Alice Coltrane Monastic Trio

Ptah, the El Daoud, recorded and released in 1970, is the third solo album by Alice Coltrane. The album was recorded in the basement of her house in Dix Hills on Long Island, New York. This was Coltrane's first album with horns (aside from one track on A Monastic Trio (1968), on which Pharoah Sanders played bass clarinet). Sanders is recorded on the right channel and Joe Henderson on the left channel throughout. Coltrane noted: "Joe Henderson is more on the intellectual side, while Pharoah is more abstract, more transcendental."

This is Alice Coltrane's first album as a leader, made a year after her husband's death. Even though you can tell that she was still developing her own style at this point, it is still a great record. The first 3 songs are especially good, I think; this is probably because of the additon of Pharoah Sanders. Alice is great with a trio, but she had incredible chemistry with Pharoah.

"Lord, Help Me To Be" is just classic. I really like Jimmy Garrison's bass playing on this one. He may not have been as technically developed as other bass players of his time, but he could really swing, which is something that other bass players sometimes lacked. "The Sun" is wonderful, too. It is basically a 4 minute Alice Coltrane solo in free rhythm, colored by bells and sparse bass. Although Pharoah is listed here, he is barely audible, playing flute in the left channel. The drums are very quiet as well. "Ohnedaruth" is a chant that the last John Coltrane group used to perform. It features a rare Pharoah Sanders solo on bass clarinet!

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality was the central purpose of the final four decades of her life, an often-overlooked awakening that largely took shape during her four-year marriage to John Coltrane and after his 1967 death. By 1983, Alice had established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside of Los Angeles. She quietly began recording music from the ashram, releasing it within her spiritual community in the form of private press cassette tapes. On May 5, Luaka Bop will release the first-ever compilation of recordings from this period, making these songs available to the wider public for the first time. Entitled ‘World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda,’ the release is the first installment in a planned series of spiritual music from around the globe; curated, compiled and distributed by Luaka Bop.