Santana – Going Home

When people hear the name Santana, depending on their generation they’ll probably either think of the ’60s heyday of ‘Black Magic Woman’ or their turn-of-the-century comeback hits like ‘Smooth’. Arguably though, the band’s most creatively fertile period was in the ’70s, when Carlos and co. were experimenting with jazz, spirituality and collaborating not with pop stars (no offence to Rob Thomas – I like Veronica Mars as much as the next guy) but with such virtuosos as Alice Coltrane and John McLaughlin.

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Alice Coltrane – Blue Nile

One of the artists mentioned in the previous post was multi-instrumentalist Alice Coltrane who plays both piano and harp on Joe Henderson’s elemental offering ‘Fire’. This wasn’t their first musical collaboration as they had already worked together on her own cosmic masterpiece, Ptah, The El Daoud, recorded at the Coltrane’s home studio in 1970 and released on Impulse! records.

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Joe Henderson – Fire

The same year as Pharoah Sanders’ Elevation (1974), saxophonist Joe Henderson enlisted that record’s violinist (Michael White) and percussionist (Kenneth Nash) for an ambitious, conceptual collaboration with the great Alice Coltrane.

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Pharoah Sanders – Greeting To Saud (Brother McCoy Tyner)

To mark the recent passing of pianist McCoy Tyner, the subject of our last post, the track for today is ‘Greeting To Saud (Brother McCoy Tyner)’ from the live album Elevation by tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, released in 1974 on Impulse! records.

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