Saluting Pharoah Sanders
By Willard Jenkins
NEA Jazz Master and spiritual beacon, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who joined the ancestors last September 24, was an honored Winter Jazzfest presence. He headlined a 2017 WJF bill opened by one of his acolytes, Afro-Brit quest-agent Shabaka Hutchings and one of his several assemblages, The Ancestors. Two years later, Pharoah returned to reprise his burning presence on the 50th anniversary performance of Gary Bartz’s classic recording Another Earth.
On this WJF occasion, guitarist, guitar synthesist, and aural architect Nate Mercereau will focus on Sanders’ 1974 Impulse! Records date, Elevation. Mercereau, a committed devotee of free improvisation and spontaneous composition, addresses his core instrument with a sense of twisted adventure that brings to mind the man Rolling Stone once labeled the “Avant-Gui- tar Godfather,” the ancestor Sonny Sharrock. The godfather of improvised guitar skronk, Sharrock made several sessions with the great saxophonist, including on Sanders’ pivotal 1966 Impulse! session Tauhid.
Born Ferrell Lee Sanders on October 13, 1940 in Little Rock, AR, the man who became Pharoah Sanders, he of the extended, multiphonic tenor saxophone technique, was initially introduced to the broader public as a member of John Coltrane’s mid-60s extended, incen- diary spiritual quest unit. In the new book Ain’t But a Few of Us: Black Music Writers Tell Their Story, (Duke University Press, 2022; edited by this writer), the Anthology section reprints a 1965 DownBeat Magazine review by A.B. Spellman headed, “Trane + 7 = a Wild Night at the Gate,” where Spellman recalls the visceral contributions of Pharoah to Coltrane’s extended assemblage:
“Sanders followed [Carlos] Ward, and he is the damndest tenor player in the English lan- guage,” Spellman enthused. “He went on for minute after minute in a register that I didn’t know the tenor had. Those special effects that most tenor men use only in moments of high orgiastic excitement are the basic premises of his presentation. His use of overtones, includ- ing a cultivated squeak that parallels his line, is constantly startling. He plays way above the upper register; long slurred lines and squeaky monosyllabic staccatos, and then closes with some kind of Bushman’s nursery rhyme. Pharoah is ready, and you’ll be hearing from him soon.” And indeed we did, starting most broadly with Sanders’ brilliant, and by turns prayerful and incendiary Impulse! recordings Tauhid (1966) and Karma (1969), which introduced Leon Thomas’ vocal hypnosis through the deeply impactful anthem “The Creator Has a Master Plan.”
The ensuing 57 years have hardly dampened author Spellman’s enthusiasm for Pharoah. “When I wrote that Pharoah Sanders is the damndest tenor saxophonist in the English lan- guage,” Spellman expressed recently, “I was thinking of the whole man with his country boy gait and his silent, introspective demeanor. But mostly, I was mentally replaying some 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. If you were open to this music, these sounds could reorder your sensibilities. He always had new ones or new ways of placing them within the progressions of the band. Like Coltrane, his leader, and Albert Ayler, his peer, he was sui generis.”
Such is the sensibility Mercereau and friends will strive mightily to bring to Winter Jazzfest. Theirs will be a quest for the often ecstatic truth and intrepid furiosity Pharoah Sanders delivered on his 1973 Impulse! date Elevation. That record included the contributions of Joe Bonner on piano, harmonium, wood flute and percussion; bassist Calvin Hill, who also con- tributed tambura; drummer-percussionists Michael Carvin, Lawrence Killian, John Blue, and Kenneth Nash; and vocalist Sedatrius Brown. Doubtless Elevation’s extended explorations, in- cluding the opening title track, which clocks in at 18:02, and the rapturous piece “The Gather- ing” (13:52 on record) with Sanders emoting at Herculean levels, will be points of Mercereau’s performance given the leader’s spontaneous composition sense of sound architecture.
The influence of Pharoah Sanders remains indelible, whether on key observers like A.B. Spellman and the legion of writers who encountered the saxophonist-conceptualist beyond his Coltrane entry point, or on subsequent generations of musicians, like Mercereau and his cohorts. Such is certainly the case with newly minted NEA Jazz Master, alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett. Pharoah joined Kenny on the bandstand at The Iridium for the altoist’s 2008 Mack Avenue record Sketches of MD. A mentor of sorts for Garrett, Kenny today says, “The lasting impact of Pharoah Sanders was his quest for the truth, speaking his truth through his saxo- phone, and allowing the listener to take part in his journey. The lasting impact of Pharoah was the sermons he spoke every time he breathed air into his saxophone. His courage to allow the listener to share his everyday ups and downs of life. His quest for the truth at whatever the cost.”