Billboard has been talking about the big, new youth audience for jazz, and "The Greening of Jazz" is a topic in the pop press. Most of the related attention is focused on Columbia's successful merchandising of Miles Davis and Weather Report. Meanwhile, Thembi has appeared with relatively little fanfare, the best album in a long while from the man who can legitimately claim to have "greened"
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jazz almost singlehandedly, not with merchandising techniques but with music alone.
When Pharoah cut his first album for ACT impulse, producer Bob Thiele considered himself lucky to talk the company into a one-shot deal for a very modest sum. The record sold fairly well, and the company decided to sign Pharoah to a contract and cut another album. Karma, which was underadvertised and got almost no airplay at first, took off largely on the strength of Pharoah's legendary performances at clubs like Slug's, spreading by word of mouth. It was high in the charts before the company jumped on the bandwagon with heavy promotional support, and it stayed there for months.
Pharoah had proved, before Bitches Brew or the Jazz and Peoples' Movement caught the public ear, that strong, original music could sell. Even today, ABC Impulse gives Pharoah's records small promotional budgets, probably because they know word of mouth and the music itself will sell records.
Thembi should be getting more push, because it's the first of Pharoah's records to contain cuts short enough for widespread airplay. The title tune is light and lilting, with Pharoah's melodic soprano sax up front and Lonnie Liston Smith's exceptional piano shimmering and hypnotic. It's under seven minutes, and Smith's fantastic "Astral Traveling," with Pharoah again on soprano and the composer at the Fender Rhodes electric keyboard, is only 5:43. These tunes are unusually tight and condensed for Pharoah, who likes to examine all the angles and touch all the bases when he plays, and they are naturals for radio.
Thembi is a delight for album listeners because of its thoughtful, varied programming. The first side includes "Red. Black, and Green." Pharoah's first venture into overdubbing, and it's remarkably powerful when it could easily have been gimmicky. Two Pharoahs screaming raw tenor from both speakers is a heavy trip, but so is the second side, an extended suite. It begins with Cecil McBee's brilliant bass solo, which cuts his previous recorded efforts by a mile, and flows effortlessly into an extended piano vamp with solos by Pharoah on alto flute and tenor sax. By the end of the tenor solo the piano has dropped out and Pharoah is riding a thick rhythm track of African percussion; he switches to bailophone and lifes for the end of the piece.
It's just great to hear more tenor from Pharoah, and to have his soprano adequately miked for a change. Thembi shows care and a good ear in programming and production as well as in the playing,
