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Biography
Phil Cohran was born eighty-five years ago in Mississippi. He grew up in St Louis, post-war home of jazz stalwarts like Clark Terry and Oliver Nelson (both of whom he played with), not to mention a genius called Miles Davis. In 1950 Cohran moved to Kansas City, where he played trumpet in one of the hardest swing-groups, Jay McShann's, touring proto-rock’n’roll with the likes of Big Mama Thornton. Cohran led his own group, the Rajas of Swing, spivved up in red jackets, grey slacks, blue suede shoes and turbans.
Then in the mid-50s he moved to Chicago. He had a small group with John Gilmore; in 1959 he was invited to join Sun Ra Arkestra. “With Sunny”, Cohran simply says, “I found my own voice”; and you can hear its emergence on Angels And Demons At Play, recorded in 1960, where Cohran’s zither is the magic ingredient of tracks like Music From The World Tomorrow.
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