I spent a lot of time last week listening to and reading about Pharoah Sanders, the cosmic jazz titan who died in Los Angeles on Sept. 24. He was 81.
He was born Ferrell Sanders on Oct. 13, 1940, in Little Rock and grew up in North Little Rock. He started playing clarinet in church and moved to tenor sax as a student at Scipio Jones High School, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. As a teen, Sanders would sneak into Little Rock clubs to hear R&B and jazz.
John Cain, program director at KABF 88.3 FM, disc jockey and jazz oracle, first met Sanders when they were kids hanging out on Ninth Street in Little Rock.
"He was about two years younger than I am. He used to carry his saxophone with him all the time," says Cain last week after finishing an on-air stint filled with Sanders' music. "Man, he blew that saxophone."
In 1959, Sanders moved to Oakland, Calif., attended Oakland Junior College and played music in clubs. In 1961, he left for New York City and eventually joined Sun Ra's Arkestra (it was Ra who suggested he change his name to Pharoah).
His 1964 debut album, "Pharoah's First," caught the attention of John Coltrane, and the two would work together regularly until Coltrane's death in 1967. Like Coltrane's work, Sanders' music -- all at once chaotic, far reaching, searching, beautiful and turbulent -- was part of a spiritual quest.
"I saw him change from a youth to this intellectual adult, and then he was this spirit guy," Cain says.
Nathaniel Friedman, in a 2020 New Yorker interview with Sanders, quoted the late Amiri Baraka: "The whole musical persona of Pharoah Sanders is of a consciousness in conscious search of a higher consciousness."
Sanders' solo albums include "Karma," "Wisdom Through Music," "Black Unity," "Love in Us All" and "Promises," his 2021 collaboration with electronic artist Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2004, he was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, and received a 2016 Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Cain says that among his favorites is Sanders' work on the songs "Boram Xam Xam," "The Shang" and "Portrait Of Cheikh Anta Diop" from the Randy Weston compilation album "Khepera."
"Whatever he played, I appreciated," Cain says. "I discovered things that I didn't know about myself ... This guy, Pharoah, is it."
email: sclancy@adgnewsroom.com