Journey To The One - Pharoah Sanders (1980)

Ideated from: a week of stuff that doesn’t seem to exist on streaming services

Pharoah Sanders did a lot of work in his long career, starting with playing second horn in John Coltrane’s later outings. Sanders was identified with spiritual jazz–not so much a subgenre as it is an outlook on how and why to play jazz. He fit more concretely into free and post-bop jazz, but was never one to hang his hat on any particular idiom.

This release isn’t one of his more famous ones, but it is solid throughout. A shifting cast of backing musicians help the sax great run through quite a few different statements of style and ambition. There are tracks comfortable in mainstream jazz of the late 70s as well as more ambitious and genre-crossing offerings.

Tracks I Liked

Doktor Pitt - to me, this sounds more like Coltrane than the actual Coltrane song featured later, After The Rain.

Soledad - a song with a Spanish title featuring Indian instruments. Very well done.

You’ve Got To Have Freedom - a scorcher with some great vocals