Sunday evening, there’s nothing but crap on TV and anyway you’ve spent the whole day in front of Netflix, pizza has already been ordered, life is down and yet you’re still overcome by the unpleasant feeling of melancholy: We call it Sunday Depression. This is probably the optimal setting for this Reissue. Pharoah Sanders, mainly known for his demanding saxophone playing, with strange overblows and wild runs, shows himself on »Welcome To Love« from another side. This LP, which was released on CD in the Netherlands in 1991, plays a special role in the work of Sanders, who was born in 1940. For instead of devoting himself to free or spiritual jazz, the focus here is on big, heart-warming ballads: Welcome To Love. The line-up that he has brought to the start can hardly be surpassed in star potential. Stafford James from the Sun Ra Arkestra on bass, William Henderson sat at the piano and Eccleston W. Wainwright prepares the carpet on the drums on which Sanders can set his unusually emotional and long notes. This is far away from avant-garde, much more classical straight-ahead, which might discourage one or the other. Of course, this is also nonsense, because »Welcome To Love« is a touching examination of homesickness and wanderlust, of uprooting and the search for happiness. Best sunday-goods then.
Pharoah Sanders
Live In Paris 1975
Transversales Disques