Pharoah Sanders - Karma

First, a bit of a backstory.

In January 1991 while the world was on the verge of seeing America go to war with Iraq, I was living alone in a bedsit in Herne Hill in London while (supposedly at least) studying at University.  It was very cold, very damp, and if I dare admit it, probably a bit lonely and boring - I didn't have a lot to do.  What I did have was a decent hi-fi system which the previous week I had added to with a “tuner” (that’s right kids, if you wanted radio on a proper hi-fi, you had to go and shell out for a tuner).  So there I was skipping around the South London pirate stations when I stumbled across something intriguing.

I heard music that was in turn simple but challenging.  Earthy but somehow spacey.  It had serious (and I mean “furrowed jazz brow” serious) sax on it alongside yodelling.  Yes really, yodelling.  The lyrics to the track playing spoke of peace, and the music itself I found sublimely peaceful on a miserable January Saturday morning.

I inserted a cassette into my tape recorder and hit record (a That’s MGX90 if anyone’s interested), the mysterious jazz was recorded for prosperity but faded out after a few minutes to be replaced by the LP version of The Isley’s “Harvest For The World” with the slow intro, between the intro and the main song the DJ uttered a sentence that I have no problem remembering to this day, “The message to George Bush and Saddam Hussein is, take a chill pill, you are listening to Gilles Peterson’s Vibrazone on Jazz FM.”

The Isleys did their thing, then we were treated to A Tribe Called Quest, some Organized Konfusion, Ernest Ranglin’s “Surfin” and many more delights.  The show blew my mind, but I never heard Gilles on Jazz FM again, his contract was terminated, or as Time Out magazine put it the next week “DJ Sacked For Playing Peace Music.”

It turned out that despite Gilles' calls for peace, from that weekend Iraq had a war on it’s hands, but on the home front I had developed a love of Pharoah Sanders, for it was him with the serious sax and peace yodelling, and I delighted at having my ears opened to so much more.

Here’s what I know about Pharoah without googling.  He used to be called “Little Rock” and was a contemporary of Coltrane.  He has accompanied many of the important Strata East and Impulse label players of the late 60s early 70s including playing with Alice Coltrane but also with jazz funkers like Norman Connors.  Pharoah has never stopped gigging, I was lucky enough to see him at Bristol Temple Meads church circa 1995, the closest I have ever come to a godly spiritual experience.  Bizarrely, Grace Jones once claimed that she was found, “Moses style” floating down the Mississippi in a basket by Pharoah Sanders.  I don’t know how mainstream music critics pigeon hole the great man, Free Jazz? Avant Garde?  I don’t care.  I care about what I hear, and right now I’m listening to the LP “Karma” by Pharoah Sanders.

The LP only has two songs, though one song is split in two if you have the vinyl original.  “The Creator Has A Masterplan” opens the album with a cacophony of free jazz blowing.  Pharoah has a very distinctive style, close to Coltrane or Ornette Colman but more melodic than both if not as technical.  The horn sometimes screams and grumbles like it is at the point of being broken but always remains soulful.  This opening salvo only lasts a couple of minutes before dying down and letting the bass take over with a very simple repetitive riff that remains a feature for the next half an hour. Also a feature (and recurring theme across Pharoah’s work to this day) is the sound of African shaker percussion and the sound of someone playing a piano by strumming the strings “harp like” behind flute (James Spalding) and piano (Lonnie Liston Smith).  This track credits both Reggie Workman and Richard Davis on bass, it sounds to me like a classic Ron Carter line, buy his credit is saved for the second track on the LP “Colours.”

It says something about the music that I lose my sense of time in it.  Terrible cliché “losing yourself” in music, but I really do.  For the sake of this blog, I’ve checked the clock, and it is around about 7 minutes 30 seconds that we hear the first vocals, Leon Thomas repeating his little poem, chanting and yodelling.  Don’t like yodelling?  Get over it you big snob, it’s great to sing along to too, altogether now…….

The track takes another couple of turns before it ends, first to return to the opening theme and later to go a bit “free” with the whole band (including Thomas) playing very hard indeed.  It is here the music is at it’s most challenging and likely to send non-jazz lovers running to the hills clutching their ears, but stick with it for “out of the strong came forth sweetness” as Grace Jones might have said, because when the vocal and bass riff return to finish the song, it all makes perfect sense.

The Second and final track on the LP is “Colours” again featuring Lonnie Liston Smith on keys and Leon Thomas taking the vocal responsibilities.  It is a very contemplative track, the childlike joyful lyrics juxtaposed against the rather sad vocal delivery and very melancholic playing.  Jazz experts could probably immediately identify what it is that allows this song (and so many others by Sanders) to set such a unique mood, they’d probably speak of minor chord changes, or modes or scales.  Others might suggest that Bob Thiele’s production or the way the studio was set up for these Impulse cuts was influencial.  I don’t know, all I know it that hearing Pharoah in a lonely attic bedsit as the world was about to go to war was very influencial on me.

20 years later and you may know already that Gilles did alright for himself.  He went from Jazz FM to Kiss and then onto his current gig on Radio 1, he is currently regarded as one of the worlds “tastemakers”.  Lucky devil.  My That’s MRX90 cassette however, does not have such a happy history.  I left it around my parents house and lost it for over a decade.  Imagine my excitement when I found it a few years ago.  Now imagine how I felt when I rewinded it expecting to hear Pharoah, only to find my dad had recorded country music over the top.  He doesn’t even really like country music.

Still, I’ve got my memories, and a whole load of Pharoah releases that every now and again, when I need that “spiritual” experience, I dig out and play “end to end.”

King Canute, January 2011.


Tracklisting (from discogs, CD version)


1 The Creator Has A Master Plan 32:45
2 Colors 5:37