Pharoah Sanders: Thembi (Verve By Request series) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve By Request edition comes on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket. AllMusic gave Thembi four stars, and its mix of spiritual jazz, fire and gentle grooves makes it a welcoming way into Sanders's Impulse! years.

This edition

• Verve By Request series
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

Good ideas often come from having nothing to do. At the Record Plant in Los Angeles in November 1970, while everyone else unpacked horns and set up drums, pianist Lonnie Liston Smith wandered over to an instrument in the corner he'd never seen before, a Fender Rhodes. He started fiddling with the buttons, the room stopped to listen, and Pharoah Sanders said they had to record it. That tune became "Astral Traveling," and it opens the album.

Thembi is named for Sanders's South African wife, Nomathemba, and it's a looser, more varied record than the side-long epics that came before. Sanders plays tenor and soprano saxophones, alto flute, koto, balafon and a cow horn; Michael White's violin sweeps through the title track; "Red, Black & Green" brings back the fire; Cecil McBee's unaccompanied bass piece "Love" stands on its own; and "Morning Prayer" and "Bailophone Dance" lean into rhythm with Roy Haynes, Clifford Jarvis and a team of percussionists. Ed Michel and Bill Szymczyk produced.

Smith liked the tune so much he made it the title track of his own 1973 debut. Not bad for a man who, by his own account, was just killing time that afternoon.

Also at Kops: more Pharoah Sanders on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Impulse! / Verve (cat# AS-9206), a reissue of the 1971 album.