Drop the needle on the opening track of Pharaoh Sander’s Africa, and the first thing you hear is Sanders’ multi-phonic screaming through his tenor saxophone. It’s not an existential cris de coeur though, he’s playing a fanfare, an announcement, the intro to a soulful melodic line.

That energy shaped into form is what makes this such an exceptional album, one of his very best if not the best.

Recorded and released by Timeless in 1987 (and not available on any streaming service, try Discogs for the original LP and CD reissues), it comes toward the end of a decade that had Sanders working on that balance between freedom and structure that is the height of jazz. My September Star-Revue column, not yet ported to the web but in the downloadable newspaper, has a longer look at the period through the recently released The Complete Pharaoh Sanders on Theresa Recordings from Mosaic Records.

“You’ve Got to Have Freedom” was a staple for Sanders and a multilevel statement of musical thinking and artistic purpose. This is an underrated decade in his music making because, on the surface, it seems like he’s pulling back from the spiritual explorations of Coltrane’s Live in Seattle, and his own Thembi and the like—a kind of mystical trial and scouring of the soul to achieve a place of enlightened peace—into an energetic but mainstream post-hard bop. Another way to put it is that you can hear him play the blues on another fine new archival release:

But that from the 1970s to the 1980s, his blues got more orderly, more inside the lines.

A lot of listeners and critics are attracted to the immediate impact of free music, the force and activity. If you listen past the top layer you can hear how the music is made, get into the poetry of it, and how free music is just a slight extension of the jazz tradition. The point is not to think less of free music but more of things like Miles Davis’ 1965-1968 Quintet and this album; music that compositionally has such tensile strength that it can contain all sorts of freedom inside. And there’s the corollary that freedom can be not just a scream, but a whisper, a caress, a bit of logic.

“You’ve Got to Have Freedom” outlines that, Sanders’ own solo moving out then in, the driving lyricism of the great, great pianist John Hicks, the push and poise from the rhythm section of Curtis Lundy and Idris Muhammed—this was the band for most of the ‘80s and they have the deep roots and purpose long-lived ensembles develop.

It’s a hell of a group, especially the wonderful Hicks (one of my personal favorite pianists). Along with the energy and wit of his playing, like for the fast samba arrangement of “Speak Low,” he brings his ballad “After the Morning,” one of the single finest jazz compositions of the 1980s.

The only other non-original is Coltrane’s “Naima,” which is lovely but not swooning, with Sanders’ unique tough-tenderness.

This is one of those rare albums where everything is on the same superior level without a weak moment or loss of energy (the CD reissue added a couple bonus tracks that are fine but not on the same level and so slacken the experience). The gamut of emotions is also extraordinary, grabbing the throat and then touching the heart. It’s a rare combination of powerful and precious, and one of the finest jazz albums of the 1980s.

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