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Soul Jazz

Pharoah Sanders, Flying Dutchman

Leon Thomas

Leon Thomas was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, in the late 1930s and studied music at Tennessee State. He sang with Jimmy Forrest and Grant Green, moved to New York in 1959 and spent time as a vocalist with Count Basie's orchestra. In 1969 he joined Pharoah Sanders, and their album Karma for Impulse! became an FM radio favourite. His trademark was a yodel he called soularphone, which influenced Bobby McFerrin. When producer Bob Thiele left Impulse to start Flying Dutchman, Thomas went with him, recording Spirits Known and Unknown with Sanders and The Leon Thomas Album with Oliver Nelson arranging and conducting. Later records turned more soulful. He toured with Santana in 1973 and died in 1999.

Chicago, A&M, Van Gelder

Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones was born on Chicago's South Side in 1933, toured Europe with Lionel Hampton in 1953 and in 1961 became a vice-president at Mercury Records, the first African American to hold that job. In 1969 and 1970 he made two albums for A&M with producer Creed Taylor at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, with players such as Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Milt Jackson and singer Valerie Simpson. The first of them won a Grammy. A 1974 album went to No. 1 on the R&B chart, his biggest record of the period. He scored nearly forty films, produced Michael Jackson's biggest albums, won 28 Grammys and died in Los Angeles in November 2024, aged 91.

The Collection