In 1962, a young saxophonist from Little Rock, Arkansas, was sleeping on New York streets and subways and selling his blood for food. This episode follows Pharoah Sanders from church hymns on clarinet and an early devotion to visual art, through a fine arts degree in Oakland, to the moment Sun Ra took him in, gave him clothes and a place to stay, and urged him to embrace the name Pharoah, spelled with the O before the A.

We trace his gigs with Don Cherry and Billy Higgins, his 1965 entry into John Coltrane's band on Ascension and Meditations, and the multiphonics and 'sheets of sound' that pushed Coltrane further out. Then come the Impulse years with Alice Coltrane, the 30-minute The Creator Has a Master Plan with Leon Thomas and Lonnie Liston Smith, the label-hopping wilderness of the 1980s and 90s, the Moroccan Gnawa recording The Trance  ...