Astral Traveling

At the Los Angeles session for Thembi in November 1970, Lonnie Liston Smith saw a Fender Rhodes electric piano for the first time, asked the engineer what it was, and started playing; the song, he said, came to him organically, as if from the creator, while the others were still unpacking, and they recorded it at once. He had been studying astral projection, which gave it its title. Sanders plays soprano saxophone over Smith's Rhodes, Michael White's violin, Cecil McBee's bass and Clifford Jarvis's percussion and bells. It opens the album, and became a cult classic; Smith re-recorded it as the title track of his own debut in 1973. The upload in the hypersongs web is the original 1970 take.