Pharoah Sanders

Essential Albums

  • Karma
    Karma
    Karma

    Consisting mainly of Pharoah Sanders’ most famous song, “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” Karma is the most widely known of the tenor sax giant’s Impulse! albums spanning 1966 to 1973. The song, co-written with vocalist Leon Thomas, is by turns meditative and declamatory, with a long, cyclical form that starts out of tempo, eases into a steady groove (loosely based on the “Acknowledgement” motif from John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme), states a main melody and several countermelodies, bursts into a joyous double-time romp, then repeats the whole process. As a nearly album-length piece, it merits consideration alongside Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and Coltrane’s Ascension (the latter featuring Sanders). “Colors,” another Sanders-Thomas song, rounds out Karma much more concisely, in a floating and ethereal vein that recalls Coltrane pieces such as “Dear Lord” and “After the Rain.” Karma is pure psychedelic soul, a glorious convergence of Black Power and Flower Power. Its accessible groove is arguably related to some of the work appearing contemporaneously on Creed Taylor’s CTI label, though much harder-edged. Remarkably, Karma was recorded almost the exact same day as In a Silent Way by Miles Davis, and thus was truly a sign of changing times. Featuring James Spaulding on flute, Julius Watkins on French horn, and Nat Bettis on percussion, it’s also a key example of Sanders using expanded instrumentation and textures. Pianist Lonnie Liston Smith, drummer Billy Hart, and bassists Reggie Workman and Richard Davis complete the lineup, with Ron Carter and Freddie Waits substituting as the rhythm section on “Colors.”

Artist Playlists

Singles & EPs

Live Albums

Compilations

Appears On

More To Hear

About Pharoah Sanders

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1940, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders stands as a crucial link between free jazz and spiritual jazz. After high school, he moved to Oakland, where he had relatives; he played locally for a couple of years, meeting and befriending John Coltrane along the way, before relocating to New York in 1961. Sanders played off and on in Sun Ra’s Arkestra, but his career took off via his work with Coltrane, beginning with the influential Ascension in 1965, which blended Sanders’ caustic, fiery tenor attack with a meditative intensity that absorbed ’Trane’s spiritual seeking. Sanders went on to play with Don Cherry and Alice Coltrane, and, after dropping his debut album on the ESP-Disk imprint in 1965, he began a long association with Impulse Records, becoming a leading figure in the early-’70s spiritual jazz scene. In the decades since, he’s maintained a post-bop sound while recording with a variety of collaborators, including master Moroccan musician Mahmoud Guinia in the 1990s and electronic music producer Floating Points on the acclaimed 2021 album Promises.

FROM
Little Rock, AR, United States
BORN
October 13, 1940
GENRE
Jazz

Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada