Pharoah Sanders / Tyrone Washington

We told you we take requests, yes?

I was raving to my student Jose about the incredible stack of jazz (Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp) I got at Groove Yard last week. Jose is a diligent jazzero, surely does his homework more than I do, and he was saying that some of these dudes are not so easy to listen to. Fair enough. He asked for some recommendations, and here’s a couple of things he might like:

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Daria by Pharoah Sanders With The Latin Jazz Quintet

Daria

Pharoah Sanders playing boogaloo?!

With absolutely no liner notes or list of musicians, and with an alternative cover that suggests he’s going to be a guest musician for ten seconds, I picked this record up a bit skeptically. I’m normally not a big fan of Latin jazz, and I definitely distrust those “so and so goes Latin” records you find all over the place – who doesn’t? But I had to pick this one up, had to be a crazy record.

As it turns out, Pharoah Sanders (and not only him) gets to spit a bit of fire, on top of a pretty tight group that keeps him more organized than usual. Not your typical Latin jazz, for sure, I’m tempted to try this on a dance floor sometime, heheh. There’s not much more I can tell you about this record, it seems to be a kind of a mysterious session, you can read a bit more here.

20091894-tyrone

Natural Essence by Tyrone Washington

Natural Essence

This is a monstrous session led by 23-year old saxophonist Tyrone Washington. I’d never heard of him, and apparently he only released two albums after this one. (His “Do Right” from a few years later is too smooth for my taste.) But this record! You can definitely hear the influence of the soulful, spiritual-search sound of Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, but this is also the sound of a bunch of excited young kids having fun and swinging hella hard!

I’ve gotta thank Chris at Explorist International for recommending this killer album. Noone likes to tell the whole wide world where they buy their records, for obvious reasons. I don’t either. But when a couple of young music and design enthusiasts decide to set up a little neighborhood record store, in the middle of 2010, and when it’s the kind of shop where you walk in, get good, honest advice, and walk out with a pile of records you didn’t know you loved, they have all my support. If you’re in San Francisco, go buy music from them!

papicultor