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Table of Contents
An Introduction to Pharoah.............................................................4

The Making of Pharoah.................................................................12

Pharoah on Pharoah, with Eric Welles-Nyström........................17

Pharoah Sanders Breathed Fire, by Marcus J. Moore.................27

My God, What Is Going On Here? with Bedria Sanders..............36

Tisziji Muñoz.................................................................................42

Randis gjestebok, fra hennes hjem i Gartnerveien.....................44

Pharoah Sanders in Europe, by Pierre Crépon...........................46

Niklaus Troxler...............................................................................55

Gérard Ruoy...................................................................................57

Pharoah tracklist and credits.....................................................58

Harvest Time Live 1977 tracklist and credits.............................59

Credits........................................................................................60

Pharoah additional credits...........................................................61

Harvest Time Live 1977 additional credits..................................62

< 2 >
 Lead sheet for “Harvest Time” written by Pharoah Sanders, New York, 1976.
Courtesy of Bedria Sanders.
< 3 >
 An Introduction
to Pharoah
This record’s origin story is
as elusive as Pharoah himself.
It was born out of a misunderstanding between Pharoah and the India
Navigation producer Bob Cummins, and was recorded with a group of
musicians so unlikely that they were never all in the same room again.
There was the guitarist Tisziji Muñoz, who would go on to become a
spiritual guru, the organist Clifton “Jiggs” Chase, who would leave jazz to
take a job at Sugar Hill Records, where he would co-write and produce
“The Message” for Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Bedria
Sanders, Pharoah’s wife at the time and a classically trained pianist, who
would play the harmonium on this record even though she had never
seen a harmonium before. The confluence of surprising circumstances
that surrounded the making of this record, though at the time seemed
like limitations, only fueled its brilliance. It would go on to become one
of Pharoah’s most beloved records, and would be recognized as one of the
great works of the 20th century.

It started in 1976, when Bob approached Pharoah about doing a record

together. Bob was a lawyer who had moved his family from Cleveland to
Staten Island in the late ’60s to work at Western Union. A devotee of the New
York downtown avant-garde jazz scene, he started his small label because,
as his daughter Beth remembers it, “he loved these musicians and nobody
was recording them.” He named it India Navigation after a garbage scow
that ferried Cleveland’s municipal waste across Lake Erie. “It was a joke,”
Beth said, “but a little ill-fated because nobody remembered the label name.”
< 4 >
 Pharoah Sanders, Jazz Middelheim,
Antwerp, 1977. Photograph by Rob Miseur /
Courtesy of Centro Studi A. Polillo - Siena Jazz.
< 5 >
 Bob would eventually get a studio in two unused offices of Western
Union’s famous Telegraph Building, a 19th century skyscraper in what
was becoming the Lower Manhattan neighborhood of TriBeCa. But
when he recorded this album he was still in his first studio, a large
cement room in an old spring water factory in Rockland County,
north of the city on the Hudson, where he lived with his wife Nancy.
Bob and his family built the studio themselves. As Beth remembers it,
getting Pharoah was a coup for her father. “Pharoah was his dream,” she
said. “He was one of [Bob and Nancy’s] favorite musicians. He was a legend,
even though he wasn’t doing that well right then. And my dad was kind
of shy, so somehow he managed to approach and talk to Pharoah. And I
guess, knowing him, probably proposed something casual, knowing that
he couldn’t really do what Pharaoh might be used to.”

Bob initially proposed a saxophone and bass duo because, as he wrote to

Pharoah in a letter, “this was something we could handle and afford,” but
as their conversation continued, Pharoah had a “wish that the music be
more complex.” By the time Pharoah showed up in Rockland County on
that hot August afternoon in 1976, he had an entourage in tow. Along with
Bedria, Muñoz, and Jiggs, there was the late Steve Neil with his bass; the
drummer Greg Bandy, whom Pharoah’s former bandmate Leon Thomas
had nicknamed “Ski,” because, as Greg told us, “I was skiing through the
world”; and the late percussionist Lawrence Killian who had been part
of Pharoah’s band a few years before, in a different era of his career—his
congas and balafon both notably graced 1972’s Black Unity and Live at
the East. Ironically, this was one of the smaller groups that Pharoah had
ever tried to record with.

But Pharoah wanted to make a rock record. In a rare interview that Pharoah
conducted with De Haagse Post during a European tour the following
summer, he told the Dutch journalist Bert Vuijsje that the India Navigation
< 6 >
 album had been an experiment, a foray into the sound that was topping
the charts: “On one side there is completely different music than on the
other, because I wanted to try something that would sell well,” he said.
“In America as a musician you don’t know what to do anymore, so much
money is made with rock. That’s why I wanted to make a record with both
those types of music. Something that would be similar to what I used to
play, but with a few changes.”

Beth popped her head into the studio that day to find that the session was
not going according to plan. “Things were tense, to put it mildly,” she said.
“I looked at Dad’s face and I was like, ‘Okay, what’s wrong?.’ And he was
almost beyond speaking. He didn’t have the setup, really. He had been
surprised by how many people came. He was self-taught as an engineer, and
he built a lot of the system, so he wasn’t slick. And it was panic time.” Greg
also remembers the atmosphere of that session. “Out of all the recordings I
did with Pharoah, that must have been the cheapest idea yet,” he laughed,
thinking of the paltry setup. “That was one of them: ‘Oh Lord. Give us the
money, otherwise, we’re gone.’ You know?”

How Bob and Pharoah managed to bounce back from that first disappointing
recording session to the final album is a bit of a mystery. But we do know
that Bob sent a letter in September asking Pharoah back to the studio:
“we can try to get the sound the way you want it—the voices, the drums,
etc.” And we also know that Pharoah did in fact come back for a second
session, where he was able to address the earlier problems he had with
the sound—but not in the way Bob expected. Because when they gathered
for the second time, on a warm day in September, they played his quiet
masterpiece “Harvest Time.”

There are no drums on “Harvest Time,” just guitar, bass, harmonium,

and saxophone. Bedria thinks the composition was spontaneous. Tisziji
< remembers it that way too, recalling7that Pharoah just turned to him and >
 told him to start. “Pharoah said, ‘Man, you know, come up with something.’
So I came up with something and it stuck,” Tisziji said. “He would also
often ask me for a harmony instrument; let the harmony play, set a vamp
so that the guys can blow on it. So, I set that vamp up, he was fine with
it, very simple. Bass player got into it, we all got into it, and I guess it
became a masterpiece for people. Write two chords. Write the two-chord
masterpiece in C minor. Beautiful, perfect.”

Then, Pharoah asked Bedria to name it. “I guess it’s just what came to my
head because it was in the fall, you know,” she said. “It was harvest time in
September. That’s my favorite time of the year.”
In her liner notes, Harmony Holiday calls the album “a love letter” to Bedria.
Her presence is all over it—she was the only one of Pharoah’s wives to ever
play on a record of his, and it’s clear from his wild, improvised vocals on “Love
Will Find A Way,” that Bedria was the inspiration for much of the music.

The complications around the recording had so sufficiently soured Bob

and Pharoah’s relationship that neither of them could recognize what
Pharoah had made. “Pharoah was not happy with Bob after that,” Bedria
said. “In the end, he felt like Bob didn’t step up to the plate, that he didn’t
really invest enough to do a really good job. And he was disappointed,
because he said, ‘Well, we could have done this ourselves. We didn’t need
an investor, you know?’ So he wasn’t happy with the way it was done and
he wasn’t happy with the product, because he thought it could have been
much better. The technical part.”

Bob was equally disappointed. “I don’t really remember him talking much
about it, because it was kind of an upsetting time right after it happened,”
Beth said. “I guess for anybody, if you meet your idol and for some reason
they agree to do something with you, and then you and they both feel like
you didn’t live up to the moment, it’s hard.”
< 8 >
 Pharoah Sanders,
Jazz Middelheim,
Antwerp, August 1977.
Photograph by Guy Stevens.
< 9 >
 After its release, Pharoah rarely spoke publicly about the record—a private
figure, he rarely spoke publicly at all. But despite his silence, or perhaps
because of it, Pharoah gained a mystique and with it, a cult following. At
times ambient and serene, at others funky and modal, it radically departed
from his earlier work and became one of his great artistic achievements,
a reminder that even in chaos there can be unexpected triumph.

When we started working with Pharoah on this project, more than

forty years after the record’s initial release, his attitude toward it
hadn’t changed very much. He was like that as an artist, always
critical of his playing and unsure of his accomplishments. The trove
of bootlegs of this particular album also brought him a great deal of
stress, and often made it impossible for him to even discuss the record.
It took several years of conversations with him to show him how worthy
it was of an official remastering. In the late summer of 2022, we began
to make real progress in piecing together the story: For the first time,
he began to open up about this record and was eager to talk—he even
encouraged us to speak with others about it, too, something that he’d
never done before. “You need to call Bedria...or Greg Bandy. They will
remember.” It was exciting. After the success of Promises, we couldn’t wait
for him to see the outpouring of love for him and for this album.

Unexpectedly, he passed away shortly after those conversations began. It

was, at first, hard to understand what to do next. We loved him, and the
reason you do all of this is not solely for the music, but also for the person
who made it. It’s their personality, their humor, and their wishes that drive
you forward.

This box set looks closely at this chapter of Pharoah’s life in a way that
has never been done before. Alongside a remastered version of the India
Navigation album, we’ve included two previously unreleased live recordings
< 10 >
 of “Harvest Time.” Performed during an intense European tour in the late
summer of 1977, these live versions turn the original piece on its head.

For seasoned listeners and new acolytes both, Pharoah will never sound
the same.

Eliza, Eric & Yale (Luaka Bop)

New York City
2023

Top and bottom: Pharoah Sanders, Bedria Sanders, and Greg Bandy,
Italy, 1979. Personal photographs, photographer unknown.
Courtesy of Bedria Sanders.
< 11 >
 The Making
of Pharoah

d C o u n ty , N e w Yo rk , c a . 1 9 7 5 .
a v ig a ti o n s tu d io , R o c k la n
The India N m m in s .
Photogra p h b y N a n c y C u

“It was a spring water factory

and we also lived there, in Rockland County.”
said Beth of her father’s first studio, where they recorded Pharoah. “Well,
it was huge. It was massive. I mean, for a dwelling, it was not like a regular
living room. It was probably about 40 by 40 feet. So it was, you know, a big
cement square. Mom and dad and I built all his studios. Mom and I did all
the cosmetic and soundproofing by ourselves. It was mostly open space.
They had my ex-boyfriend do the building and he was a plumber, so it was
very patched together.”
< 12 >
 Bob Cummins building the Rockland County studio
, New York, ca. 1975.
Photograph by Nancy Cummins.

When Bob started the label, he was still working his day job at
Western Union and didn’t have a studio.

“If he could have done everything live, he would have,” Beth

said. “He only did studios ’cause the musicians demanded it.
He always thought live was better.” After the studio in Rockland
County, Bob moved into the legendary old skyscraper building
of his then former employer. He built the recording studio in two
of their empty offices. “Cecil Taylor used to occasionally rehearse
there,” Beth said.

Bob’s daughter Beth visited the studio on the day that Pharoah
was recording.
< 13 >
 Beth Cummins: I saw my dad’s face.
Well, he was self-taught as an engineer, and he built a lot of the studio.
He wasn’t a slick, very experienced recording engineer. So, everybody had
traveled from wherever they traveled up to Rockland County. And it was
panic time. I could just see how he was scrambling around just trying to set
something up that was gonna work. And he was almost beyond speaking.
Like, he didn’t have the setup really. He had been surprised by how many
people came.

Yale Evelev: And at the time it was the smallest group that Pharaoh had
ever recorded with, you know? So that’s the funny thing.

BC: Yeah, it was tense, to put it mildly. And there were also visitors, too.
There weren’t just musicians, there were a lot of people in there. So, it’s a
miracle it happened, actually. And I think there was a question about that
at some point, whether it would actually happen or not. [...] Pharoah was
[my father’s] dream, I would say. He was one of their favorite musicians. He
was a legend, even though he wasn’t doing that well right then. And my dad
was kind of shy, in a way. So somehow he managed to approach and talk to
Pharoah. And I guess, knowing him, probably proposed something casual,
knowing that he couldn’t really do what Pharaoh might be used to. And
then it blew up into a bigger plan that was not so casual. And then he tried
to fulfill what it was. But I don’t really remember him talking much about
it ’cause, you know, it was kind of an upsetting time right after it happened.
[...] I mean, I guess for anybody, if you meet your idol and for some reason
they agree to spend some time with you and maybe do something with you,
and then you and they both feel like you didn’t live up to the moment, it’s
hard.

< 14 >
 Bob’s wife Nancy drew
the image of Pharaoh on
the back of the jacket,
as well as this one. She
signed her name O. Star,
short for “Ohio Star,”
which was her pen name,
“in the peak of the hippie
era,” Beth said, “’cause
they were feeling it.”

Drawing of Pharoah Sanders, copied from

a photograph, ca. 1976. Illustration by
Nancy Cummins aka O. Star.

“Everyone was creative,” she said. “She was

a housewife primarily. She rarely worked
at jobs. Generally she was at home and just
doing sewing, drawing. I know she copied
this one because it’s exactly that photo. She The Cummins family’s
was attracted to Pharoah, and she actually last original copy
of Pharoah, 1977.
dated him when my parents were separated.”

Bob and Nancy

Cummins in front of
the garage doors of
the Rockland
County studio,
New York, 1975.
Photograph by Beth
Cummins.

< 15 >
 Peter grew up
in an orphanage
on Staten Island
down the block
from the Cummins
family’s first
house in NYC. He
was Beth’s first
boyfriend, and
he did the design
and layout of some
of the first India
Navigation records,
including Pharoah,
before he took a job
Peter Shepard and Nancy Cummins, 1972.
Photograph by Bob Cummins. as an illustrator at
Hughes Aircraft.

Some of the first pressings of the record accidentally had a blue cover,
instead of brown. “The printer had an employee who excelled in printing
errors,” said Beth. “He got the PMS number wrong”—the PMS identified
the ink color—“and printed it blue. Not the only time it happened. He also
printed one backwards.”

Beth designed the India Navigation logo when she was still in high school.
This was her second design, which detailed a Hiroshige-like wave crashing
over the wordmark. Bob, who was originally from Ohio, named the
label after a garbage scow that a t i o n l o g o , 1 9 7 6 .
T h e I n d i a Na v i g
h C u m m i n s .
carried Cleveland’s municipal Designed by Bet
waste across Lake Erie. “It was
a joke,” said Beth, “but a little ill-
fated because nobody remembered
the name of the label.”
< 16 >
 Pharoah
on Pharoah
Pharoah Sanders and Eric Welles-Nyström talk about the album
Pharoah in Santa Monica, California in September 2022.

Eric Welles-Nyström: Do you remember anything from those

recordings?

Pharoah Sanders: Not really... I don’t think I used any of the

musicians who was on that album. I don’t think I used Jiggs
[again]…he played organ, right? I haven’t seen him since that time.

EW-N: Yeah Jiggs played organ...and Greg Bandy on drums.

PS: Yeah you could speak with him. He moved back to Cleveland…
Cleveland, Ohio.

EW-N: Steve Neil?

PS: Steve Neil? I know he passed away. Steve…he was muscle…and

talent.

EW-N: What do you remember of Muñoz?

PS: He...brought lots of energy. His style of playing was very, very
different.

I’m trying to think…the pianist? Was his name Moss or something?

< 17 >
 Personal photograph of Pharoah Sanders, Italy, 1979. By Gian
Carlo Roncaglia / Courtesy of Centro Studi A. Polillo - Siena Jazz.

< 18 >
 Anyway, he called me and wanted me to see this thing, and I had
a shower going on, and I said, “What is it man?” He said, “You
gotta come out and see this thing, man.” It was big…and the mail
saw it…and a lot of people saw it…but I had to go back and finish
my shower…there was water all over the rug [laughs]. Yeah he
was a good man. He always played beautiful solos. Everybody was
always trying to get him…but he stayed with me, as long as he
could.

The old guys, they could play. Greg Bandy, I knew his family. I
know somebody who might have his number, if you don’t have it.

EW-N: I think we can find it.

PS: My friend…

EW-N: Bass player? I think I can find it.

PS: Yeah we can find it, easily. Maybe Anna might have it.

EW-N: And Bedria played the harmonium?

PS: Mmmm, hrmmm. I got her number, you want to talk to her?

EW-N: Yeah, I think we will try to get in touch with her, if that’s OK?

PS: Mmmm, hrmmm.

EW-N: What do you remember of her involvement, and playing?

PS: Let me think... You know she was my wife at that time.
< 19 >
 She played the harmonium. She was a very religious person.

EW-N: Did she….When you composed the music, did she help you
with that? Was she around that part as well?

PS: She was around that time, you know…she played the harmonium,
and I showed her how I wanted it to be played.

Was there anybody else [on the album]?

EW-N: Steve Neil we talked about. Bandy we talked about. Jiggs Chase?

PS: I mean he was sort of…an R’n’B kinda person. Similar like that.
I don’t even know if he is still living or that. Maybe Greg Bandy…
he knows everybody. Maybe Greg Bandy would know something
about him. And Lawrence Killian…but he passed away. Who else?
Bedria…

EW-N: Do you remember anything…any particular stories of…who

were we just talking about…Clifton Chase…Jiggs Chase? Anything
particular about him? Any particular memory that sticks out?

PS: I liked the way he played the organ…with the…What was it?
He had some attitude with the organ. I don’t know exactly what
that was.

He changed the sound…he liked a lot of different colors.

I don’t know much about electronics…the sound...he had me

out on that. Maybe Sam [Shepherd] could help me out on that...
explain what they used...make it more commercial.
< 20 >
 EW-N: That’s also an idea we had...and why we keep asking about
the tapes…if we had the tapes, we could work with Sam and get
the sound you want. We could go into a studio, and do it really
properly. And Sam could help us.

PS: It’s hard...they’re in...the sound wasn’t what I wanted. It was at

Nancy’s house...way out. And they didn’t have the right equipment.
But we did whatever we had…. Sam would be good to listen to it,
and he could see what it might need.

EW-N: Yeah.

PS: I don’t think I was turned up loud enough...like I mean in a musical

sense. I don’t just mean loud. Like the blend with everything, you
know...I don’t know how the drums was...it may have been like level,
or it maybe not have. You know. They didn’t know...Nancy’s husband,
you know. Well, he knew some things, but there wasn’t much of nothing
he knew. He knew…

You know, it wasn’t up to the level it could have been. Like the
quality, but, somebody like Sam could have made it better than
Nancy’s husband did. Sam, he knows all about these electronic stuff.

EW-N: Right. Yeah that would be so cool. We could go into the studio
again and load up the music, and you could talk to him about it.

PS: So... what was the first song on the album?

EW-N: The first track is “Harvest Time.”

PS: I was playing my horn, and Muñoz was playing...Tisziji...Muñoz…

< 21 >
 See, Sam could help out, because he knows how to make things
sound, and could make it sound a lot lot better...he knows how
things sound. Like all together. The way I was singing it...you
know, maybe something could be done to my singing, because I
was no singer [laughs]. I was trying to do...we could listen and it
wasn’t too bad...

…the way I look at it...[laughs]...maybe it could have been

done better. Something had to be done to it. To make it stand
out more. I don’t think it stood out too much. My singing on
it...whatever can be done with that...[phone call interupts]

You just need lots and lots of work on that. Well...you know they
want to put it out...I was thinking about it all about putting it out.
And there are some tunes on there...what are the other songs?

EW-N: “Love Will Find a Way”...and...“Memories of Edith...Memories

of Edith Johnson.” Who was Edith Johnson??

PS: That’s my aunt.

EW-N: Oh wow! What can you tell me about her?

PS: [giggles] Well...She…you know...she could...she wasn’t like, trying

to be a singer, she was just a church member. A church lady. But
she could really sing though.

If she wants to go out…or...wanted to have a career like singing...

she was really a great singer, over everybody. She was somebody like
Patti LaBelle, somebody like that. If there was a hundred singers,
you would hear her over everybody. In tune. Not struggling or
< 22 >
 Pharoah Sanders, Jazz
Middelheim, Antwerp, 1977.
Photograph by Rob Miseur /
Courtesy of Centro Studi A.
Polillo - Siena Jazz.
< 23 >
 anything. She never practiced or anything, she was just a natural.
You know...Patti LaBelle, she remind you...when you hear Patti
LaBelle, she had that kind of voice...loud and very high pitched,
in tune!

Maybe more in tune of Patti LaBelle. Very...A very unique voice...

very unique! I used to ask her...how can you sing like that? But
many times she couldn’t answer all that stuff. It was just a natural
thing to her. She would sing loud and clear, and very resonant. I
wasn’t thinking about it ’til a little later on…you know…my mother
she could sing, not as loud as her sister, but she had a very unique
voice too. I came from a musical family. It wasn’t that they would
go around singing all the time, but it was just, when they did sing,
people would look up, and they would go “oh goodness!”, maybe
they’re just like that naturally. One time, I was going to go sing,
no, play with my mother. I played the harmonium, and my mother
sung. It was a song that she always liked to sing. She always used
to sing when she was working around the house...when she was
ironing, and doing things. She had a beautiful voice too. I didn’t
know that, until...she didn’t sound loud...just subtle.

A beautiful voice though. You know. And I used to say to her, why
don’t you sing a solo or something? Couldn’t she...maybe...she wasn’t
afraid...but maybe she was just a little...didn’t like getting and doing
things like that. But around the house, she be singing!

I had...a couple of cousins, one of them used to sing on a radio

program, every Sunday, mmm hrm.

You know, in Arkansas and places like that in the South, people
be singing and they don’t know they have that kinda talent.
< 24 >
 They sing. And a year later, you think about it...that lady could
really sing. But she never got a thought about trying to be heard
singing, or something. Maybe somebody ask her to sing, but I don’t
know.

My mother was the cook of the house...and she taught school...she

didn’t teach school, but cooked for the school. She was the head
person there. But when it comes to singing, she was a little bashful
type. But she would...About singing you know. My grandfather, he
was, you know. He was the head of the choir, he was rehearsing
and stuff. He taught school, math at school, he was an educated
grandfather. He had a lot to offer.

EW-N: What was your grandfather’s name?

PS: What was his name…? [laughs] Let’s call and ask somebody. He
had a biblical name...Socrates. My mother’s name was Bethera. And
her sister’s name...the singer I was talking about...her name was
Edith Irene Johnson. We all had them weird names. I would ask
my cousin...what was her name? This was a very talented family.
I didn’t even mention...

EW-N: Edith was on your mother’s side…?

PS: Yeah, on my mother’s, yes.

< 25 >
 Pharoah Sanders at Slugs, New York, ca. 1968-9.
Photograph by Bob Cummins.

< 26 >
 Pharoah
Sanders
breathed fire
through the instrument.
In his early work, on albums like Jewels of Thought, Karma, and
Thembi, he released a certain spiritual essence, the kind rooted
in joy and constructive anger, informed by struggle, uncertainty
and enlightenment. One could hear him trying to forge his own
sound within the context of free and spiritual jazz, yet his blend
was decidedly more Afrocentric. At times sentimental, fuming,
and melodic, it spoke to everyone: the coffee house scene in
Greenwich Village, the psych-rock counterculture, and the irate
college kids with picket signs and a cause. It was also strange
to the ear: Karma’s 32-minute centerpiece, “The Creator Has a
Master Plan,” featured the yodeling avant-garde vocalist Leon
Thomas; “Japan,” from 1967’s Tauhid, was a meditative slow
burner, seemingly shaded by the recent passing of his friend and
mentor, John Coltrane. But he was a wandering soul with limitless
range trying to find the right notes to convey his constitution. His
blend equally encapsulated rawness and tranquility, sometimes
within the scope of one song. Moments of serenity were met with
volcanic shrieks that came out of nowhere to shake the body into
shock, anxiety, or rage. He recognized that his sound could hold
a mirror to the country.
< 27 >
 Sanders’ achievements were captured in 1977’s Pharoah, his
first foray into ambient soundscapes. At a time when he was at
a crossroads in his career, it took remarkable bravery to come
back with a completely new aesthetic. But he knew that greatness
doesn’t come without creative risk, that it exists on the tightrope,
doing whatever felt natural to him first, regardless of how it might
be perceived by those who never understood him anyway. For
those who get it — and I mean all of it: the fire and the ice, the
church and the ambience — his music was always meant to live
in the future. Pharoah was no different. Misunderstood upon its
release, it’s long been a Holy Grail album for his enthusiasts, the
missing link between old and new Sanders, a gorgeous mosaic
ripe for deeper study.

By the time the self-titled Pharoah arrived in 1977, the musician

was 10 years removed from his early work on Impulse Records,
a deal he was given at Coltrane’s behest. Perhaps on purpose,
the blaze of that era had been reduced to smolder: Coltrane,
the most famous defender of The New Thing (jazz with atonal
wails and loose rhythmic structure), died in 1967 of liver cancer.
Albert Ayler, a like-minded saxophonist and bandleader who was
often affiliated with Sanders and Coltrane, died under mysterious
circumstances in 1970. And while it’s unclear what impact deep
racism, civil rights protests and the raging Vietnam War had on
his creativity, one would imagine that, as a Black Southern man
living in the United States, it came through his playing somehow.
America was no panacea in the mid-’70s, but even in a country
with soaring inflation and political upheaval, it was less volatile
than in years past. In turn, Pharoah exhibited a calm that hadn’t
been there previously. He leaned into quiet as therapy, writing
meditative arrangements that seemed to loop in a circle and go
< 28 >
 Pharoah Sanders,
Jazz Middelheim,
Antwerp, 1977.
Photograph by Rob Miseur /
Courtesy of Centro
Studi A. Polillo - Siena Jazz.
< 29 >
 on forever. While some criticized the shift—calling it New Agey
or whatever—Sanders foresaw what would become popular in
jazz some 40 years later: that muted repetition can impact like
aggressive swing. When life aggravates, you have to retreat to
find peace, reset, and return anew.

Pharoah arrived three years after the albums Love In Us All and
Elevation were released. Back with a new band that included his
wife Bedria Sanders on harmonium, Tisziji Muñoz on guitar, Steve
Neil on bass, Jiggs Chase on organ, Greg Bandy on drums and
Lawrence Killian on percussion, Sanders opted for a composed tone
that explored ambient and R&B, offering the same restoration as
“The Creator Has a Master Plan” (his most popular composition) but
with a softer resonance. The finest example arises on the opening
song of side B, “Love Will Find a Way,” a 14-minute rumination on
the power of deep affection told through subtle gospel inflections
and West African rhythm. Sanders singing his adoration in a not-
so pitch-perfect baritone only adds to the song’s authenticity; his
willingness to be vulnerable spoke to the newfound restfulness he
prioritized. The same went for Pharoah’s other two songs: “Harvest
Time” and “Memories Of Edith Johnson,” the former a seductive
churn of drifting horns in lower register, the latter a solemn, gospel-
centered remembrance with hypnotic organs. Here, he maintains
the album’s theme of repetition as cognitive treatment. Pharoah
is incredibly immersive in that way; it treks gently into your soul
and stays there long after the final note fades.

The extended guitar solo near the middle of “Love Will Find a
Way,” and Muñoz’s slow-build of an intro on “Harvest Time,” also
signaled a new direction: Sanders ceding the floor epitomized a
creative openness that would follow him until his death (at the age
< 30 >
 of 81) in 2022. On what would be his final album—Promises, the
2021 collaborative LP with the electronic producer Floating Points
and the London Symphony Orchestra—Sanders added gentle
coos and blustery saxophone wails to the composer’s looping
harpsichord.

Following the release of Pharoah, Sanders all but abandoned jazz

on his next album, 1977’s Love Will Find a Way. Opting for Quiet
Storm R&B and featuring the vocalist Phyllis Hyman on three
tracks, the LP put Sanders in front of a different set of listeners,
showing some in the jazz community that he wasn’t just one
thing. He only kept exploring: West African highlife on Rejoice;
American blues on Oh Lord, Let Me Do No Wrong. By the early
’80s, Sanders tinkered with smooth jazz, slowed his output and
faded from public view.

Up until his death last year, Sanders continued to inspire jazz

and rap musicians far and wide, playing the occasional nightclub
throughout the world—and, in 2016, was awarded an NEA Jazz
Masters Fellowship. At the time, America was in peril: Unarmed
Black people were being killed by police at an alarming rate,
and Donald Trump—a racist real estate mogul and reality TV
star—was making a serious push to become the country’s 45th
president. The tenor hadn’t been this eruptive since the 1960s
Civil Rights Movement, when Black people had to march for their
collective freedom against the threat of attack dogs, nightsticks,
and high-pressure water hoses, and Sanders’ music had stronger
resonance. The music responded in kind: In 2016, another powerful
sax player—the Barbados-born, London-based Shabaka
Hutchings—traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa and formed
a collective of local musicians called The Ancestors.
< 31 >
 They put out an album called Wisdom of Elders that was probably
the closest thing to an old Sanders record that we’d heard.
Hutchings was deeply impacted by Sanders’ singularity. “It’s
seeing how someone can take on the Coltrane legacy without
losing their own voice,” he once told Jazz Times. “You hear a lot
of people go into the realms of Coltrane and then maybe lose
a part of themselves. With Pharoah Sanders, you can see that
direct lineage, but you see a definite part of himself adding to that
legacy.”

Later in life, Sanders was still learning, reflecting, and letting the
world give him new stimuli. There was an almost-indescribable
aura with both him and the music, a regal perch that went beyond
words. There was a palpable energy to the icon that you felt
instantly, the same sort of hypnotism that transfers through songs
like “Astral Traveling” and “Elevation.” Be it the volcanic peaks
of earlier records or the meditative valleys of Pharoah, Sanders
always spoke a very clear message: Love is everywhere and it
always finds a way.
—Marcus J. Moore

< 32 >
 Newspaper clipping, “Hail Pharoah” by Stan Mieses,
New York Daily News, New York, August 1977. Courtesy of Sharon Howard.
< 33 >
 Toward the end of his life, Bob Cummins gave the artists on India Navigation
the masters of their music, along with other archival material from the
making of their records. It was an unprecedented move. These are a few of
the documents about Pharoah that Beth was able to find in her dad’s files.

< 34 >
 Courtesy of
Be t h C u m m i n s .

< 35 >
 My God, what is
going on here?
Bedria Sanders was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. She grew up in an educational
family and studied classical piano as a child. She first saw Pharoah play at
a tent service in Ohio and then later met him at a show of his in NYC, while
visiting her brother. The rest is history, as they say. In 1974, Bedria became
Pharoah’s second wife and the album Pharoah is said to have been a love
letter to her. It is the only album that one of Pharoah’s family members plays
on. She stayed in contact with him throughout his life. After traveling and
living in many different places around the world, she is now back living in
her hometown.
Bedria Sanders: We lived in East Orange (NJ). It’s a funny story.
We had an apartment...and you know it was okay...but we needed to get
somewhere where he could practice. So we moved from that apartment
to another place we’d heard about that was this large, luxury apartment.
They were like...three beds, four bedrooms? There was a maid’s quarter.
Each apartment had its own separate elevator entrance. So you get off
the elevator and you’re right there.

It was 80% vacant. And the way they explained it to me was that a lot of
older people had died off and they couldn’t fill the places. But anyway,
we got one of those places. So he was practicing and we were having a
nice time. We got a pool table. One of the bedrooms had a pool table.

And then I get a note from the doorman. He gives me this note from
a little lady that lived over us. She’s really nice. She invited me up and
she said, “Oh, we just love that you live here, but you know, we’ll pay to
soundproof the rooms.” [laughs] So after that, we moved. You know,
we had to get out of there.

Eric Welles-Nyström: So, who would win the pool games? You or Pharoah?
< 36 >
 Pharoah and Bedria Sanders.
Personal photograph, date unknown.
Courtesy of Bedria Sanders.
< 37 >
 BS: Well, I was doing okay. You know, I did fine. It was a pool table
where you had to put quarters in. He loved pool. He loved to play pool.

EW-N: I didn’t know that.

BS: Yeah he loved it. He loved to collect coins, too. So that was perfect
for him.

EW-N: That’s sweet. So, how did you come to play harmonium on
the album?

BS: Well, I don’t know. I don’t remember, really. I remember he got a

harmonium and he asked me to play it.

EW-N: Was it kind of like a spur of the moment in the studio, or was this
before?

BS: No, he had planned for me to come with him.

EW-N: Had you heard that piece of music before you went into the
studio?

BS: Let’s see...the harmonium was on what tune?

EW-N: “Harvest Time.”

BS: No, I don’t remember hearing that. I think that was something that
was spontaneous, I think. There were a lot of songs like that.

It was great, you know? And after, they wanted to name it. He used to ask
me for names a lot. I think I gave him that name, too...“Harvest Time.”
< 38 >
 EW-N: So tell me about that. How come you chose that name?

BS: Well, I guess it’s just what came to my head because it was in the fall,
you know. Just, you know, something. It was harvest time in September.
That’s my favorite time of the year. A warm September.

EW-N: So when did you meet Pharoah for the first time?

BS: The first time I saw him was when we went up to Wilburforce, Ohio.
There’s a couple of schools up there, a couple of African American colleges
that were formed after Reconstruction. Wilburforce University and
Central State. So they were having a festival up there. And I went with
my friends who loved jazz, you know, and we drove up there. It’s about an
hour drive away from here [Cincinnati]. And Pharoah was performing in
a revival tent [laugh]. You know how they used to have these revivals, and
they put up these big tents? So that was kinda unusual, that was really
something. But I didn’t meet him until later. I didn’t meet him then.

EW-N: So you met him later? How?

BS: When I was in New York. When I went to see my brother in New
York. I went to Slugs on Second Avenue. And we went down there to see
him play. And then we went in and there weren’t any seats, so we kind of
sat in the back. Slugs was like a hole in the wall. It wasn’t a very nice club.
But

we sat in the back. And then when the set was over, Pharoah walks
directly to me. Look, I don’t know him, but OK. He walked directly to
me and just stands there looking at me, and doesn’t say anything. And I
looked at him and...You know, later I asked him, ‘What was going on?’
And he said, ‘I thought you were Aisha!’ I said, ‘really?’ [laugh].EW-N:
< 39 >
 Ha! Who was Aisha?

BS: McCoy Tyner’s wife. Eventually he said something, but you know,
yeah. He’s...you know how he is.

EW-N: Yeah, yeah. My next question was gonna be, what was your first
impression of him? But maybe that’s a bit off because he came up to you
like this.

BS: Oh, well, I didn’t know what to think, really. I just thought he was
kind of strange. You know? And then my first impression...I saw him...you
know, I saw this aura around him. It was like a blue light aura all around
him, you know? I said, ‘My God, what is going on here?’

[silence]

EW-N: That was my first impression, too.

BS: Really?

EW-N: Yeah. Many years later. But it was, you know, it just really hits
you, you know?

BS: He had an aura.

EW-N: Yeah. I don’t think it ever left him, you know? [silence]

BS: No, it didn’t. And I’ll tell you something about him. He was so
special, because I just didn’t know anybody like that, you know?

A conversation between Bedria Sanders and Eric Welles-Nyström

< 40 >
 Personal photograph of
Pharoah Sanders, Italy, 1979.
By Gian Carlo Roncaglia /
Courtesy of Centro Studi A.
Polillo - Siena Jazz.

< 41 >
 Tisziji Muñoz
began his career as a drummer in the 440th Army Band and switched
to guitar when he started playing gigs in New York (he grew up in
Brooklyn). He had never played in a club before he met Pharoah.

Tisziji Muñoz: I met Pharaoh at the Vanguard in ’74. Calvin Hill, the bass
player, introduced me. Calvin was playing with McCoy [Tyner] and he was
also playing with Elvin [Jones], I think.

I was working one afternoon with Calvin, and a group in New York City.
It was a business luncheon. And he said...After we played, he says, “Man, I
never heard anybody play like you. Pharoah’s got to meet you. Meet me at
the Vanguard.” And then I didn’t know the Vanguard. I didn’t know Pha-
raoh. And then all of a sudden I show up there and Pharoah says, “Are you
Muñoz?” I said, “Yeah.” He says, ‘‘The guitar player who played with Cal-
vin?” He said, “Then you have to get your guitar. Get your guitar. Bring your
guitar here to the club.” That’s the beginning.

And then he auditioned me in a full house. He said, “Come with me up to

the piano before we hit.” I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I did have my
guitar at that point. And he played some chords. And he said, “Do you hear
that?” I said, “Yeah, I do.” He said, “Let me hear what you hear.” I let him
hear what I heard. And he said, “You’re with me.” The rest is history.

Max Gordon [of the Vanguard] said that I was one of the best sidemen
Pharaoh’s ever had. That is to say I brought great music out of Pharaoh,
and that was just coincident to the fact that we were on a similar vibration
and we got along like brothers all the time. Very deeply.

I’m not surprised by, let’s say, the extreme that Pharoah represented as a
musician. Extremely avant garde, to the point where he could sound like a
< 42 >
 Tyrannosaurus rex on the saxophone. Give him a chance to go deep and be
strong, and he would frighten ghosts from the area. I have no doubt about
it because he was awesome.

But then go to these melodies, these beautiful lyrical melodies that were
chants. He would find these chants, right? And he would want to play the
chants. There would be times when he wanted to play bebop, but not as of-
ten as out and in.

That is to say, his own contribution to the music on the beauty side, and
then on the terrifying avant-garde side.

If you wanted to go out, go out with Pharoah, and you’ll never be the same.
I’m not the same from that experience. Even though, as a child, the drum-
ming sessions would be open, but no horn player would take it out the way
Pharoah would take it out, with such command and virtuosity, and so much
soulfulness that he left everybody in the dust, as I said. Most of the other
musicians couldn’t keep up with it, they couldn’t do it. Pharoah did. Yeah.

Pharoah Sanders & Tisziji Muñoz

at the Village Vanguard, New York, ca. 1976.
Courtesy of Nancy & Tisziji Muñoz.
< 43 >
 Randis gjestebok,
fra hennes hjem i Gartnerveien

Pharoah Sanders’ own entry in Randi’s guestbook. Photographed at the

home of Randi Hultin on Gartnerveien, Oslo, August 1977. Courtesy of
Randi Hultin / National Library of Norway.
Randi Hultin was an internationally renowned music journalist
who wrote for DownBeat in the U.S. and Jazz Journal in the UK, as
well as daily newspapers, magazines and radio stations in Norway.
She trained as a visual artist under the painter Per Krohg, but her
interest in jazz led her into music journalism in the ’50s and ’60s.
Randi Hultin was an internationally renowned music journalist
who wrote for DownBeat in the U.S. and Jazz Journal in the UK, as
well as daily newspapers, magazines and radio stations in Norway.
She trained as a visual artist under the painter Per Krohg, but her
interest in jazz led her into music journalism in the ’50s and ’60s.
She filmed and photographed concerts and interviews herself, documented
the social life of musicians behind the scenes, many times at her own
home where guests would sign her guestbook. Her unique archive of
around 30,000 photographs, hours of film and sound clips, guest books,
letters and other documents are gathered at the National Library in Oslo.
< 44 >
 “Oh, Playing with Pharoah
was spiritual.
He was so cool, man.
I really loved the man.
He was, like, smooth, you know?
Low key, you know what I mean?
We got along well. There never
was no problems with Pharoah.
He goes, ‘Okay. Everybody happy?
Whatever it’s going to be is going to be, okay,
let’s do it like this.’ And we would just go head on.
He would start playing something and I would just go ahead
and I didn’t know when we played
what the next song was going to be.
He was just doing his thing. It was cool.
It was just extremely smooth with him.”
- Clifton “Jiggs” Chase, the organist on Pharoah

Pharoah Sanders, Jazzhus Montmartre,

Copenhagen, 1977. Photograph by Gorm Valentin.
< 45 >
 Pharoah Sanders in Europe:
1977 Pendulum Harmonics
The most unusual instrument used during Pharoah Sanders’
1977 European tour did not catch the attention of photographers.
It is only visible in a couple of pictures, laying on the stage
floor among an assortment of bells and percussions. It is a
compact box surmounted by a short keyboard and equipped with
bellows: a harmonium. Producing a sound midway between
the organ and the accordion, the instrument had already been
used by Sanders on several albums made for the renowned
Impulse label, and on a very recent small independent release,
Pharoah. The harmonium immediately brought to mind India,
the country that had kept it alive when it could have become a
memory of the 19th century, after an importation under British
colonial rule.

There was another dimension to it. “I came from a musical family,”

Sanders said a few days before his passing in September 2022.
“It wasn’t that they would go around singing all the time, but it was
just, when they did sing, people would look up. One time, I was
going to go sing...no, play with my mother. I played the harmonium,
and my mother sang. It was a song that she always liked to sing.”

Sanders traveled with the portable Indian incarnation of the

instrument, and that it could also have a connection to his
childhood in 1940s and ’50s Little Rock, Arkansas, was likely
far from most observers’ thoughts. It was the way many things
were with Sanders: remote, private, and easily misread. The
harmonium was just one of the elements that could by then
have been regarded as original to Sanders’ sound, had his
music more often been considered for what it actually was.
< 46 >
 Pharoah Sanders, Jazz Festival Willisau, Switzerland, August 1977.
Photograph by Markus DiFrancesco / Courtesy of Jazz Festival Willisau.
< 47 >
 In 1977, the saxophonist was coming off what many wrongly
assumed to have been a period of inactivity, even a disappearance.

But he had in fact worked regularly, playing gigs both in known

West Coast, Boston, and Detroit clubs, and also in places not
reputed for their jazz activity, from Buffalo, New York, to Nashville,
Tennessee. Such travels were made possible by the success
Sanders had found as an Impulse recording artist until 1973. But
his New York profile was kept low—his international appearances
were also minimal—and, crucially, a yearslong stretch without
recordings only ended in the spring, with the release of Pharoah
by India Navigation. Asked what was up with Sanders, many
listeners might not have known how to answer the question.
Still, just like when his family did sing, when Sanders did play,
people would look up. They would be taken in by the strength
of his tone, and they would listen, but no introductory notes
would be provided. It was up to them to find their way inside the
music. Perhaps surprisingly for someone of his stature,
although he had played circumscribed gigs abroad, Sanders,
36, had never been on a full European tour. The modest
itinerary he followed in the summer of 1977, traveling with a
quartet, included a few festivals but mostly club one-nighters in
places he had never visited, such as the Netherlands and the
Scandinavian countries. The tour started in France in the middle
of August and ended back in France a couple of weeks later.

In photographs of the tour, shaved-headed bassist Hayes

Burnett stands out. Burnett had played Europe with Sun Ra
the year before but remained a newcomer. In the early 1970s,
he had been among those who had gone to Antioch College in
Ohio to play with Cecil Taylor. He appeared with Jimmy Lyons at
< 48 >
 New York’s Studio Rivbea. In his hometown, he hosted a radio
show and performed with the Boston Art Ensemble. Earlier in
1977, Burnett and his Boston colleagues founded the Friends
of Great Black Music loft, a “survival tactic” to allow black artists
to “perform and be in control of the performance,” Burnett said.

Pianist Khalid Moss, 30, a discreet figure who seemed ensconced

in his instrument, was also a new name. A few years prior, he had
had to jump out a window in Dayton, Ohio to flee the FBI after he
did not report for army induction.

In late 1974—probably following the conditional amnesty

o f V i e t n a m Wa r d r a f t r e s i s t e r s — M o s s ’ n a m e s t a r t e d
appearing on Dayton clubs advertisements. In 1976, he
played various keyboards in a Richard “Groove” Holmes trio
covering popular tunes.

Only drummer Clifford Jarvis was preceded by some degree of

reputation, even if not as a DownBeat polls-topper. Originally
from Boston, where his trumpeter father had been a close friend
of the young Malcolm X, Jarvis was mainly identified as a Sun
Ra man. But his scope was broader, including work with Randy
Weston and Freddie Hubbard. He also had extensive history
with Sanders, from the saxophonist’s early days in New York
to the height of his Impulse years, when Jarvis was part of the
regular band.

The music of the Impulse albums was not what Sanders played
by this point, but it remained the bedrock of the audiences’
expectations. Throughout his life, Sanders was known to sift
through a vast quantity of mouthpieces, constantly retooling
< 49 >
 Contact sheet of Pharoah Sanders, Khalid Moss, Hayes Burnett, and Clifford
Jarvis, as well as unknown members of the audience, Jazz Middelheim,
Antwerp, August 1977. Courtesy of Guy Stevens.

< 50 >
 his sound, and in the process leaving fragments of his music
behind. He changed partners often, as the newness of this
current group illustrated. Similarly, his Impulse work had
shown him to be capable of not only threading new paths at
a fast pace but also discarding much. Closer attention to this
aspect of what he was doing then could have provided a clue
regarding what he was doing now. He seemed to be playing a
music where what mattered was not the sum total of what he
had already done, but precise details that had not yet been
worked out. But that was not how European s u p p o r t e r s o f
S a n d e r s ’ e a r l i e r e ff o r t s received the music. It was
met with brutal and nearly unanimous critical dismissal.
“I’m not a nice, smooth, horn player. I might be very, very hard,
disturbing. So I work on my sound to make it pleasing, so people
won’t leave,” Sanders told Musician magazine in 1982.
“A lot of players have gotten very free in their playing,
but their sound is like anyone else’s—
they don’t care enough
about what it sounds like.
I work on that a lot,
within my limitations.”
At the Jazz Middelheim festival in the harbor city of Antwerp,
Belgium, impeccable smoothness was demonstrated on
“Harvest Time,” the centerpiece of the Pharoah album,
over the tune’s oscillating bass vamp, cymbal-driven
beat, and Fender Rhodes coloring. From the “saxophonistic”
perspective that always preoccupied Sanders, it may have been the
necessary pendant to some of his historic, indeed very hard solos.
In Antwerp, Sanders’ group was followed by David Murray’s Low
< 51 >
 Pharoah Sanders, Jazz Middelheim. Antwerp, 1977.
Photograph by Gérard Ruoy.
< 52 >
 Class Conspiracy. “This confrontation between the avant-garde of
1970 and that of 1975 will probably be one of the most fascinating
events of Jazz Middelheim,” the program noted. The somewhat
odd idea of a confrontation said something of the shifting backdrop
against which critical expectations were formed, something
of the growing importance of the generation building on what
Sanders and others had laid down during the heydays of the
original jazz avant-garde. Similarly, European free musics were
now firmly part of the landscape. The Sanders group crossed
their paths at both a last-minute stop at Amsterdam’s BIMhuis,
and taking the stage after the Peter Brötzmann/Han Bennink duo
at the Jazz Festival Willisau.

There, in a barn-shaped hall in the middle of Switzerland, “Harvest

Time” was brighter, more upbeat. And then the ensemble playing
stopped abruptly, with Sanders launching into a fluttering circular
saxophone motif he regularly returned to. It was heard by band
members as a signal to lay out, and Sanders retreated into what
mattered: his own remote, private world of air, the mouthpiece,
the keys. On Pharoah, the same motif had preceded the entry of
the harmonium, its lung-like voice expanding the texture of the
music. In Willisau, the small hand organ remained silent, pointing
to one thing at the core of Sanders’ music: breath.

— Pierre Crépon

The Pharoah Sanders interview first quoted was conducted by

Eric Welles-Nyström in Los Angeles, September 2022. Find the
full conversation between Pharoah and Eric on page 17.
< 53 >
<
Concert program, Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen, August 1977. Courtesy of Niels Christensen.

54
>
 “I remember being impressed by all the instruments Pharoah and his
group brought on stage. This was the first time Pharoah ever played
Willisau. And like for all the musicians I invited, I think the first time
was always the strongest. Pharoah had lots of different percussion
instruments and bells. It was an impressive set up. Everybody in
the band was playing percussions. I remember the other musicians:
Khalid Moss on piano, Joseph Hayes Burnett on double bass and
Clifford Jarvis on drums, who I knew from his work with Sun Ra.

The atmosphere that night was truly amazing,

I think the concert went perfectly.
The sun was shining through the concert room windows.
Afterwards, Pharoah was very pleased
and spoke about the audience reaction.
The concert had sold out with 1500 people in attendance.
It was amazing for that time. His music went from kind of
explosions of sound, to more melodic and peaceful sounds.
At the end of their performance there was a standing ovation.
The public was so touched by their music.
We had many journalists there that year, from
Switzerland, Paris, Germany and around Europe.
Pharoah’s concert got a very big echo
and very positive reviews.”
—Niklaus Troxler
Niklaus Troxler is a Swiss graphic artist who studied at the Lucerne
School of Art and Design, and then worked as an art director in
Paris. In 1966, he began organizing jazz concerts in his birthplace
of Willisau, a small town in the Swiss Alps of just about 7,000
people. He eventually started his own design practice there and in
1975 founded the Jazz Festival Willisau, making it a fixture among
jazz festivals in Europe. Today, many of his posters for the festival
have been exhibited at MoMA in New York.
< 55 >
 Pharoah Sanders and Hayes Burnett, Jazz
Festival Willisau, Switzerland, August 1977.
Photograph by Markus DiFrancesco /
Courtesy Jazz Festival Willisau.

< 56 >
 “This was at soundcheck earlier that day. On the left in this picture is Belgian
photographer Rob Miseur. On the right is Miel Vanattenhoven, then manager
of the Middelheim Festival in Antwerp. The third man on the right is Frans
Iven, producer and program board member of Belgian Radio 1.

For this year’s festival, I was particularly looking forward to hearing Pharoah
play. I became interested in jazz in the early ‘60s, and was mainly interested in
saxophonists, particularly tenors. Listening to jazz broadcasts on peripheral
radio stations, I tried writing down phonetically the names I heard on air.
This was the first time I would see Pharoah live.”
—Gérard Ruoy, photographer

Rob Miseur, Pharoah Sanders, Miel Vanattenhoven, and Frans Iven.

Jazz Middelheim, Antwerp, 1977. Photograph by Gérard Ruoy.

< 57 >
 PHAROAH SANDERS / PHAROAH
Harvest Time (20:24)
Love Will Find a Way (14:27)
Memories of Edith Johnson (5:44)

Pharoah Sanders tenor saxophone, percussion, vocals

Bedria Sanders harmonium
Steve Neil bass
Tisziji Muñoz guitar
Greg Bandy drums
Clifton “Jiggs” Chase keyboards
Lawrence Killian percussion

Recorded August & September, 1976

Licensed from Pharoah Sanders

Produced by Bob Cummins for India Navigation
< 58 >
 PHAROAH SANDERS / HARVEST TIME LIVE 1977
HARVEST TIME LIVE – MIDDELHEIM 18:15
HARVEST TIME LIVE – WILLISAU 10:34

PHAROAH SANDERS TENOR SAXOPHONE, PERCUSSION, BELLS

HAYES BURNETT BASS, PERCUSSION
CLIFFORD JARVIS DRUMS
KHALID MOSS PIANO, ELECTRIC PIANO

RECORDED LIVE AT JAZZ MIDDELHEIM, AUGUST 1977, BY VRT-VLAAMSE RADIO EN TELEVISIE,

AND AT JAZZ FESTIVAL WILLISAU, AUGUST 1977, BY WALTER TROXLER.

< 59 >
 Editor & Introduction by Eliza Grace Martin

Essays by Pierre Crépon and Marcus J. Moore

With research by Eric Welles-Nyström, Christian Tarabini, Thomas

“truckthomas” Gauffroy-Naudin, Lander Lenaerts, Pierre Crépon and
Dr. Peter Kemper.

Additional research help by:

Arne Berg, NRK
Bill Bowden, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Claudio Palagini, Associazione Siena Jazz
David Dyrholm, Politiken
David Mittleman, WFMU
Erlend Hegdal, Nasjonalbiblioteket
Gunnar Lindgren, Jazz Artdur
Niels Christensen, Jazzhus Montmartre
Roger Bergner, Musikverket
Samantha De Chiara, Northwestern University
Tyler Heaton, Harvard University

Special thanks to Ms. Wivi-Ann Wells for the kind permission to

work with her mother Randi Hultin’s incredible material, and to Beth
Cummins for the photos and stories from the making of the India
Navigation album Pharoah. We would also greatly like to thank Mr.
Rob Miseur, Mr. Guy Stevens and Mr. Gorm Valentin for allowing us
to work with their photos, as well as Mr. Niels Christensen of Jazzhus
Montmartre in Copenhagen, and Marie Härtling of the Jazzinstitut
Darmstadt and their collection of Wilhelm E. Liefland.
< 60 >
 Additional thanks to Adrian Hughes, Anna Sala, Bert Vuijsje, Bertram
Dingshoff, Björn Thorstensson, Clifford Allen, Charlie Fishman, Craig A.
Schiffert, Cristiane Lemire, Don Palmer, Daniel Baker, Daniela
Siemon, David Kleijwegt, Dean Whitbeck, Esu Ma’at, Frank Jochemsen,
Gunnar Lindgren, Günther Hottman, Henrik Iversen, Honor Kerley, Kajtek
Prochyra, Kehinde Alonge, Kjell Jansson, Lätitia Röse, Marc Chaloin,
Mariko Yamazaki, Matt Hanks, Michael Ehlers, Mikkel Hess, Necim
Boukhchana, Nicole Mckenzie, Peter Dennett, Rick Lopez, Rikke Juelund,
Rita Wigt, Sergei Minakov, Sharon Howard, Sven Dolling, Teddy
Hillaert, Terence Teh, Tom Klaasen, Willard Jenkins, Wim Wigt.

Additional album credits, Pharoah:

Cover Design by Peter Shepard

Illustration by O. Star
Layout by Paul Diddy

Mastered by Chris Bellman

Liner notes by Harmony Holiday
‘Pharoah’ India Navigation Transfer by Colin Young
Eliza Grace Martin thought about being in the room
Executive Produced by Yale Evelev & Eric Welles-Nyström

Special thanks to Pharoah Sanders and the Sanders family; Beth

and Nancy Cummins; Nancy and Tisziji Muñoz; Greg Bandy; Clif-
ton “Jiggs” Chase; and Bedria Sanders, for her insights, memories,
generosity, and time.

Additional thanks to the legendary Aneesh Patel.

< 61 >
 Additional album credits, Harvest Time Live 1977:

Jazz Festival Willisau recordings brought to our attention (thank you!)

by Christian Tarabini & Thomas Gauffroy-Naudin. Swiss transfers and
audio restoration by David Hadzis, United Music Foundation.

Mastered by Chris Bellman

Design by Paul Diddy wah Diddy
Manufacturing Overseen by Dominikus Kungl
Eliza Grace Martin was in the room
Executive Produced by Yale Evelev & Eric Welles-Nyström

Cover Photograph : Pharoah Sanders at Jazz Middelheim, 1977.

© Guy Stevens
Back Photograph : Pharoah Sanders and Hayes Burnett, pharoah sanders at
Jazz Festival Willisau, 1977. © Markus Di Francesco / Jazz Festival Willisau

Thanks to Teddy Hillaert, Daniela Siemon, and Chantal Pattyn, Peter

Preal, and Koen Renders of the VRT in Belgium.

And a very special thanks to Bedria Sanders, Gorm Valentin, Pierre Crépon,
Lander Lenaerts, Sharon Howard and the family of Khalid Moss, and the
Director of the Jazz Festival Willisau, Mr. Niklaus Troxler.

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 Pharoah Sanders, Khalid Moss, Hayes Burnett, and Clifford Jarvis,
Jazz Middelheim, Antwerp, August 1977. Photographs by Guy Stevens.
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