The record that grew out of Karma

Lonnie Liston Smith grew up in Richmond, Virginia, in a house full of gospel: his father sang with the Harmonizing Four, and the Soul Stirrers, with a young Sam Cooke, came through the living room. After a music degree in Baltimore he moved to New York in 1963 and served one of the great apprenticeships: Betty Carter, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Max Roach.

In 1968 he joined the band Pharoah Sanders built after Coltrane died, and played piano on Karma, Jewels of Thought, and Thembi. At the Thembi sessions he spotted a strange instrument in the corner of the studio - a Fender Rhodes electric piano - started messing with it, and wrote "Astral Traveling" on the spot. Pharoah heard it and said, man, we have to record that. After that came Miles Davis, who gave him two nights to learn the organ for the On the Corner sessions.

In 1973, producer Bob Thiele, the man behind Pharoah's records, encouraged Smith to start his own group on Thiele's Flying Dutchman label: Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes, with Smith's brother Donald singing. Expansions, recorded over two November days in 1974 in New York and released in 1975, is where it all came together: the title track, Desert Nights, Summer Days, Voodoo Woman, Peace. "I was trying to expand the consciousness of humanity," Smith said. AllMusic called it "timeless soul-jazz, perfect in every era."

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Expansions (the full album - the title track opens it)

Where it leads: Astral Traveling, the song he wrote at Pharoah's Rhodes, opened the first Cosmic Echoes album in 1973. Twenty years later a new generation found him: Guru put him on Jazzmatazz in 1993, and hip-hop producers have been sampling Expansions ever since. The band he came up through: the record Pharoah Sanders made after Trane. Expansions is in our free guide.

Heard it? Come talk about it in the listening room.