Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold

rdf:langString Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold

rdf:langString Featuring Pharoah Sanders & Black Harold

rdf:langString Pharoahandblackharold.jpg

rdf:langString Saturn

rdf:langString Superior Viaduct

rdf:langString Allmusic

rdf:langString live

rdf:langString Featuring Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold is a jazz album by Sun Ra, recorded live on December 31, 1964, but not released until 1976, on Ra and Alton Abraham's El Saturn label. An expanded version of the album was reissued in 2009 by ESP-Disk, and again in 2017 by Superior Viaduct. A complete version of Sun Ra's performances on December 30 and 31, 1964 were released in 2012 on the Pharoah Sanders album In The Beginning 1963-1964. The jacket of the original release of the album stated that the recording took place on June 15, 1964 at the Cellar Cafe, New York, prior to the "October Revolution in Jazz". However, it has been established that the recording actually took place at Judson Hall on December 31, as part of the Jazz Composers Guild's "Four Days in December" series of concerts. The reissues on ESP-Disk and Superior Viaduct provide the correct location and date, as do the liner notes for In The Beginning 1963-1964, as well as the discography found in John Szwed's biography of Sun Ra. The record documents the earliest known recorded performance of "The Shadow World" (here reverse-named as "The World Shadow"), a complex structured piece which was to feature on several of Ra's better known records of subsequent years, notably The Magic City. It is an unusual item in the Ra discography, because tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders replaces John Gilmore, a mainstay of the Arkestra for most of its existence; at the time, he was working in other contexts, with the pianists Paul Bley and Andrew Hill, and drummer Art Blakey. Before releasing the recording, Sun Ra said "It should be very interesting to show the world what pre-Coltrane Pharoah Sanders was like" Also featured is the obscure flautist, Black Harold (Harold Murray), who takes a solo, vocalising through his flute, Rahsaan Roland Kirk-style, on "The Voice of Pan" (continuing into "Dawn over Israel"). This is Sanders' only recording with Sun Ra, and he is not a major presence, taking only one solo on the first track. Ra himself plays several short piano solos and introductions. Alan Silva also has a brief bass solo, and alto saxophonist Marshall Allen provides his customary fireworks. The music is mostly in the experimental, free-jazz mould, and though not quite as radical and challenging as "The Magic City", it is mostly dense and uncompromising (though that is not to say there is no variety - there are plenty of quiet interludes as well).