“The Seventh Son” was published on RA Records in 1980 and quickly became a Jazz Holy Grail. This release is a must-have for anybody who collects Spiritual Jazz.

Malachi Thompson went to Chicago as a kid and began playing the bugle at 11. Malachi played in the Chicago South Side rhythm and blues scene as an adolescent. He attended the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1968, where he spent some time with the AACM large band.

While residing in New York City, Thompson collaborated with saxophonists Joe Henderson, Jackie McLean, Frank Foster, and Archie Shepp, among others. In 1978, he founded his Freebop ensemble and ended up moving to Washington, D.C. Thompson has also collaborated with Lester Bowie’s Hot Trumpets Repertory Company and founded Africa Brass, a band influenced by classic New Orleans brass bands.

Thompson formed the Sutherland Community Arts Initiative, a non-profit company, in 1991 with the objective of saving the Sutherland Theater on Chicago’s South Side. He also composed background music for a play about the theater.

Thompson said he was treated by radiotherapy and jazz reading after being diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma and given a year to live in 1989. In 2006, he died in Chicago, Illinois, due to a return of his disease.