Pharaoh Sanders, Revered Musician, Dead at 81

Saxophonist and jazz legend Pharoah Sanders has died at the age of 81. While his cause of death has yet to be revealed, his impact on the music industry is clear. Born Farrell Sanders in October 1940 in Arkansas, the genius learned to play the clarinet and drums in church before picking up the alto saxophone while in high school. He ended up switching to play the tenor saxophone. "I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a career. What I really wanted to do was play the saxophone—that was one of the instruments that I really loved," he told The New Yorker. "I would rent the school saxophone. You could rent it every day if you wanted to. It wasn't a great horn. It was sort of beat-up and out of condition. I never owned a saxophone until I finished high school and went to Oakland, California. I had a clarinet, and so I traded that for a new silver tenor saxophone, and that got me started playing the tenor."

He briefly studied music at Oakland Junior College before he played in both Black and white clubs for the first time where he met John Coltrane. Sanders moved to New York where he performed with Sun Ra. It was there that he coined the nickname "Pharoah." In 1964, he made his solo debut with the release of Pharoah's First. From there, be gean performing alongside Coltrane, playing on more than a dozen of their albums, including Ascension, Meditations, and A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle.

"I couldn't figure out why he wanted me to play with him, because I didn't feel like, at the time, that I was ready to play with John Coltrane," he would later recall. "Being around him was almost, like, 'Well, what do you want me to do? I don't know what I'm supposed to do.' He always told me, 'Play.' That's what I did." Sanders' music with Coltrane greatly influenced the direction of jazz through the 1970s and '80s.

But his personal transition came later. He helped to revolutionize the spiritual jazz movement. Amid the release of his album Karma, followed by A Monastic Trio, and beyond, he was at his peak. Sanders collaborated with the greats, who included Alice Coltrane, Kenny Garrett, Norman Connors, Tisziji Muñoz, McCoy Tyner and Randy Weston.

Despite such, he was never satisfied with his work. Like most artists, he was his own biggest critic."I listen to myself so that I know what I need to work on, and I let that be my guide," he told NPR once. 

He'd share similar sentiments later, explaining, "I've always been like that, especially when I was small. I used to love hearing old car doors squeaking. Maybe it's something you're really into, then maybe you'll get a sound like that," he told The New Yorker. "So I'm always trying to make something that might sound bad sound beautiful in some way. I'm a person who just starts playing anything I want to play, and make it turn out to be maybe some beautiful music."