Alice Coltrane: Ptah, The El Daoud (Verve By Request Series) LP

Artist: 
Alice Coltrane
$27.98

Impulse!, 1970

There’s not a lot of harp playing on this, but it’s well worth a listen to hear how Coltrane’s harp style evolved so naturally out of her fluid, searching piano playing. The album is named after the ancient Egyptian God Ptah, creator of the Earth through speech. El Daoud translates as The Beloved and the sound is both bluesy and contemporary In the studio, Coltrane was inspired by the right and left hemispheres of the brain to combine the two saxophonists on either side of the stereo image. Throughout the album you can hear Pharoah Sanders - whom Alice thought of as abstract and transcendental - on the right-hand channel, and Joe Henderson, who she considered more cerebral on the left.

Tracklist

Side A
1. Ptah, The El Daoud
2. Turiya & Ramakrishna

Side B
3. Blue Nile
4. Mantra

  • Recorded - 26 January 1970, Coltrane Home Studios, Dix Hills, New York
  • Producer - Ed Michel
  • Engineer - W.L. Barneke