Pharoah Sanders at Slugs, 1969

Pharoah at Slugs in New York City’s East Village, 1969. Photograph by Bob Cummins.

Slugs was a legendary club in New York City’s East Village in the late sixties and early seventies where all the greats played — for a while Sun Ra had a residency there every Monday night. It was also, much like New York itself, notoriously rough. The trumpeter Lee Morgan famously died there after he was shot at the bar by his wife (it closed a few months after that). 

When Bob Cummins, the man behind the record label India Navigation, photographed Pharoah there in 1969 neither of them knew that they would go on to work together. But in 1977, a full eight years later, they would join forces to record and release Pharoah’s beloved self-titled album Pharoah.

While the original LP was released with its signature illustration of branches on its maroon cover, Bob would eventually use this photo of Pharoah at Slugs for the CD version of the album. 

As we soon will learn, it was also here that Pharoah came to meet Bedria, who he married a few years later…

Pharoah is back out September 15.