The Pharaohs’ “Freedom Road” is an excellent, rare example of the Funk and Soul treasures that get trampled in the main stream, but dug up and glorified thankfully, by the DJs, Bboys and Bgirls that keep the Soul alive.
Some background on The Pharaohs from Allmusic:
The Pharaohs were one of the forgotten treasures of ’70s R&B, a freewheeling jazz-funk congregation heavily influenced by Chicago’s jazz avant-garde as well as on-the-one funk and African motifs. Unfortunately, they recorded only one album before Earth, Wind & Fire frontman Maurice White (who played in an early version of The Pharaohs) hired several of its members to form the Phenix Horns, the justly celebrated horn section for Earth, Wind & Fire during the ’70s.
The group was formed from several jazz bands active around Chicago’s Affro Arts Theater, a community educational collective. One of the bands, the Jazzmen, was formed in the early ’60s around trumpeter Charles Handy, trombone player Louis Satterfield, and alto Don Myrick (along with three who didn’t survive later conglomerations: pianist Fred Humphrey, bassist Ernest McCarthy, and drummer Maurice White). The other main component of The Pharaohs was the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, who had already recorded one late-’60s LP with cornetist Philip Cohran, a veteran of Sun Ra’s Arkestra and AACM. By the time of The Pharaohs‘ 1971 recording debut, Awakening, the group included Handy, Myrick, and Satterfield plus Big Willie Woods on trombone, Oye Bisi and Shango Njoko Adefumi on African drums, Yehudah Ben Israel on guitar and vocals, Alious Watkins on trap drums, Derf Reklaw-Raheem on percussion and flute, and Aaron Dodd on tuba. Though the album’s astonishing fusion of funk, jazz, and Afro-beat earned them an assortment of die-hard fans and critics, the group’s abstract inclinations hardly geared them for commercial success.
