Pharoah Sanders – Thembi

Lonnie Liston Smith: “’Astral Travelling’ (1971) was the first time I played an Electric Piano! Before that, I only played the Grand Piano. I met Pharoah Sanders in the late sixties, and we were doing this particular record session in a California Studio when I found a strange instrument on the corner, cause you know, they have a lot of instruments there. I asked “What’s that?” and they said it was an Electric Piano! I started playing it and it blew people’s minds! At the time we recorded this music, I was studying Astral projections, so I decided to call it ‘Astral Travelling’. It’s a twelve-bar 21st Century Cosmic Blues… Working with Pharoah was great, he was doing different things with his horn, and me with the piano! And also Leon Thomas on the vocals, for example, on the ‘Karma’ LP (1969) by yodeling. We were all experimenting, wanting to do different things with the instruments!”

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