Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble

"Around '59 all the cats pulled up here and left. I didn't want to go to New York. So I was stumblin' around, and John Gilmore and I got to be friends, and I started rehearsing with Sun Ra. That's when Sonny was rehearsing six hours a day and playing six hours a night. We played all around here. His music was more difficult than anything I have ever seen. I didn't run up on anything in Anacostia that would touch what Sun Ra was doing - Wagner or anybody else. It wasn't no funny thing. Sometimes he had us trumpet players skipping two octaves, with eighth notes.

"He left in 1961. Gilmore came by and said, 'Man, we're gettin' ready to go to New York. We need you to go with us.' Sun Ra's music was so great. He removed all the borders in my mind. He moved you so powerful and generated such a response in people that I knew I wanted to do that on my own. That's the reason I didn't go with him.

"So I stayed here and became a recluse. I started walking the streets in my GI clothes, let my hair and beard grow out. My mother thought I lost my mind. But I just got serious and started working seven days a week on music, at least 16 hours a day. I made the Frankiphone (an amplified thumb-piano, named after his mother) and some other instruments.

"Around April 1965, I ran into Steve McCall and Muhal walking down Cottage Grove, by the cemetery. We talked about how everybody had gone to new York and there was nobody around here and nothing happening. So we said, 'Man, we ought to do something about this ourselves. We'll just get together. You call all the guys you know, send them a card; I'll take the guys I know.' I had a place at 740 East 75th Street, and it had a large living room. So everybody met there on May 8, that was a Saturday. And that was the first AACM meeting."

The Artistic Heritage Ensemble, which Cohran put together at that time, was one of the best received of the early AACM groups. "A year before that, I had a rehearsal group, but that's all that it was because I didn't think that the music I was writing would be accepted for 10 to 12 years. That first concert, when we got a standing ovation, I was really shocked." But differing philosophies drove Cohran from the AACM tent. "Everybody wanted to play OUT, see. My nature wanted me to go somewhere else. I'm not a spaceman; I'm an earthman. We always had a very strong rhythmic foundation and sound centers, and we always knew where we were going."

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Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble

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"Amazing work from the legendary Phil Cohran -- and a much-needed collection of his rare singles on the Zulu label! The work here is contemporary to the sides issued by Phil's Artistic Heritage Ensemble on their two famous records -- but the sound is often a bit tighter, and funkier too -- kind of the 45 distillation of sounds the group was working out in larger format on the full albums! As with those classics, the approach is amazing -- a hip blend of jazz, soul, and African elements -- very much in the spirit of Sun Ra, Cohran's predecessor on the Chicago scene -- but often with a lot more groove, and a lot less avant garde elements. Players on the set include Charles Williams on alto, Don Myrick on baritone, Charles Handy on trumpet, Louis Satterfield on bass, Pete Cosey on guitar, and Henry Gibson on timbales and conga -- all working at a level that easily rivals the best from Ra, Salah Ragab, Mulatu, and other space jazz legends from the time! Titles include "The African Look", "Loud Mouth", "New Frankiphone Blues", "Frankiphone Blues", "Detroit Red", "El Hajj Malik El Shabazz", and "Black Beauty". Dusty Groove America

 Malcolm X Memorial
Reissue of the 1968 Zulu Record Co. LP. Released March 2007. Mastered by Tim Stollenwerk. Nicely-packaged replica album features gatefold cover with archival photos and liner notes. An early member of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Cohran went on to record and self-release this LP in 1968, originally in an edition of 1000. Cohran, a personal friend of Malcolm X, created this concept album retelling the story of Malcolm's political and spiritual journey from a little boy ("Malcolm Little") to his later life pilgrimage to Mecca ("El Hajj Malik El Shabazz"). Features a tight groove-oriented band (which later evolved into the Pharaohs and then Earth, Wind, & Fire) who explore soul, jazz, and Middle Eastern rhythms. A radical and intense recording. This is a live performance recorded on February 25, 1968, at the Afro-Arts Theater, a cultural center in Chicago operated by Cohran from 1967-1970. "The personnel and instrumentation are almost identical to Cohran’s ‘On the Beach’ session. This historic concert was originally an LP issued on Cohran’s Zulu label. Original copies of that record are very rare collector’s items and sell for hundreds of dollars. Kelan Phil Cohran is an unsung hero of jazz history and a cosmic treasure. He played with Sun Ra in the late 1950s and early ‘60s and was a co-founder of the world famous AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians)." Personnel: Arranged and composed by Philip Cohran; Louis Satterfield (bass); Master Henry Gibson (congas); Philip Cohran (cornet); Bob Crowder (drums); Pete Cosey (guitar); Charles Handy (horns); Charles James Williams (alto sax); Donald Myrick (bari sax); Eugene Easton (tenor sax); Willie Woods (trombone); Charles Handy (trumpet, Chinese musette); Aaron Dodd (tuba); Ella Pearl Jackson (vocals)

AFRICAN SKIES 

Kelan Philip Cohran and Legacy present "African Skies"Captcha Records is proud to announce the arrival of “African Skies”, the most recently recorded album from the visionary Brother Kelan Philip Cohran and his band Legacy. This record was influenced and realized in 1993, shortly after the passing of Brother Phil’s friend, mentor and band mate, Herman Blount (better known as Sun Ra). It was heard publicly for the first and only time at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois that same year. By channeling the energy of Sun Ra, Brother Phil brings us closer to enlightenment, closer to the cosmos with melodies that are as ancient as time itself. Sun Ra believed that music is the voice of the spirit, the energy we want to live within. In the aftermath of his death, Brother Phil drew upon his mentor’s cosmic perspective to produce an elegiac album that is utopian in spirit: a vessel brim-full of primordial vibes and a memo from some higher astral plane. In the words of its maker, “African Skies” is a “nourishing and inspirational” document - a nuanced portrait of one of the most visionary musicians of our time in his prime. Source Kelan Phil Cohran-harp, frankiphone, trumpet, congas, violin uke, guitar and flute Oscar Brown III-regular and piccolo string bass (bow), fluteMalik Cohran -guitar, string bass and fluteAquilla Sadalla -bass clarinet, guitar, flute and vocalsJosefe Marie Verna -classical harp, trombone and flute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Cohran