t leave me. Sounds that were exclusively his, sounds that seemed thrown out of the bell with a jet force and a shrapnel edge.”

At the same time, the noted New Yorker jazz writer Whitney Balliett compares your sound to “elephant shrieks,” and Dennis Hunt, in the San Francisco Chronicle, calls it “primitive” and “nerve-wracking.”

In other words, you’re making an impression. You’re Pharoah Sanders, you’re 25 years old, and you’re already considered one of the most consequential jazz musicians in history. A few years later, as a leader, you release “Karma” with its masterwork, “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” widely deemed among the most important jazz records of all time. You’re still not 30 year old.

So then what?

A More Mature, But Still Smoldering, Voice

A decade after his signature contributions to Coltrane’s band, and his own groundbreaking work on Impulse! records, Pharaoh Sanders was still exploring, still re-defining, and still raising eyebrows and quickening pulses live and on record. Some have chosen to describe his later recordings — which included standards as well as interpretations of popular music — as his “rethinking period,” with the possible connotation that he was turning away from more passionate, hard-edged music.

Some critics don’t understand the nature of the creative process, which can involve embracing new ideas without turning away from earlier pursuits. In fact, many musicians who had fallen in love with the freedom avant-garde music provided found themselves looking back at the music traditions that preceded their careers.

In the case of Sanders, his life-long exploration brought him to Theresa Records and the albums he made from 1980 to 1987. Fans of Sanders’s earlier work will find in those recordings plenty to satisfy and remind them of the music that made his name — the spiritual themes, the inclusion of non-Western instruments, the dense backdrop supporting his ravishing horn work, and his unbridled passion.

But other tracks remind us that Sanders was similar to his former boss and mentor John Coltrane in that he could bring you to tears with a ballad, or breathe new life into a song you know from the radio. The two strains in his work were all within Sanders. While some would say he softened, others praise his later work for the potential it provides for inexperienced listeners to immerse themselves in the saxophonist, and work their way back to his earlier dates.

Sanders’s work for Theresa Records gets unjustly ignored, but hopefully that changes with the Mosaic release of The Complete Theresa Recordings of Pharoah Sanders. Pharoah Sanders remained brave and free, while also finding ways to express himself on more approachable material.

Heart Is A Melody
Ole

Having struck artistic gold with Pharoah Sanders Live, Theresa’s brain trust planned a second club recording at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. Muhammad is back on drums, but two Los Angeles-based players complete the rhythm section. Pianist William (Bill) Henderson III makes the first of nine appearances on record with Sanders.

A 22-minute version of Coltrane’s Spanish-flavored Olé comprised all of Side 1 of the original LP. It ranks with the most dynamic performances by Sanders on Theresa. The ferocity of Sanders’s playing and his stamina harken back to his performances in the 1960s and ‘70s that evoked purification rituals. He plays three solos on Olé. Each develops from prayerful phrases into broadsides that sound like his saxophone might shatter into fragments of metal, keypads and pearl inlays.

Sometimes he gives up vocalizing through his horn and just yells with his voice. Nothing sounds false or affected. Sanders believes in every note, every sound. Henderson, Heard and especially Muhammad never wither in the saxophonist’s wake. The performance takes you on a trip.

Coming Of Age With Coltrane

His was a journey that began in 1940, in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he initially studied art as well as music, turning to tenor saxophone in his high school years. There was a thriving scene in black music at the time, and the youthful Sanders could hang around 9th Street to hear blues, R&B, and jazz. The city was also rife with racism, and his experience of that would fuel a lot of his later compositions. When he graduated, he moved to Oakland, then New York, where he got swept up in the newness and unrestrained expression of the avant-garde. He was nearly penniless, sleeping in movie theaters during the day, and donating blood for lunch money.

John Coltrane first became aware of Sanders when Coltrane was still part of Miles Davis’ band. He invited the younger player to join his own group in 1965. They pushed each other, and their fellow musicians, into the territories of free jazz that had not previously been explored, often characterized by a more limited chord structure but a tremendous expansion of expression through dynamics, dissonance, and emotional upheaval.

While both men made certain free jazz would not be for the faint of heart or for the easy listening crowd, Sanders was certainly more raw. Solos would start with intensity, and build through line after line until it was impossible for him to go further. And then he’d go further. He would surge through raucous and musically dangerous terrain to achieve a kind of beauty previously unknown — the beauty in realizing that music, like life, can reveal unpredictable and unexpected truths delivered in wave after wave of energy, exuberance, joy, and fury.

Sanders’s work after his association with Coltrane showed he also embraced Coltrane’s devotion to the spiritual in his music. The fervor and earnestness of Sanders’s music can’t be separated from his interest in Afrocentrism, and beliefs drawn from Eastern and Middle Eastern traditions, a keen sense of gratitude, and his celebration of life.

Unbridled Energy? Soaring Emotionalism?
How About Both

On our new set, you’ll hear everything you expect from a Pharoah Sanders album on tracks such as “Greeting to Idris,” a nod to his long-time percussionist Idris Muhammad, which starts strong and escalates into a flurry of unlimited energy. Pianist John Hicks, a long-time Sanders ally, doesn’t miss the moment by adding his own indefatigable piano approach.

He follows that with a swinging approach to “Doktor Pitt,” a private and serene “Kazuko,” and a version of the Coltrane classic “After The Rain” that will leave you stunned by how close Sanders’s vision could be to his former employer’s. He goes on like that — an explosive torrent on “You’ve Got to Have Freedom,” followed by a tune such as “Soledad” that features Indian instruments and textures, followed by the Rodgers and Hart number “It’s Easy To Remember,” then the straight=ahead blowing on “Origin,” even a track or two celebrating highlife music.

Regardless of the idiom, Sanders and his sidemen are strong, confident, and muscular when need be, soothing and tender when the song demands.

Mosaic Records
The Definitive Presentation

Initially conceived by Michael Cuscuna, the set was produced by David Weiss and John Koenig, who played instrumental roles in the painstaking and intricate mastering and all the aspects of releasing a Mosaic set. The set was mastered by Andreas K. Meyer and Shane Carroll.

Due to dramatic improvements in analog-to-digital converters and our mastering process, we believe this set will be viewed as the most sonically faithful presentation of Pharoah’s extraordinary musical output of the 1980s. Our goal was to highlight the fine details, beauty, and unique sound inherent in his extraordinary output.

This mastering process utilized hi-res 24-bit/192 kHz transfers from the original analog master tapes. The only exceptions are two missing analog reels (totaling four tracks) and all bonus tracks/alternate takes previously released on CD, which were originally mastered from digital sources.

The exclusive Mosaic booklet includes many vintage photos, a complete discography of the sessions, and an essay by jazz writer Mark Stryker that covers the historical significance of Sanders, provides track-by-track analysis, and digs deep into the techniques Sanders employed using lips, mouth, breath control, and fingerings to achieve his extraordinary sound.

We think this compendium is one you’ll cherish, but as most of this music has been out of print for a long time, we believe demand will be strong. Please beat the rush before our very limited edition sells out, never to be issued again. Order today.

Pharoah is a man of large spiritual reservoir. He’s always trying to reach out to truth. He’s trying to allow his spiritual self to be his guide. He’s dealing, among other things, in energy, in integrity, in essences. I so much like the strength of his playing. Furthermore, he is one of the innovators, and it’s been my pleasure and privilege that he’s been willing to help me.—John Coltrane

Audio Clips

Album: Journey To The One
Audio Clip: Greeting To Idris
Pharoah Sanders (ts), John Hicks (p) Ray Drummond (b), Idris Muhammad (d)

For Sanders’s first recording as a leader in more than two years, Pittman and Ishida reintroduced him to the public with a double-LP released in April 1980. Featuring shifting personnel, the 10 tracks were recorded at multiple sessions in December 1979 in San Francisco. It’s a spectacular start for Sanders’s run on Theresa.

Greeting To Idris is a blissful invocation: buoyant, swinging, with a songful melody that never leaves the F Dorian mode (scale). The elementary form is eight bars long and the harmony beams with contentment: C minor/F minor/C minor/F minor/G minor/F minor/D-flat Major/E-flat Major. Sanders strolls through the melody six times with slight variations before starting to improvise. He retains the essence of the song while building to a thundering climax. His incorporates growls, multiphonics, screams, split tones and overtones — yet he does so in melodic fashion. His abstract gestures and avant-garde techniques remain wedded to the harmony and form in ways they were not a decade earlier. Hicks follows with an animated solo that sustains the energy. Sanders returns with the melody, before the performance fades out abruptly. (Bay Area guitarist Carl Lockett plays on three tracks, including this one, but does not solo.)

Album: Rejoice
Audio Clip: Rejoice
Pharoah Sanders (ts) Bobby Hutcherson (v) vibes; Joe Bonner (p), Art Davis (b), Elvin Jones (d), Babatunde (agogô bells); B. Kazuko Ishida (vcl)

Sanders’s sophomore release follows a similar outline to his debut. Recorded in 1981 in New York and San Francisco, Rejoice is a 2-LP set with shifting personnel, diverse material, choir, African percussion and overdubs. Three all-time greats make guest appearances — drummers Elvin Jones, Billy Higgins and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson — though, regrettably, Jones appears just once, and Hutcherson is only slightly more present. Nonetheless, it’s a strong sequel to its predecessor.

Rejoice, composed by Sanders as an offering to God, opens the album on a high. After a rumbling introduction, the music kicks into time with a bright, joyous vamp anchored by Jones’s broken Latin beat. Ishida’s spoken words beckon: Join us in our tribute to peace and beauty. Sanders’s lustrous tenor joins the piano riff and returns often to the entrancing melody as his luminous improvisation expands in cogent, concentric circles. Bonner’s solo follows a similar arc. Jones’s solo erupts in rousing waves of polyrhythms before the vamp returns. Good Lord, Jones’s churning rhythmic feel is otherworldly — those floating triplets, that beguiling ride-cymbal beat!

A trilling Sanders jumps back into the fray and a second tenor joins — himself overdubbed, perhaps a genial callback to his duets with Coltrane 15 years earlier. Bassist Art Davis, who recorded with Coltrane when the saxophonist wanted two bassists in the mix, hooks up well with Jones. Nigerian percussionist Michael (Babatunde) Olatunji, who was also close to Coltrane, adds colorful West African agogô bells to the texture.

Album: A Prayer Before Dawn
Audio Clip: After The Rain
Pharoah Sanders (ts),  John Hicks (p)

Sanders’s final recording for the label, likely released in 1988, is mostly a duo album with William Henderson. The front cover of the LP cited Sanders as the leader, but the back credited Sanders and Henderson as co-leaders. The liner notes make clear that Pittman and Sanders had mulled an all-ballad recording for years and that it came together piecemeal. Two impromptu studio duets by Sanders and Henderson got the ball rolling. They later recorded additional tracks, and Henderson added synthesizer overdubs. Two songs pair Sanders with others.

Live!

In April 1981, Sanders played a series of West Coast engagements with Hicks, bassist Walter Booker and Muhammad. Theresa recorded the quartet at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, Maiden Voyage in Los Angeles and Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. Sanders’s energy is jacked, and his combustible chemistry with the rhythm section generates scorched-earth intensity.

Shukuru

Released in 1985, Sanders’s penultimate recording for Theresa intentionally turns away from the red-hot ardor of his four previous releases in search of a more relaxed, affable expression. Shukuru (“gratitude” in Arabic) also owes its character to au courant production techniques, including electronic sonorities provided by a Kurzweil synthesizer, which Henderson plays exclusively to produce facsimile strings, voices and acoustic piano. Drummond and Muhammad return, and Sanders’s old friend and colleague, vocalist Leon Thomas, appears on two tracks.

Ed Kelly & Friend

In 1978 Pharoah Sanders went into the studio with pianist, Ed Kelly, who was an important figure in the local San Francisco and Oakland jazz scene and were joined by Peter Barshay (b) and Eddie Marshall (d). They recorded six tracks and among these, “Rainbow Song,” a Kelly composition, powerfully showcases Pharoah’s sound, while “Newborn,” a Sanders composition, burns with intensity.

Kabsha

In September 1980, Idris Muhammad took a pianoless quartet into Rudy Van Gelder’s studio with Sanders and George Coleman on tenor saxophones and Drummond on bass. The saxophonists’ contrasting styles make for fascinating listening. Coleman’s GCCG blues boasts a simple melodic riff carried by the two tenors over driving bass and drums. Coleman solos first, throwing down the gauntlet. He rifles everything he’s got at Sanders in eight rabid choruses: chromatic bebop lines, supple double timing, bracing intervals, blues elocutions and even blustery overtones and altissimo cries designed to show he can play Sanders’s game too.

The Evolving Expressionism

On these recordings, Pharoah Sanders doesn’t entirely abandon the untamed urgency, explosiveness and stamina of his free jazz days. His signature vocabulary of extended saxophone techniques and vocalized tonal effects continues to fire listeners’ emotions. The rapturous vamps and improvisations of his Impulse! years remain central to his sound world.

Sanders integrates all these elements into a more capacious and disciplined expressionism than in his previous work. His Theresa recordings — six LPs as a leader, one as a sideman with San Francisco pianist Ed Kelly and a few tracks in support of Muhammad — reveal a more communicative and bonhomous saxophonist and improvisor. He has a greater range of stories to tell and greater means with which to tell them.

On the surface, Sanders steps back from the cutting edge, but his Theresa LPs resist reductive descriptions such as “safe” or “conservative.” They represent not retrenchment but growth and consolidation: a personalized merger of so-called inside (mainstream) and outside (avant-garde) vocabularies. The details evolve spontaneously on the bandstand.

“I just wanted people to feel like I had a warm side, too, not just playing one kind of a thing,” Sanders told Ashley Kahn in Jazz Times in 2008. “I like to play some inside things and some very colorful type of music. I’m still not all the way in. I’m still a little out with a lot of things — I call it out because I can’t write it down. I used to play those ballads a long time ago, but when I got to New York City, I was so excited about what was going on that I stopped playing them.”

As always, however, the music has the last word. Sanders’s Theresa recordings, many long out of print or available as expensive imports, are the most persuasive rejoinder to skeptics. The most inspired of the LPs — Journey to the One, Rejoice, Heart is a Melody, Pharoah Sanders Live — are full of passion, intensity and poetry; the uninhibited expression of an artist discovering the Whitmanesque multitudes within himself.

Sanders helped foment a revolution in the 1960s. Two decades later, jazz had moved into a different historical epoch. Sanders, now in his 40s, courted a new muse, one engaged to his evolving sense of self. Sanders’s work on Theresa opened an aesthetic lane that he inhabited for the rest of his career, even as excursions sometimes took him elsewhere.

NEA Jazz Masters: Pharoah Sanders

“I’d go see Pharoah Sanders play at the Village Vanguard. He plays this amazing set, and then at the end of the set, brings out his prayer bowl. At that moment you realize you’re not in a jazz club anymore, that you’re in a spiritual space and that you’ve all come there unknowingly to become a congregation.” – Jason Moran

Limited Edition: 5000
(#282- 7 CDs)

This set is strictly limited in its release and will someday be unavailable. Please don’t delay in ordering this comprehensive set of some of the music’s most reliably captivating artists.