The Friday Flashback: The Pharaohs

The Pharaohs started out as a student band under the direction of James Mack at Crane Junior College on the West Side in 1962. Years later the band hooked up with Kehan Phil Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble on the South Side, one of the precursors to the long-standing Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). When Cohran left to teach at Malcolm X College, the two bands merged under the Pharaohs moniker.

The band was together long enough to release a fierce album, Awakening, a brilliant album that merged early 70's funk with the more accessible elements of Sun Ra's musical leanings. Shortly after the Pharaohs original drummer, Maurice White, poached the horn section to form Earth, Wind & Fire's legendary Phenix Horns.

MP3: The Pharaohs - "Somebody's Been Sleeping."