The Pharaohs

The Pharaohs rank among the overlooked gems of 1970s R&B, operating as an expansive jazz-funk ensemble shaped by Chicago's experimental jazz currents along with straight-ahead funk grooves and African rhythmic patterns. They managed to complete just a single album before Maurice White, the Earth, Wind & Fire frontman who had performed in an earlier lineup of the Pharaohs, recruited several of its players to create the Phenix Horns, the widely acclaimed horn section that backed Earth, Wind & Fire throughout the decade.

Several Chicago jazz outfits active at the Affro Arts Theater, a neighborhood educational collective, supplied the members who formed the Pharaohs. One such group, the Jazzmen, coalesced in the early 1960s around trumpeter Charles Handy, trombonist Louis Satterfield, and alto saxophonist Don Myrick, together with pianist Fred Humphrey, bassist Ernest McCarthy, and drummer Maurice White, none of whom remained through subsequent mergers. The Artistic Heritage Ensemble supplied the other core element; that unit had already cut a late-1960s album featuring cornetist Philip Cohran, a onetime member of Sun Ra's Arkestra and the AACM. By the time the Pharaohs issued their 1971 debut Awakening, the roster comprised Handy, Myrick, Satterfield, trombonist Big Willie Woods, African drummers Oye Bisi and Shango Njoko Adefumi, guitarist and vocalist Yehudah Ben Israel, trap drummer Alious Watkins, percussionist and flutist Derf Reklaw-Raheem, and tuba player Aaron Dodd. Although the record's striking blend of funk, jazz, and Afro-beat attracted a devoted following among listeners and reviewers, the group's exploratory bent offered little prospect of broad commercial appeal.

Handy, Satterfield, and Maurice White had already played on numerous Chess studio dates in the 1960s, so when White cut a demo for a prospective new band both Handy and Satterfield took part. After White secured a Warner Bros. contract they appeared on Earth, Wind & Fire tracks and were formally engaged as the Phenix Horns, joined by Pharaohs Yehudah Ben Israel and Rahm Lee along with Michael Harris. The Pharaohs continued until 1973 before disbanding without releasing another studio album. Derf Reklaw later emerged as a noted world-jazz bandleader, while Woods and Dodd contributed to numerous Chicago soul sessions during the 1970s. In 1996 the acid jazz imprint Luv 'N' Haight reissued Awakening and brought out the previously unissued 1972 live set In the Basement.