The story goes that in 1962 a little-known saxophonist from a working-class family in Little Rock, Arkansas, arrived in New York City. Farrell Sanders was fuelled with such technical pizzazz that he impressed both John Coltrane and Sun Ra – so much so that Sun Ra nicknamed him “Pharoah” and Coltrane invited him to join his band.
In reality, any success enjoyed by the revered tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who died on 24 September aged 81, was hard won. Musicians who shaped the free jazz revolution, such as Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, have become deified, as contemporary players such as Kamasi Washington and Shabaka Hutchings gorge on their music for inspiration. But free music in 1960s America was played largely in the shadows, with scant financial reward and even scanter chance of mainstream acceptance.
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