Sun Ra in Chronological Order: An Arkestra Listening Thread + Related Solar Sounds

greetings, earthlings!

we begin our adventure with sonny's "first commercial recordings" (zwed, p. 51) -- four sides as pianist for wynonie harris, recorded in nashville, 1946.

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/bullet251arc.jpg
listen on youtube

i've found that this article is a supremely helpful resource for the early years. here's what campbell et al. have to say:

One transition in his career about which we can safely say that "cosmic forces" were not in control took place in January 1946, when Sonny, fed up with segregation and lack of musical opportunities, bought a one-way train ticket to Chicago. He was soon out on the road in a combo led by alto saxophonist Jimmie Jackson. For three or four months they played Club Zanzibar in Nashville, where they backed the touring blues singer Wynonie Harris. An unlikely setting, maybe. But Harris already had made several hit records on the West Coast, and a brand-new local label started by a radio announcer saw fit to capitalize. Label owner Jim Bulliet cut a deal with Harris's manager, Harold Oxley, and Harris and combo (with the old fashioned rhythm section of piano and drums) made four sides. One of them was Sonny's feature, Dig This Boogie. He'd obviously learned his blues lessons. In fact, he'd developed a few tricks of his own, like deliberately dropping beats and picking them up in the next line.

some other good links as we get started:

SUN RA'S DISCOGRAPHY IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
Sun Ra, the ultimate album guide
Sun Ra Arkive

for the most part, though, we'll be going by arkestra (usually LP) release date as listed on discogs

finally, PLEASE feel free to interject with whatever chronological arcana you feel might be applicable, or to point out discrepancies, or to suggest alternate takes, bootlegs, archival material of interest, etc. ultimately this thread is about listening to as much sun ra as possible, with a minimum of academic quibbling, but i don't see any problem with the more astute among you opening doorways to ever-deeper directions of listening, even if this thread probably can't incorporate the entirety of the sun ra omniverse.

next up: the singles

bookmarked

whoops that's SZWED, as in john f. szwed, as in the author of "space is the place: the lives and times of sun ra"

thank you budo jeru for starting this up! thanks for the extra links and article excerpt in the first post, as well. i know it's more work but i loooove those extra post elements. it feels like turning the page in a magazine and finding an especially good scratch n sniff perfume ad.

i'm excited to learn a lot more about sun ra. i only know a few of what i think are his better known albums (heliocentric worlds, space is the place, jazz by / sun song, the futuristic sounds of), along with other snippets of his albums that will pop up on playlists and mixes. it's all good. even in my limited listening his versatility has become so apparent. anyway, i feel like i'm ready for a deep dive.

btw i started a spotify playlist here.

WARNING: i was just using the discogs release date as my guide, so it starts with supersonic jazz and goes forward from there. but i already added in the first song posted above, and i'll fill in the others as they get posted to keep it up to date.

I saw Karl Malone's post this morning and cued up what of his linked discogs list is on spotify. Stunned to find about 80% of it! I'm now five albums in (When The Sun Comes Out) and am loving every minute. Sun Ra has for me been an artist who I never thought I'd have to the resolve to approach systematically so I'm thankful for this thread.

Thanks bodo and Karl!

i haven't started a new year off so right in a very long time. 2018 is going to be different. it's an even number!

Looking forward to this - great thread

it's an even number!
my people

:D

thanks for the spotify playlist, KM!

btw 2018 is the year of the DOG [from OE, docga] >>> D O C G A

or, AD COG (ad cogitationem, "toward reflection")

https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/dog+in+stars+small-290x300.jpg

i dig that boogie! this is a cool thread idea ... not sure if I'll be able to do the whole thing, but will definitely be checking in.

budo jeru i don't envy the task of having to decide what is "chronological". there are all these side recordings, home and rehearsal recordings, things that were recorded early but released much later. whichever way you go, i'll try to make the playlist match up where possible!

yeah i don't plan on sweating it too much. close enough will be fine and, like i said initially, anyone is welcome to jump in with corrections / objections.

in terms of your playlist, i'll say right off the bat that sun ra plays on all of the four last songs on that wynonie harris comp, so you might add the other three after "dig this boogie"

got it! i wasn't sure if you were going to go song by song or not. release by release makes sense because holy shit there's a lot.

stoked for this thread and ready to get schooled!

i think my favorite moment from this first recording session is the piano accompaniment during the trumpet solo on "my baby's barrelhouse blues" and then into the last vocal stanza or whatever.

also the lyrics !!! geez

i'm gonna snatch me a picket off o' somebody's barbwire fence,
i'm gonna beat you 'side your head until you learn some sense

when i first heard this early ra arrangement i said: that's so ra! but he didn't play on it so it doesn't really count here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9qavDaeXRM

yeah that's a killer side.

also cf. szwed:

... he began rehearsing the band for Saunders and playing in the relief band that filled in when Saunders was off. Every week Saunders handed him new arrangements for the floor show, but during rehearsals Sonny began to make small changes -- a note here and there, an alternation in a chord -- but as time went on the changes became increasingly dramatic. During rehearsal one day Saunders walked in, looked over an arrangement, and shook his head when he saw the crossed-out notes and inserted harmonies: "I give you these nice, clean arrangements each week, and look what you do with them! ... But, damn, they sure sound good, though." Sonny was now rewriting arrangements used to accompany singers like B.B. King, Laverne Baker, Dakota Staton, Joe Williams, Johnny Guitar Watson, Sarah Vaughan, and Lorenz Alexandria.

and then, on the instrumental side, there's his amazing arrangement of 'summertime' (also for red saunders)

Lorez Alexandria***

OK I'm already confused, I'll have to try and damp down my OCD in this thread

Jazz By Sun Ra/Sun Song has ten songs, but only five are in the playlist? Maybe this is a Spotify availability thing idk

Technically (at least acc. to Szwed) the tracks "Super Blonde", "Soft Talk", "Springtime In Chicago" and "Medicine For A Nightmare" were recorded in "early 1956", as opposed to the Sun Song sessions from July, so those four tracks should come before the Sun Song/Jazz By Sun Ra tracks as opposed to the rest of the Supersonic Jazz tracks

really enjoying the early records, thanks for this thread

also keep in mind that lots of the remasters are now on Bandcamp

man it all goes weird when you get to "India", huh? jazz heads back then must have not known what hit 'em

I can def. hear the exotica influence on this track, Martin Denny percussion vibes

Jazz By Sun Ra/Sun Song has ten songs, but only five are in the playlist? Maybe this is a Spotify availability thing idk

nah, i just fucked up. fixed!

i'm really getting ahead of myself anyway - i was just planning on adding to the playlist as this thread progresses, but i jumped the gun yesterday and already started adding the first few albums.

Technically (at least acc. to Szwed) the tracks "Super Blonde", "Soft Talk", "Springtime In Chicago" and "Medicine For A Nightmare" were recorded in "early 1956", as opposed to the Sun Song sessions from July, so those four tracks should come before the Sun Song/Jazz By Sun Ra tracks as opposed to the rest of the Supersonic Jazz tracks

on this though, i have to make clear upfront that i probably won't be this meticulous. i don't have the szwed book so i was just planning on placing the albums/singles into the playlist in full as we cover them in this thread, according to their release date, rather than splitting them up in the playlist according to their recording date.

haha that's fine, unless you looked at everything in advance I'm sure we'd miss some (for example, we've already missed some tracks that appeared much later on "Purple Night". we can note tracks w/different/older dates when we get to those albums in order of release.

now I need to go back and listen to those other five tracks! thanks.

there's also this recent find from the archives, which is great and not on Youtube unfortunately:

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-Its-A-Good-Day/release/10452067

recorded 1955

I was just reading his wiki bio and had not realized he was buried in Birmingham. I guess I'd assumed he was buried in Philadelphia. I think I'll try to make a brief pilgrimage to his grave in 2018.

the magic city

So this thread could potentially go on forever, right?

At least it's good music and not greatest outtakes of The Eagles or some such.

i'm on board though as always spotify is out for me. are we going to cover the doo-wop stuff at all? because man i love his doo-wop stuff, and if we're getting into his mambo i want to talk about "teenager's letter of promises".

sleeve: thanks for your diligence. it's sure to be useful at almost every point (i'll do my best, too). and yeah, pointing out discrepancies as they come up between release / recording date -- that's what i had in mind. otherwise i'd just feel incapacitated. we'll sort it all out as we go.

rushomancy: we'll definitely cover the doo wop stuff. re: listening, since KM is doing spotify, i'm trying to post youtube links as we go along. there's also the (official, more or less) sun ra bandcamp: https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/ (and that material is also available on itunes)

So this thread could potentially go on forever, right?

yeah.

hopefully!

interlude, 1948-1954

most of this information and ALL of the quoted text comes from this article, which i HIGHLY recommend for its exhaustive coverage of sun ra's chicago period through 1961: From Sonny Blount to Sun Ra: The Chicago Years

1. the "deep purple" duet with stuff smith, recorded in 1948 and first made available in 1973 on saturn 485

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturn485act.jpg
listen on youtube

On his very first tape machine, Sonny recorded Stuff Smith and himself playing in his tiny apartment at 5414 South Prairie Avenue. They performed a duet featuring the Solovox, a primitive electronic instrument that Sonny had picked up back in 1941, while still in Birmingham. Sonny had a thing about purple (he thought people would be healthier if they ate more purple food). He released Deep Purple nearly a quarter century later on his Saturn label, and the tune remained in his repertoire for the rest of his career. It would be featured on his very last recording session, when he accompanied Billy Bang for Soul Note in 1992.

2. solo church organ recording, 1948

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPO7oY8riXc

3. piano accompaniment for the dozier boys

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/aristocrat3002a.jpg
listen on youtube

In October 1948, Sonny became the music director of a successful medium-sized band. Bassist Gene Wright, at the tender of age of 23, was simultaneously running a big band and a 10 or 11 piece aggregration called the Dukes of Swing (two previous incarnations of the Dukes had been in operation in 1943 and 1946). For a while, the big band was upstairs in the Pershing Ballroom while the Dukes held the gig at the Beige Room (as the basement club in the Pershing Hotel was then known). During most of the engagement, the Dukes worked with a vocal-instrumental quartet called the Dozier Boys. Sonny composed or arranged the Dukes' entire book. Many of these pieces were of a strictly functional nature (floor shows again) but their theme number was a suite based on the theme from Spellbound, an ambitious work by composer Miklos Rozsa. If only we were lucky enough to have that on record....

The engagement with the Dukes did bring Sonny some recording work, first as session pianist for the Dozier Boys, then with the entire band. Both sesssions were done for the fledgling Aristocrat label. It was the Doziers who came to the company's attention first, courtesy of bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon.

4. various solo, duet, and trio recordings made at home w/ the ampex. many featuring the nu-sounds of the solovox. most of these recordings are available on the norton and transparency labels (see article linked at beginning of post for specifics). some of these recordings document SR's first compositions, performed by his proto-arkestra small combo.

In 1950 or 1951, he started a band to play his own, frankly far-out music. He called it the Space Trio: one charter member was Laurdine "Pat" Patrick (1929 - 1991), who played alto and baritone sax. The drum chair was occupied on some occasions by Tommy Hunter. On other occasions it was taken by Robert Barry, who would soon emerge as a leading bebop drummer in town.

5. arrangements and accompaniment for the red saunders orchestra, 1948-1953 (see szwed quote upthread). red saunders backed joe williams (see scott's post above), lavern baker, jo jo adams, and dorothy donegan.

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/bluelake101a.jpg

1953 was the year of the arrangements. Sunny was making no commercial recordings of his own, and probably didn't feel that his experimental ensemble was ready to make them. But he was willing now to put his stamp on arrangements written for others, to a degree not previously heard. His name did not appear on a single record label in 1953—in one case the band's didn't either—but Red Saunders was now recording his aggressively "modern" arrangements: "Voodoo Blues," "It's Raining Again," "Summertime." And the opening bars of "Call My Baby" announce, for all who care to hear, that Sun Ra has arrived.

6. six cuts with coleman hawkins, rec. 1953 and released in 1955 on savoy

https://img.discogs.com/CcbBqut9Rvf616wHhj-torO4Le4=/fit-in/592x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7877514-1450726598-7314.jpeg.jpg

7. possible arrangement for king kolax, 1954

https://img.discogs.com/iUxyQwP098dGUe58pXDsSJLoKeQ=/fit-in/600x601/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9243083-1477238533-6355.png.jpg
listen on youtube

There is no need for Sun Ra arrangements (or anybody's arrangements) on generic jump band-style R&B like "Right Now," "What Have You Done to Me?," or "Goodnite Blues." However, "Vivian" (presumably named after Vivian Carter of Vee-Jay) is a mysterioso Latin number with percussion breaks built right into the theme. Off the beaten path for King Kolax, but straightforward for Sun Ra at this time. Harold Ousley did not want to rule out "Vivian" as a Sun Ra arrangement either: "Kolax wrote a lot himself, but he also used a lot of other people's stuff."

OKAY! that gets us into 1954/1955, so next we'll move onto the nu sounds / cosmic rays stuff and the rest of THE SINGLES

That Red Saunders "Summertime" is Ra all over.
https://open.spotify.com/album/6olv4cjXzSpX72WATWZomA

oh man, this is a good batch of stuff! the meager musical critical sensibilities i have fall to the wayside when i hear early 1950s music. just about everything of the period sounds good to me.

i updated the playlist where i could - red saunders "summertime", "riverboat", and the red saunders orchestra's "honky tonk train blues". but spotify is missing the sun ra releases that feature a lot of his early recordings through the late 40s and early 50s - Deep Purple (or Dreams Come True) - as well as most of saunders' other recordings. and no dozier boys or king kolax, sadly.

man it all goes weird when you get to "India", huh? jazz heads back then must have not known what hit 'em

"Sun Song" gets there first imo

OK I'll give that a closer listen, thanks! I was making dinner for some of the Spotify playlist last night and I think that's one of the tracks that Karl added later

yeah, it's definitely a work in progress! and any track in the playlist beyond what budo jeru has posted here is very, very provisional.

those Red Saunders tracks are so good

wow, that version of "deep purple" with stuff smith from 1948 is so good. it has a lovely, meandering melancholy sound. stuff smith is good!

This is a great thread, I'll be here for the ride.

(also ty for spotify playlist km!)

no prob! i just hope no one skips ahead of the thread and thinks that the next songs on the playlist represent the correct order! i'm just kinda searching for songs that I think will be upcoming and adding them in the generally correct area of the playlist, but as the thread progresses I'll keep adjusting things to match it.

the solo church recording from 1948 youtube posted above is really good, too. in the midst of these more traditional sessions with other musicians, it shows that he was already interested in going on cosmic voyages in his own work

more youtube links:

Andy Tibbs Dozier Boys with Sax Malllard's Combo + Sun Ra on piano, recorded nov 1948, released dec 1948: In a Traveling Mood (just the first song)
Andy Tibbs & the Dozier Boys + Sun Ra on piano, recorded nov 1948, released jan 1949: In Every Man's Life

Dozier Boys with Eugene Wright + Sun Ra on piano and arrangements, recorded dec 1948, released Sept 1949: Music Goes Round and Round
(couldn't find "Pork n Beans" or "Dawn Mist", from the same session)

after some searching, i found the 6 tracks that Sun Ra/ Blount played on The Hawk Returns (search for "Sun31" here on the amazingly exhaustive Chicago Years link posted above: . They were included on the Confessin': The Astounding Coleman Hawkins comp, which is on Spotify.

Sun Ra studies should be a standard department at universities

Not to be too much of a party pooper, but is the idea of the thread to listen to all the stuff that's been posted so far and then discuss at some point? Or are we going to go song by song like the Billy Joel thread?

(looking forward to 1965 -- "cosmic chaos" is my jam)

xpost
not sure! personally i'd rather go release by release since there are around 125 LPs to go through, not even counting other releases.

i'm not trying to be dismissive but i guess i just don't understand your question. my idea was to post stuff and then anybody is welcome to discuss it, right? or other people can post things, too, that's fine. and also discuss them. maybe once we get to the albums it will be more straightforward. since i feel like we could manage to do a record / day, plus maybe links to archival / live / home recordings from the same period.

oh do you mean like are we going to break down the albums track-by-track? no i'm with KM, i don't want to do that. too much stuff to get through.

xpost @ moodles

all of that sounds good to me

Yep, thanks

(1978 is another banner year. lanquidity!)

i'm pretty sure that these sun ra arrangements of "call my baby" and "rebecca" by jo jo adams (rec. 1952, backed by red saunders) are the same versions as the ones available on spotify.

The pieces may both be midtempo blues in the same key, but the band is clearly reading from charts. The arrangements definitely are by Sun Ra; especially on "Call My Baby," they keep threatening to turn into early Arkestra numbers, then veer temporarily back to the usual formulae. The arrangements are not just remarkable in their own right; they show Sun Ra's "far out" style emerging from its chrysalis. Our thanks to the late Otto Flückiger for careful listening to these sides.

(campbell et al.)

sorry, 1952

errrr 1953 ****

also yeah "lanquidity" rules!

wow there are 1953 sessions with Coleman Hawkins! I'm diving into that crazy "Sonny Blount To Sun Ra" link now

Maybe a couple of days per album...

not a chance! buckle up, pal!

got the jo jo adams, thanks!

and yeah, i'm enjoying the coleman hawkins stuff a lot too. i think the only stuff i've heard with him as a leader is Night Hawk, so it's really cool to get another view of his sound from earlier in the 50s. Blount on the keys is a nice bonus!

also it looks like this comp is the way to go if you want to hear the space trio + other early home recordings. so if any of you heads want to dig into it and then report back, that'd be cool. there's also a discogs review (posted, apparently, by the same person who made a number of the 78rpm youtube videos we've linked to) purporting that the compiler was too speculative re: whether SR is actually the sideman, so it looks like the mystery only deepens the deeper you dig:

https://img.discogs.com/XiHykR2372o7dKLxXBqg5Mu-WjY=/fit-in/312x498/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3282915-1403207320-7971.jpeg.jpg

14 x CD !!!

it's been linked to a few times upthread, but esp. while we're still in this era this is such a great resource: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/sunra.html

just wanted to make sure no one misses it because it's one of those links that you can easily spend an entire evening reading through

highly recommended reading

that entire website is great. the sun ra page is just one of many exhaustive biographies/discographies of musicians of the era. all put together by robert campbell, psychology professor at clemson university. thanks robert campbell!

https://i.imgur.com/lwwa6lT.jpg

btw for those without spotify, there's a lot of stuff on bandcamp. here's a recent A Guide to the Many Sun Ra Albums Now Available on Bandcamp

https://i.imgur.com/qd4Mpp0.jpg

church organ recordings are amazing.

may I suggest we spend approx. 1 week listening/posting/talking per calendar year, with this first week devoted to pre-Sun Song recordings i.e everything before 1956?

I like "Dig This Boogie". His piano already had an aggressive overabundance, like it was trying to stretch beyond the boundaries of the blues.

sleeve: the more i think about, the more i think it would be less stressful to organize this thread by year. i had a sort of release-focused approach in mind, but just coming to the thread and saying "okay, 1957 this week. here's this stuff i know is from this year. what else do we know is out there? and how do we feel about it?" -- that's both less stressful for me and also encourages more thread participation i think.

and then in terms of how much time we allot for discussion, probably somewhere between 3-5 days seems right to me (WilliamC, i was only joking, sorry if that didn't come across!)

but of course that's going to depend on how much stuff there is to listen to, and also of course i'd like to give people the opportunity to listen, formulate thoughts, express them, link to articles even, or point out live / archival material from the same year that was missed, etc. so maybe a week is better. i'm honestly not sure.

how does everybody else feel? i've been off from work for a week, so my sense of free time might be skewed.

i'd guess that everyone is going to prefer a different timeline. personally i prefer a brisker pace, so i'm going ahead into the 60s because i've already listened to all the 1950s material that i can get my hand on, several times over. but i'll still look forward to circling back and taking a deeper dive into each year as the thread progresses!

and actually, maybe a more useful suggestion is to just be flexible. i'm guessing that some years of sun ra's life will be more filled with music and other ephemera to absorb than others, so there's nothing wrong with adjusting the rollout accordingly!

okay. for sleeve i'll wait until monday to post about "jazz by sun ra" and the rest of '56. after that i'll post every few days and adjust according to what's going on in the thread and how much material there is to cover.

right now i'm reading szwed, the campbell discography, and the essays in the '96 2xCD singles comp (came across a copy by chance last night in a record store). '55 coming tonight.

that Singles comp is so essential. can anyone tell me about Vol. 2?

i think that art yard broke the vinyl release into two volumes, each three discs.

other than that it looks like the 2016 art yard 3xCD release covers 1952-1991 (while the evidence 1996 2xCD only does 1955-1982). since there were no singles recorded before 1955, it looks like art yard included home recordings in addition to newly-discovered releases + intended releases that never made it, most of which were made available on this atavistic comp from 2003

there are also the norton compilations, which break the singles material up into discs that seem to be more about a "theme" or something:

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-Interplanetary-Melodies/release/2166326
https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-Rocket-Ship-Rock/release/2206168
https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-The-Second-Stop-Is-Jupiter/release/2195244

actually it looks like the atavistic comp is rehearsals, not shelved releases. but i think that "demo" is sometimes used as a synonym on some of these singles releases. and since SR was recording basically everything at the time, and clearly intended to self-release his music, it's unclear to me whether the recorded material was intended more as a reference for the musicians than as something to shop around to labels or whatever else.

szwed on ra's recording habits (p. 73):

When he heard about a new kind of tape recorder, once which recorded on paper-backed tape for a half hour at a stretch, he bought one, an Ampex. He began recording everything he could, rehearsals, performances, even the Calumet City gigs. In fact, he sometimes played all twelve hours of the strip show without a break so that he could play and record every piece they did. His habit of documenting all his work became legendary among musicians in Chicago. Those who played with him later said that "if you worked for him for three years, you could say that you made 700 records."

one**

1955

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/1955arkestra.jpg

in 1954 sun ra got his first club gig with members of his experimental band, billed as LE SONYR RA & HIS COMBO and performing at the vincennes lounge. the next year they played the parkway terrace and thereafter cadillac bob's birdland. it was also in 1955 that john gilmore and julian priester became permanent members of the arkestra (although it wouldn't be called that until 1956, and even then the name was arkistra; the name as we now know it appeared in 1957). alton abraham had established himself as sunny's patron, relieving him of the need to perform ceaselessly in strip clubs and allowing him more time to develop his own music. (alton was also on his way to becoming director of saturn records.) from an arkestral perspective, 1955 might be most important as a time when ra was writing, copyrighting tunes, and working those tunes out on at rehearsals (5 days a week / 8 hours a day !!) and at gigs. the new sound was emerging, and efforts were being made to document it:

When the band opened at Cadillac Bob's basement club, Wilburn Green was playing what Sunny quaintly called the "electronic bass" and Gilmore's old Air Force buddy Art Hoyle had become the Arkestra's main trumpeter. We are able to hear their efforts because Alton Abraham, his brother Artis, and Sun Ra had put together a new company called Saturn Records and found some capital, and the new label booked time at RCA Studios.

...which we'll get around to when we head into 1956! for now, the recorded efforts of 1955:

1. the nu sounds, "foggy day" (released as a 45 in 1983)

http://matsgus.com/discaholic_corner/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/a-foggy-day1.jpg
listen on youtube

According to Alton Abraham, the Nu Sounds, led by Roland Williams, were one of the vocal groups being coached by Sun Ra. Location (Club Evergreen in Chicago) from Abraham and Robert Pruter; Club Evergreen was on North Clybourn Street. (On other occasions, Abraham attributed this side to a later vocal group, the Cosmic Rays; the source of the confusion is that Sunny had the Nu Sounds and the Rays record the same tunes, then picked the version he liked better to release. This policy applied not only to Ra's vocal compositions but also to some of the standards that he arranged for vocal groups.)

Besides the competing recordings by the Nu Sounds and the Cosmic Rays, a further source of confusion has been that Sun Ra's interest in vocal groups came and went. It was intense in 1954 and 1955, quickly vanished once the Arkestra began recording on its own in 1956, then returned in 1958-1960. The known studio recordings of Ra's vocal groups are from the later period, even though he was rehearsing with some of the same performers in the earlier period.

(campbell et al.)

2. sun ra w/ wilbur bare, "can this be love?" (released on the LP "deep purple" in 1973)

http://vf-images.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/deep-purple.jpeg
listen on youtube

3. rehearsals / home recordings with the nu sounds and the lintels, first made available on the 2003 atavistic CD "spaceship lullaby"

http://www.sunraarkestra.com/sunradisco/covers/1.jpg

if i'm not mistaken, much of this was also made available on the norton singles comps (linked above), and the art yard singles comp from 2016 (which is available on spotify). i don't have copies of the norton, atavistic, or art yard comps, so i don't have access to the liner notes and i'm unsure which recordings belong here. perhaps somebody else does.

4. two arrangements for the red saunders band w/ billy brooks on vocals

http://images.45worlds.com/f/78/billy-brooks-mambo-is-everywhere-duke-78.jpg
listen on youtube

http://images.45cat.com/billy-brooks-i-want-your-love-tonight-duke.jpg
listen on youtube

1955 also saw Sunny's last recorded efforts as an arranger for the Red Saunders band. Although many of Red's regulars would remain in the band until the Club DeLisa closed in February 1958, and some stayed with him beyond that, R&B was trending toward rock and roll and record companies were beginning to see Saunders' band as dated.

(campbell et al.)

5. rehearsal recordings of the "treasure hunt trio" doing two takes of a sonny title called "of this i know" + two standards. as far as i know this material is only available on the transparency 14xCD "eternal myth revealed vol, 1" linked above.

6. unissued acetate, now owned by robert campbell. there's an interesting article about that here:

http://united-mutations.blogspot.com/2010/11/sun-ra-acetate-from-1955.html

i don't have copies of the norton, atavistic, or art yard comps, so i don't have access to the liner notes and i'm unsure which recordings belong here.

the discogs entry for the art yard comp (also conveniently the one on spotify) includes the recording date information: https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-Singles-The-Definitive-45s-Collection-19521991/release/9226540

one that belongs in the 1954/55 era is "Chicago USA":

“Chicago USA,” a strange tone poem to Sun Ra’s adopted city, was also recorded with local vocal group the Lintels and submitted in a contest to become the city’s official theme song. It didn’t win, but still stands as a fine tribute to the city and especially to the South Side, rattling off the stop names of an old Loop-bound Green Line train: Jackson Park, University, Cottage Grove.

i have to admit there's a special thrill in listening to this song - when sun ra first moved here he lived in washington park, which is on the other side of the park i live next to here in chicago. i take my dog out to washington park just about every day! next time i take the green line downtown, i know which song to cue up.

the Art Yard singles comp info for "Chicago USA" says "Home recording, Chicago, between 1952 and 1962.", rather unhelpfully, but the Clemson page says it was a rehearsal in either 54 or 55?

same deal with "Spaceship Lullaby": home recording, either 54 or 55, available on the Art Yard singles comp

get in here, rushomancy :)

did he ever return to the doo-wop/vocal group motifs later on? all I can think of that even comes close is "Nuclear War" which is not really the same thing

also everyone plz post lots of crazy homemade Saturn LP cover pics so I can drool over them

i _loved_ the singles comp when it came out in '96

it had all the weird oddball stuff in one place

which you can't get nowadays. there's so much more oddball stuff and it's impossible to keep track of. which cds have "spaceship lullaby"? which cd has "baby won't you please be mine"? which versions of "i'm gonna unmask the batman" are on which cds? who the hell knows.

according to the article that keeps showing up in the thread he had two phases of doo-wop, the first from '54-'55 and the second from '59-'60

but the doo-wop was clearly the predecessor of the space chants, which were part and parcel of his work throughout his career, even if you don't get those sweet harmonies on "i'm gonna unmask the batman" (is "i'm gonna unmask the batman" the best sun ra song? yes.)

when was "the space stroll" by don "dino" dean recorded? why was it recorded? who is don "dino" dean? what is "tony's wife" and why is it? why did the qualities suck so bad?

so many questions.

spending some more time with the Singles tracks that got added to that playlist (thanks Karl!), I have the 2CD on Evidence and the liner notes are great, like most/all of their CDs? but man this "Calling All Demons"/"Demon's Lullaby" single is blowing me away, it's not on the original Evidence one but it is on the newer Strut triple CD.

some observations on looking through Discogs - damn Transparency has been cranking out the releases!

also: these kinds of "hybrid" releases must have driven collectors crazy in the pre-Discogs era

https://www.discogs.com/The-Sun-Ra-Arkestra-Primitone/release/4896811

Occurred to me that with the size of the Ra ouevre getting thing doing chronologically will take forever to reach certain points I find most significant to me.
Not read thread through but did think doing something like this with separate threads per decade might be more conducive to getting to the bits I'm most interested in. Or is the 60s, 70s and early 80s stuff too heavily covered elsewhere anyway.

I was listening to the Singles set yesterday and did enjoy the first disc but its the electric stuff that really connects with me.

I've never listened to the singles collection before and it's on [streaming site]. Will check it out later, totally into Futuristic Sounds of .. today. It's just so perfect and swings so hard.

yeah, i have been listening to loads of futuristic sounds as well, it's so good.

i wish there were more images/videos of the chicago years! i'm looking forward to the part of this thread when people will start posting live footage and other visual treats, but there's just not much of it for the early years.

Scott, that Joe Williams side has just made my night. Lovely, thanks.

so many questions.

― bob lefse (rushomancy), Friday, January 5, 2018 6:56 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so true.

also, v happy to see enthusiasm itt. as for different ideas about what pace to take, what to focus on etc. -- all i can say is i'm just going to stick to the plan i sketch'd above (a post every few days per calendar year) and see how it goes. i have no problem with people skipping ahead, here or on other threads, but it seems to me like the primary appeal of this thread is precisely that it's as exhaustive and meticulous as possible. for me (and hopefully others) that's challenging but also a nice opportunity to sit with some stuff that might not immediately grab you, maybe dig around and see what was happening in jazz and elsewhere that year, etc. we're all capable of using the internet to zap ourselves to the sounds / eras that are most appealing (i've been doing this for years). so this thread is a different approach, hopefully that's cool. and hopefully ppl who are bored by or indifferent to certain periods will swing back in when certain recordings come up for discussion.

anyway, "supersonic jazz" and "jazz by sun ra" coming tonight, along with a ton of other delightful material from 1956.

i have to admit there's a special thrill in listening to this song - when sun ra first moved here he lived in washington park, which is on the other side of the park i live next to here in chicago. i take my dog out to washington park just about every day! next time i take the green line downtown, i know which song to cue up.

― Karl Malone, Friday, January 5, 2018 1:44 AM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also KM, i love this. i lived in hyde park for several years but didn't put this together until your post.

I'm good with your pacing. Is any of that "Cry Of Jazz" (?) movie footage on Youtube?

Kinda blown away by how many more singles were uncovered between the 1996 Evidence 2CD and the recent Strut 3CD

cry of jazz is all on youtube! i watched it the other night.

Kinda blown away by how many more singles were uncovered between the 1996 Evidence 2CD and the recent Strut 3CD

― sleeve, Monday, January 8, 2018 8:22 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right !!!! truly dizzying

1956

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/john1958a.jpg
J O H N G I L M O R E

(all quotes from the campbell article unless otherwise noted)

1. two rehearsal takes + four sides as pianist w/ walter dunn and the metros (a doo wop group), rec. in january and eventually released as two 45s in 1968 on the repeto label (a saturn subsidiary)

https://img.discogs.com/tL5n0kGNuNS456fq-P77m-n1PFQ=/fit-in/600x595/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9144318-1475760630-4059.png.jpg
https://img.discogs.com/dHB83hEodVbJT9CO4Ea42wXL3e8=/fit-in/600x597/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9156745-1475777865-1730.png.jpg

(mostly available on the 14xCD transparency comp)

2. "soft talk" b/w "super blonde" -- two late march recordings that became the very first saturn release (a 45 with the inexplicable catalogue # Z1111), prob. released in 1956.

https://img.discogs.com/CGJnx1IcDTPYPvq9Lhhz7DZxpzk=/fit-in/600x594/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7322694-1475767866-8654.png.jpg

both recordings (the A side a j. priester composition, the b side a ra comp.) are also to be found on "super-sonic jazz" >>>

3. "supersonic jazz" (lp, saturn) rec. march / november

https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0001/454/MI0001454646.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
listen on youtube
listen on bandcamp

Both sides of Saturn Z1111 reappeared in March 1957 on the first Saturn LP, Super-Sonic Jazz. The serial number of this LP was originally H7OP0216 (thanks to Alden Kimbrough for this information; the matrix numbers for the two sides were H7OP-0216 and H7OP-0217). The first pressing of this LP carried a jacket with an illustration by Claude Dangerfield of a keyboard with flames and lightning bolts and hands playing a conga drum—all printed in red on white. (On extant copies, the white covers have yellowed with age.) A later variant of the cover displayed the same art in black on pink-purple.

"Super Blonde" was used on the soundtrack of The Cry of Jazz, a short film that would not be completed until the summer of 1958. At 20:42 into the film, "Super Blonde" starts with the piano intro by Sun Ra. Visually, most of this segment presents an octet at Budland in 1956 with a four-man front line with John Gilmore, tenor sax, Art Hoyle, trumpet, Julian Priester, trombone, and Pat Patrick, baritone sax. Both drums and tympani are visible, as is a string bass player. As heard in the film, the number includes a brief trumpet solo by Art Hoyle, followed by the dissonant central ensemble, and a Pat Patrick baritone sax solo that cuts off abruptly at 21:50.

4. "we travel the spaceways" LP (saturn, 1967 -- "new horizons" rec. april, 1956)

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturn409afrontct.jpg
listen to 'new horizons' on youtube
listen to the full album on bandcamp

We Travel The Spaceways (sometimes spelled "Space Ways") ranks as an essential Sun Ra collection. It's brief (less than 25 minutes), and though it was recorded in three separate, unrelated sessions over a five-year-span (making it a compilation rather than an album), it's chock full of "hits"—or what would be chart-toppers in the perfect Sun Ra universe. Alternate versions of all seven tracks appeared on other Ra albums; a number of these titles became perennial club and concert favorites; and Spaceways contained two of Sun Ra's beloved Arkestra "chants"—"Interplanetary Music" and the title track. The recordings were made in Chicago from 1956-1961, but the album was not released on Ra's Saturn label until 1966 , long after Sunny and his band had relocated to New York and zoomed light years beyond the forms etched in the grooves of that platter.

In retrospect, every period in Sun Ra's career seems transitional, but 1959-1961 especially so. It was during these years that he began to musically stray from his Chicago haunts and navigate through the weightless cosmos. In the mid- and late-1950s Sunny had begun to incorporate Egyptian and Ethiopian themes into a music that already drew on American and European traditions. Like many musical pilgrims, he was creating hybrids that would decades later be trivialized with the pretentious (and Eurocentric) marketing term "World Music." By 1959, Sun Ra was creating Other-World Music. Four titles on Spaceways—and arguably a fifth, "New Horizons"—are not of this Earth.

(sun ra bandcamp page)

5. "adventure in space" (issued as a 45 in 1968 as saturn 478) rec. april

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturn874bct.jpg

This piece was issued around 1968 on Saturn 874, a 45 rpm single; Ihnfinity (which was incorporated in 1967) is credited on the label, and the title was misspelled “Adventur.” The abrupt editing suggests a Sun Ra solo excerpted from a longer performance; sonics are a little rugged for a studio recording. Lucious Randolph has confirmed that Ra sometimes played like this in Chicago and believes the tympanist is Jim Herndon. The drummer sounds like Robert Barry in his work with Herndon. Alton Abraham confirmed Herndon's presence. The side was reissued in September 1996 on Evidence 22164, a 2-CD set titled The Singles.

6. sessions w/ james scales (as) and wilbur green (b)

These three tracks were first released in 2011 on Transparency 0316, The Eternal Myth Revealed Vol. 1, a 14-CD set compiled by Michael Anderson. "Somebody Else's World" has the familiar motif, accompanied on the electric piano, but changes to straight 4/4 with piano accompaniment for Scales' alto sax solo. The identities of the participants are obvious. Anderson describes these as items from a rehearsal and gives the date as April 23, 1956. Sound quality is unusually good, raising the question whether they are in fact from another outing at Balkan Studio. A Union contract in the Alton Abraham collection was filled out by Sun Ra and dated May 16, 1956 (almost certainly an instance of postdating; below, we'll see that the Elks Hall contract was postdated from June 10 to August 30, 1960); it identifies the session as 4 tunes, 3 hours and gives Ra, Scales, and Green as the personnel.

7. sessions with billie hawkins, one of which features an AMAZING wurlitzer solo by SR (linked below) !! two sides were released; four rehearsals are available on the transparency 14xCD comp.

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/heartbeath4rc.jpg
listen on youtube

Now Sunny landed a gig with another brand-new Chicago-based independent—the Heartbeat label, run by record store owner Seymour Schwartz. Schwartz wanted to record a singer named Billie Hawkins doing two of his own compositions, and hired the Arkestra to accompany. As it happened, Schwartz also booked the RCA Studio for his session. We had previously dated this session to January 1956, but given what we now know about Saturn and recording studios, we have put the first Arkestral session at RCA Victor in mid-May. The matrix numbers on the Heartbeat single are just a little earlier in the same series. And Schwartz may, in fact, have introduced Ra and Abraham to RCA Victor, a company with which they would have a fairly steady relationship through 1961.

8. "medicine for a nightmare" 45 single + B side of "angels and demons at play" LP (may)

https://img.discogs.com/Hi6WN1woXZo46oTdT6Z6mTHs4h0=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-8906621-1471206141-6383.jpeg.jpg
http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturn409frontct.jpg
listen to 'medicine for a nightmare' on youtube
listen to full album on bandcamp

Saturn Z222 ("Medicine for a Nightmare" b/w "Urnack") was a 45 rpm single with black print on gold and the Saturn logo in block letters across the top (information courtesy of Glenn Jones). From a RCA Victor custom pressing invoice in the Alton Abraham papers, we can see that 500 pressings were ordered on June 5, 1956. The first shipment arrived on June 11. Saturn ordered another 175 copies on June 14 and another 287 on June 20. “Arkistra” was Sunny's original respelling of “Orchestra.” Sun Ra maintained that there was an “equation of sound-similarity” between “kest” and “kist” but by some point after January 1957 he had settled on “Arkestra.”

Four tracks from this session reappeared in 1965 on side B of Saturn SR 9956-2-O/P, Angels and Demons at Play. (“Call for All Demons” was titled “A Call for All Demons” on this and subsequent releases.) In 1967 the LP was given the catalog number 407. The album is distinctive among early Saturns in its complete lack of liner notes—there was no room for any, because the same design was used front and back. The cover design is one of three originally done as cutouts in black on a white background. While the Angels and Demons cutout was actually used (in a striking black on gold rendition), the other two, initially intended for the early New York albums When Sun Comes Out and When Angels Speak of Love, were displayed in the 1966 Saturn catalogue but replaced with different covers when the LPs were released. (See Pathways to Unknown Worlds, pp. 63, 64, and 66.) The artist is not identified; John Corbett has suggested that it was Sun Ra himself.

9. "swing a little taste" for the "jazz in transition" compilation LP

listen on youtube

“Swing a Little Taste” (a Julian Priester composition) initially appeared later in 1957 on an LP sampler (including tracks by Donald Byrd, Jay Migliori and others) titled Jazz in Transition. This was reissued in the late 70s in Japan as Transition GXF3126. “Swing a Little Taste” was also included as a bonus track on Delmark DD-411 (though there it is incorrectly credited to Sun Ra). “Street Named Hell” take 2 was also reissued on Smithsonian RD108, Big Band Renaissance, as part of a 5-CD various-artists collection.

10. "jazz by sun ra" (transition, rec. july)

listen on youtube
listen on bandcamp

(released in 1957)

11. "sound of joy" / "visits planet earth" sessions for transition

listen to 'saturn' on youtube
listen to full album on bandcamp

listen on youtube
listen on bandcamp

This session was recorded for Transition (before Sunny's first album for the label was released) and was intended for Jazz by Sun Ra Volume 2. The LP featured Sunny's working band with the addition of Dave Young on second trumpet and Johnny Avant on trombone (the latter on two tracks only). But the company folded before these plans could be carried out. Items from this session appeared on three different LPs, two on Saturn and one on Delmark, from which various reissues have sprung in turn.

First, five tracks (not four, as we previously thought) appeared in 1966 on Saturn 9956-11-A/B, Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth. "Two Tones," "Reflections in Blue," "Saturn," and "El Viktor" were all placed on the B side of the Saturn LP. However, "Eve," which appeared on the A side, turns out to also be from this session (and not released elsewhere!). The cover art, by Claude Dangerfield, was a variant of the work he had prepared for A Tonal View of Times Tomorrow, an LP that never got past the early planning stages. In 1967 Visits Planet Earth was given the catalog number 207. All tracks from this album were reissued in 1992 on Evidence 22039 (CD).

Second, all but three tracks from the session were released in 1968 on Delmark DS-414, Sound of Joy (in electronic stereo). According to Bob Koester, as interviewed by Allan Chase, the two cuts featuring vocalist Clyde Williams were in Delmark's possession but were held from release in 1968 because they seemed stylistically incongruous with the rest of the session. (Clyde Williams sang with Sun Ra from late 1956 through the middle of 1958.) The Delmark album was pirated as the first LP of the 2-LP set Monkey MY 40014 (Monkey being a French label with seriously dubious credentials). In addition, there was a single-LP French bootleg in the BYG Jazz Masters Série, BYG 529.162 (issued c. 1970—thanks to Marco Melaragni for pointing this one out).

A R K E S T R A C I R C A 1 9 5 6

hmm not sure what happened to my images. oh well.

the brief tympani solo on "call for all demons" (c. 3m) is consistently amazing to me.

as is the keyboard solo on the billie hawkins track which deserves to be embedded here (despite an odd picture choice by the youtube uploader):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLnME7q8YAw

"jazz in transition" comp:

https://img.discogs.com/TrQszURG6djgGzy-q3giCcKaxys=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4729661-1511752480-9730.jpeg.jpg

the arkesta circa 1956:

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/1956bandd.jpg

arkestra*

p.s. i promise to learn how to shrink photo sizes before my next post.

p.p.s. thanks KM for pointing out that "cry of jazz" is available on youtube. watching now!

spotify is updated (and rearranged a bit to matchup with this rollout) as much as possible, including the jazz in transition track, two songs with billie hawkins. i only included a single song ("New Horizons) off of the We Travel the Spaceways comp, because that was the only track recorded in 1956 and the others were recorded 1959-61.

interesting / sort of annoying sonic tidbit from "Call for All Demons" - at least on headphones, you can clearly hear a prominent squeak (on what I strongly suspect to be either the bass drum pedal or hi-hat pedal), especially during the drum solo starting 2:15

ha! i kind of like that sound.

also the woodblock against the really sharp, angular piano (which sounds like it's clipping almost) in the early moments of the song is amazing.

or it's probably a clave i guess

yep, clave!

so, total noob here, but should I be paying attention to key members of the Arkestra at this point, or was the membership pretty dynamic?

ha, i'm noticing the squeaky pedal in other 1956 songs too (like the "new horizons" song off of the "we travel the spaceways" comp)! that's awesome

re: interlude, 1948-1954

Boy, that Solovox is an interesting instrument. Got me looking at eBay auctions.

Sun Ra reminiscing about Stuff Smith is great. Smith was a bit of an innovator - apparently one of the, if not the first violinist to use electronic amplification for his instrument. It doesn't seem like he recorded again with Sun Ra though.

To expand a little on what was mentioned before, Billy Bang and Sun Ra played several of Stuff's compositions and favourite tunes on some Italian dates in September 1992 and released the following tribute album.

This is the last known recording of Sun Ra. Short after, his health went worse and had to retire from music scene, leaving the planet some months later.

Little bit poetic, going out similar to the way you came in isn't it?

re:1955

2. sun ra w/ wilbur bare, "can this be love?" (released on the LP "deep purple" in 1973)

The double bassist Wilbur Ware was introduced to Sun Ra through Stuff Smith (with whom he debuted with in the late 1940s) and he would go on to work sporadically with Sun Ra into the 1970s.

"(a 45 with the inexplicable catalogue # Z1111)"

it's probably explicable, but only if you ran in chicago black occult circles in the 1950s. :)

both Sunologys (parts 1 and 2) on Supers-Sonic Jazz are entrancing. It took me a long time to notice, but I love the subtle percussion elements during the slow main theme that gets introduced during the first minute or so of both parts - not so much the drums, but the quiet tambourine pulse punctuated by a tap of the triangle. now i hear it and enjoy it every time. his band of this period has a knack for paying attention to detail while still sounding loose.

re: 1956
3. "supersonic jazz" (lp, saturn) rec. march / november

April 13, 1956, Chicago. Sun Ra and his friend and manager Alton Abraham arrive at Balkan Music Co., a small record and musical supply wholesaler at 1425 W. 18th Street, in the neighborhood now known as Pilsen. Helping the other seven musicians unload, they file into the storefront, which doubles as a recording studio, to record the first full-length session for their new label, El Saturn Records.

The band is in top form, coming off a lengthy engagement at Budland, the basement venue at the Pershing Hotel. Originally called Birdland, the club was threatened with lawsuit by the owners of New York's Birdland, an eventuality that Sun Ra helped avoid by renaming it with a word that's spelled differently, but pronounced almost the same. Ra was a logophile — words were another form of music, which was the ultimate artform — and he loved homonyms just about as much as he loved tangy, dissonant harmonies, aggregations of low horns, and parallel unison. Homonymity is why he called his group the Arkestra — on one hand, he slipped in a Biblical reference to the Ark, but on the other hand, Ra always explained that where he came from, in Alabama, that's how you said the word "Orchestra."

It's midnight and the session is in full swing. One take and the band nails "India," the loping, percussion-thick, quasi-Egyptian number with electronic piano and penetrating Art Hoyle trumpet. Things are off to a very good start. Two takes of "Sunology," vehicle for Pat Patrick's meaty baritone and James Scales' tart alto, are so solid that they'll both end up released, but on the longer second version the tape breaks. The band waxes a couple of numbers with singer Clyde Williams ("Dreams," "As You Once Were," which remain unissued until Delmark adds them to the CD reissue of the first Transition Sun Ra LP), then again hits a bullseye with "Big Charles," a tune re-titled "Kingdom of Not." A full take of "Eve" doesn't work, but the dark, stormy piano, bass, percussion part is a killer, and an edit of the first minute-and-a-half cuts out the full band section and turns it into "Portrait Of The Living Sky." They're into the second long tape reel when Ra calls a blues, with John Gilmore's smoldering post-Rollins tenor; it's after 2am, but they call it "Blues At Midnight." And for good measure, the recording closes with a tremendous single take of the Arkestra classic "El Is A Sound Of Joy." Three in the morning, the band packs up for the night, everyone gets a check (union scale, $41.25/hr., with Ra getting a royal $165 leader's fee), and a little bit of history is made.

The second track Sunology is where this album grabs my attention properly. The two sax solos and the way it just melts into just Ra tinkering and the wonderfully recorded bass.

I would name the individual players but the personnel, on a track by track basis, is a nightmare and seems to differ at every source I look at.

1948

Sonny Blount's apartment, Chicago, July 29, 1948

Darn That Dream (Composed by Jimmy Van Heusen and Eddie DeLange)
Herman “Sonny” Blount (piano, Solovox)

Youtube Link

Uploaded this piece. I have the 14 disc Eternal Myth 1 set so if you're after anything in particular give me a shout and I'll upload. I'll have a listen through and upload highlights over the next while.

1948

Sonny Blount's apartment, Chicago, August 10, 1948

If They Only Knew (written by Herman “Sonny” Blount)

Herman “Sonny” Blount (recitation, piano, Solovox).

Youtube Link

Interesting poem by Sonny.

these are fantastic additions, thanks fionnland! "Darn That Dream", in particular, is very lovely

wow, amazing. thanks fionnland!

1949

Sonny Blount's apartment, Chicago, July 21, 1949

"I've Got Some New Blues" (Herman “Sonny” Blount)

"Smile" (Charlie Chaplin)

"Old Man River" (Jerome Kern, ‎Oscar Hammerstein II)

Herman “Sonny” Blount (vocals, piano)

Youtube Link

"Smile" is particularly nice after accustoming to his voice. Funnily enough I was just reading Groucho Marx's letters re: Chaplin. Love it when it all comes together!

I love the delivery on "Old Man River".

Gotsta love Sonny any day of the week.

Singles has surprises around every corner; especially the doo wop material.

I keep coming back to Sound of Joy from 1956 as my fave from front to back.

(form Wikipedia)
All tracks were written by Sun Ra, except "Two Tones," by Pat Patrick and Charles Davis.
Side A:

"El is a Sound of Joy" - (4.04)
"Overtones of China" - (3.25)
"Two Tones" - (3.41)
"Paradise" - (4.30)
"Planet Earth" - (4.24)
Side B:

"Ankh" - (6.31)
"Saturn" - (4.01)
"Reflections in Blue" - (6.21)
"El Viktor" - (2.33)

Bonus Tracks
"As You Once Were"
"Dreams Come True"

could you possibly upload the "space trio" session from february, 1951? it's on disc 5.

xpost

Sure thing, I'll put it up tomorrow as I'm heading out in a minute.

thanks. great posts btw. it's really nice to have the thread being filled out with some of the more obscure recordings.

agreed, good stuff

1949

Sonny Blount's apartment, Chicago, July 21, 1949

"Song Introduction"

"Somewhere over the Rainbow" (Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg)

"Out of Nowhere" (Johnny Green, Edward Heyman)

Herman “Sonny” Blount (vocals, piano)

Youtube Link

wow, that is great!

1949

Sonny Blount's apartment, Chicago, July 21, 1949

"Song Introduction"

"Somewhere over the Rainbow" (Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg)

"Out of Nowhere" (Johnny Green, Edward Heyman)

Herman “Sonny” Blount (vocals, piano)

Youtube Link

^oops!

1949

Beige Room, Chicago, August 17, 1949 - The Sunny Blount Trio

"You Go to My Head" (J. Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie)

"Blue Chicago Blues" (Herman “Sonny” Blount)

Herman “Sonny” Blount (vocals, piano)

Youtube Link

1951

Chicago, February 6, 1951 - The Sunny Blount Trio

"The Nearness of You" (Hoagy Carmichael, Ned Washington)

"Sunny's Place #1" (Herman "Sonny" Blount)

"The Man I Love" (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin)

"All Alone" (Herman "Sonny" Blount)

Herman "Sonny" Blount (piano, celeste, Solovox); Leo Blevins (electric guitar); Wilbur Ware (double bass)

Youtube Link

X-Files vibe to that last ditty.

1952

Chicago, June 9, 1952

"Wonderful You" (?)

"A Place in My Heart" (?)

Herman "Sonny" Blount (piano); Laurdine "Pat" Patrick Jr. (baritone sax)

Youtube Link

so, total noob here, but should I be paying attention to key members of the Arkestra at this point, or was the membership pretty dynamic?

― Karl Malone, Monday, January 8, 2018 11:40 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbh i've been pretty lazy in this regard. and i'm not at all an authority on this, but it does seem there was a good deal of personnel fluctuation, with the exception of john gilmore maybe. some of that probably has to do with small combo vs. big(ger) band stuff, but also the well-documented rigors of working with sun ra, the lack of finances, etc. i'll start posting the line ups for 1957 and onwards (and also point out soloists who can be identified) so it will be easier to keep track of that in the thread -- much like fionnland has been doing, greatly to our collective edification.

I haven't listened to these Youtube uploads yet, but thank you in advance fionnland

Just here to say this thread is really special to me, devouring everything and listening my ears off, but it's almost at a too fast a pace! Which isn't to say it should go slower, mind! Just that: so much goodness. Do keep it up you beautiful ppl.

Haha, no problem guys! Inspired thread idea budo jeru..this is going to be a lot of fun!

I'll upload some really choice '53 tracks either late tonight or tomorrow morn (UK time).

And please call me Finn! :)

1953

Chicago, March 9, 1953

"The Many Thoughts of..." (Sun Ra)

"The Inner Being" (Sun Ra)

"The Haunted Melody" (Sun Ra)

"Pennies from Heaven" (Arthur Johnston, Johnny Burke)

"You and the Night and the Music" (Arthur Schwartz, Howard Dietz)

Sun Ra (organ); "Thea Barbara" (vocals); unidentified (vocals)

Youtube Link

1956

RCA Studios, Chicago April or May 1956 - Billie Hawkins, Sun-Ra and His Orchestra

I'm Coming Home (Berryl Orris, Sunny Lane)

Last Call for Love (Tom Seymour)

Billie Hawkins (vocals); Sun Ra (piano, arranger); Art Hoyle (trumpet); Dave Young (trumpet); Julian Priester (trombone); John Gilmore (tenor sax); Pat Patrick (baritone sax); Wilburn Green (electric bass); Robert Barry (drums)

Youtube Link

1956

RCA Studios, Chicago, May 16, 1956 - Le Sun-Ra and his Arkistra

Velvet (take 1, false start)
Velvet (take 2, false start)
Velvet (take 3, false start)
Velvet (take 4, complete)

Sun Ra (Wurlitzer, piano); Art Hoyle (trumpet); Julian Priester (trombone); John Gilmore (tenor sax); Laurdine “Pat” Patrick (baritone sax); Wilburn Green (electric bass); Robert Barry (drums); Jim Herndon (tympani).

Youtube Link

^ Velvet is a Sun Ra composition

now i have my afternoon listening set out, thanks again Finn!

just curious - are these all from the Eternal Myth boxset, and are you uploading all of the early ones or just your faves? (either way is obviously appreciated!)

1956

Chicago, April 23, 1956 - Sun Ra Arkestra

Somebody Else's World (Sun Ra)

Blues in Outer Space (Sun Ra)

Space Aura (Sun Ra)

Sun Ra (piano, Wurlitzer); James Scales (alto sax, bells); Wilburn Green (electric bass)

Youtube Link

xpost

All from the Eternal Myth box set. I've restricted it to my favourites of the ones where Sun-Ra is definitely playing or leading. From the ones where he is playing I think I've only missed some solo piano recordings and some rehearsals with Pat Patrick that seemed a little superfluous. I can however upload or send the other tracks on request.

That's all of the 1956 material I currently intend to upload from the boxset - though there are a couple more recordings from 1958 and 1960 that I will upload when we are there.

awesome, thanks so much. speaking for myself, I think this is plenty, no need to hear him as a sideman really

is that cool version of "It's A Good Day" on that box set?

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-Its-A-Good-Day/release/10452067

Nope it doesn't but here you go

really loving the "haunted melody" that finn posted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5KNQ2uwjBA - starts at 5:40), part of 4 songs recorded that on March 9, 1953, somewhere in Chicago. there's so little information on it. the campbell website lists the personnel as:

Sun Ra (org); "Thea Barbara" (female voc -1); unidentified (male voc -2).

Thea never shows up again in the Chicago years, and she only sings on one song from this set (she sings along with the unidentified vocalist on "haunted melody")

i did not mean to embed the youtube in the middle of the sentence there. sorry!

Finn, thanks again for this material. i'll get around to listening to these recordings in the next couple of days and then post 1957 on sunday.

also thanks for the john corbett link!

So was catching up on 1956 and the Jazz by Sun Ra / Sun Song reissue cover reminded me a bit of the Screamadelica cover.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/SunRaSunSongAlbumCover.jpeg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d4/Screamadelica_album_cover.jpg

On actual viewing they aren't so similar. However the search found this article with Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie talking about their 2013 album More Light.

“River of Pain” sticks out as one of those songs where you might have been stretching yourself more than before.
Oh yeah. “River of Pain” and “Tenement Kid.” Structurally and lyrically, we’ve never really done anything like that. It’s like cartoon-future-Sci-Fi-psychedelia. I love the groove on “River of Pain,” it’s this desert blues folk song. Even before the lyrics start, it conjures pictures in your mind. It’s very cinematic. The middle section where it breaks down has the Sun Ra Arkestra. It has this real sense of mystery and beauty.

How did that Sun Ra collaboration come about?
They were stranded because of a volcano eruption in Iceland. All transatlantic flights were cancelled for a week or ten days so they were stuck. They played three nights in London and I went two nights. A couple nights later I went to go see Lou Reed play Metal Machine Music and I started talking to a promoter he mentioned to me that the Sun Ra guys were stranded and he was trying to do a benefit gig for them. I had the idea that we should hire them to come play on their album so the next day I gave the idea to the promoter and he managed to sort it out that Marshall Allen and three of the other guys came up and played on “River of Pain” and “Sideman.”

Obviously this is the Sun Ra Arkestra post Sun Ra but still a funny link to crop up. Link to River of Pain

Back to Jazz by Sun Ra/Sun Song, hot damn that drum and tympani work on A Street Named Hell

1957

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/frontlinemarshalle.jpg
"An unrecorded Arkestra: from left, prob. Lucious Randolph, trumpet; John Gilmore, tenor sax; Marshall Allen, alto sax; unidentified, baritone sax. Budland, 1957 or 1958; from The Cry of Jazz."

(all quotes from the campbell discography unless otherwise noted)

kind of a thin year, but some interesting stuff nonetheless. here's some context:

During the period that concerns us, Saturn was a singles label. The first three Arkestral releases were on 45s (though some reappeared on LP much later). There were just two LPs: Supersonic Jazz, which came out in 1957, after it was clear that there would be no more Transitions, and Jazz in Silhouette, from 1959. An item in the Chicago Defender, from June 1959, announced that Saturn had released 6 singles by then. The bulk of the Arkestra's Chicago recordings would go unreleased until 1965, and some waited a good deal longer.

(...)

As 1957 began, the Arkestra was still at Budland, sometimes restricted to the Monday morning "breakfast dance." Cadillac Bob must have regretted the expense after Dinah Washington did a return engagement over the holidays. In the future, it was Herman Roberts of Roberts Show Lounge who would lay out the fees she demanded. No longer would Budland regularly book big-name singers from out of town. During the first six weeks of the year, gigs at the club were not being advertised and the place was nearly empty. But organ trios were suddenly popular in the Black community and Cadillac Bob decided to put one together in mid-Febuary. By early March, Tom Archia was fronting the trio on tenor sax and customers were returning. For the next six months, the club was able to sustain itself, but its resurgent advertisements kept passing over Sunny's contribution.

Studio time cost money, too. For the next couple of years, Ra and Abraham usually made do with tapes cut at rehearsals or in the clubs. The 1957 Arkestra isn't well documented on records—just a handful of instrumental tracks were ever released, all of them from rehearsals. By the beginning of 1958 there had been major alerations to the lineup. An adventuresome alto saxophonist from Indianapolis named James Spaulding (1938- ) came into the fold in July or August of 1957. Spaulding sounded the same then as he would years later — about halfway between Cannonball Adderley and Ornette Coleman. Alto saxophonist Marshall Allen (born May 25, 1924 in Louisville, Kentucky) had wandered into Chicago in 1952, after a sojourn in Europe. Playing in his spare time while he maintained a day job at the Rivier Camera Company, he sought out Sun Ra after hearing the Transition album. He and Spaulding added their flutes to the Arkestral armamentarium. And then there was bassist extraordinaire Ronnie Boykins (born in 1932), another graduate of DuSable High School who had been playing in R&B bands.

(...)

Despite the sore lack of publicity, the band did get some use out of Budland. One of Sunny's conditions on any club gig was that the Arkestra be allowed to rehearse at the club when it was empty. The next session was recorded at such a rehearsal.

that session being:

1. recordings with hattie randolph on vocals, resulting in four cuts.

Sun Ra (p); Calvin Newborn (eg); Victor Sproles (b); Tito (cga).
Budland, Chicago, August 25, 1957

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/hattie102955p29nocaption.jpg
listen to 's wonderful' on youtube

Hattie Randolph says these tracks were made live at Budland after Art Hoyle left the band. The bassist is not Ronnie Boykins; Victor Sproles was credited on the Saturn LP jacket. Tito is the only conga player that other musicians have recalled working with Ra during the 1950s. The three sides were first released in 1973 on Side A of Saturn LP 485, Deep Purple (some copies titled Dreams Come True). All tracks from Side A were reissued on Evidence 22014 (CD, 1992). Transparency 0316, The Eternal Myth Revealed Vol. 1 is a 14-CD set released in 2011. It includes a second take of "Don't Blame Me" as well as a scrap of conversation between the takes.

2. session with calvin newborn on guitar

Sun Ra (p); Calvin Newborn (eg); Victor Sproles (b); Tito (cga).
Budland, Chicago, August 25, 1957

http://www.ponderosastomp.com/bphotos/calvinnewborn.jpg

the two tracks are available on the "eternal myth" box set.

calvin newborn is an interesting figure and the "last living member of the newborn family jazz dynasty." according to the ponderosa stomp website:

The family band held down the floor at Memphis' Flamingo Room every weekend (where young Calvin often beat Pee Wee Crayton in legendary after-hours 'Battles of the Blues') and even hit the road as Ike Turner's band with 'Rocket 88' - the hit that according to Calvin, started rock 'n roll. Ike taught Calvin how to drive - in return, Calvin taught Ike his first guitar licks. Calvin also taught Elvis Presley how to gyrate, using his own 'Calvin's Boogie' as inspiration for hip-shaking. In '55, Calvin and Phineas Jr. hung up their rock 'n roll shoes and moved to New York, where they opened for Count Basie at Birdland and recorded their jazz debut for Atlantic. Calvin spent the '60s playing with Earl 'Fatha' Hines, Wild Bill Davis, Mingus, Lionel Hampton, Ray Charles, and Sun Ra.

3. sessions with yochanan (the space age vocalist)

Yochanan (voc) with Sun Ra (p); John Gilmore (ts); prob. Victor Sproles (b); prob. Robert Barry (d).
Studio recording, Chicago, probably 1957

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturn4236ct.jpg
listen to 'muck muck' on youtube

it looks like most or all of this material is split between the '96 2xCD "singles" release and the norton 'rocket ship rock' CD comp

There is residual uncertainty about the date of the first Yochanan single, but if it was made in 1957 (as seems fairly likely), it was the only studio recording for Saturn that year. We have yet to locate any bills or paperwork, either for the recording session or for the production of the single.

Yochanan (an extra 'n' was later added to his name, perhaps for numerological reasons) was an eccentric R&B performer in Chicago who wore 'sun colors' and open-toed sandals, said he was 'descended from the Sun,' and gave 'wild man' performances in clubs and along Maxwell Street. Although his work with Sun Ra would sometimes take him in other directions, Yochanan is best understood as a fringe blues performer.

(...)

What Yochanan's birth name was remains a mystery. His place of origin is also unclear, though as noted above others on the Chicago blues scene thought he was from Memphis. John Gilmore recalled Yochanan hanging around rehearsals while the band was playing at Budland but after Jazz by Sun Ra. By contrast, Julian Priester (who left the band in the Fall of 1956) does not remember him. Hattie Randolph recalls Yochanan, whose nightclub act at least occasionally included jumping over tables, as well as this single. We have learned from other sources (see Miriam Linna's notes to the Rocket Ship Rock CD) that Yochanan had a longstanding affiliation with Alvenia Fulton, who ran the Fulton Institute of Health and Fasting at West 63rd and Damen Avenue.

4. two recordings, from late 1957 or early 1958, which ended up on "visits planet earth" (the rest of that LP consisting of the '56 sessions covered above)

-- "planet earth" (ra)

Sun Ra (p, solar p [Wurlitzer ep], Egyptian sun bells), Lucious Randolph (tp); Nate Pryor (tb); James Spaulding (as); Marshall Allen (fl); John Gilmore (ts, solar bells, tambourine); Pat Patrick (bars, Rhodesian bells, solar drum); Ronald Boykins (b); Jim Herndon (timb); Robert Barry (d)
Rehearsal, Chicago, late 1957 or early 1958

-- "overtones of china" (ra)

Sun Ra (ep, p, spiral percussion gong, Chinese solar gong); Lucious Randolph (tp); Marshall Allen (as, fl); James Spaulding (as); John Gilmore (ts, solar drum); Charles Davis (bars); Pat Patrick (space lute); Ronnie Boykins (b); Robert Barry (d); Jim Herndon (tymp, timb).

Rehearsal, Chicago, late 1957 or early 1958

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/ravisitslpa.jpg

These two tracks were released in 1966 on Side A of Saturn LP 9956-11-A/B, Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth. (A third track, "Eve" from Side A of the same LP was formerly listed here, but turns out of have come from the same session on November 1, 1956 that produced side B of the album; see above.) In 1967, it was given the catalog number 207. In 1992, all tracks from this LP were reissued on Evidence 22039 (CD). The extensive solo credits on the Saturn jacket were helpful in establishing the personnel. James Spaulding joined the Arkestra soon after his arrival in Chicago in August 1957; Marshall Allen and Ronald Boykins were in the fold by the beginning of 1958 and may have joined earlier. Julian Vein gives early 1958 as the date for these three items. Lucious Randolph said that the date is approximately correct, and was positive about his appearance on “Planet Earth” (on which he solos) but not completely sure about “Eve” and “Overtones of China.” (And that is just as well, since no trumpet is actually audible on "Eve," which we have now placed with the session of November 1, 1956).

whoops, the hattie randolph personnel should read:

Sun Ra (p); Victor Sproles (b); Tito (cga); Hattie Randolph (voc).
Budland, Chicago, August 25, 1957

I kind of love that nobody knows jack shit about the Yochanan guy

haha yeah

i think the only new additions to the playlist are the tracks from Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth. I arranged them so they're sequenced after Jazz by Sun Ra, with the five 1956 tracks first and the two 1957 tracks afterward.

I'm listening to Visits Planet Earth right now and really enjoying it so far. "Eve" is one of my faves so far

thanks man! gonna check it out now

I also LOVE that brief Calvin Newborn bio above

Back to Jazz by Sun Ra/Sun Song, hot damn that drum and tympani work on A Street Named Hell

― call me by your name..or Finn (fionnland), Monday, January 15, 2018 12:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no kidding! also check the tympani solo on "reflections in blue" around 5m22s

I will do!

A tiny bit more colour re: Yochanan

one Hattie Randolph remembers catching his shtick in a nightclub in Kokomo, Indiana--"When he started his act and began leaping over the tables, one woman jumped up and shouted, 'He's possessed'! and ran out of the club"

- The Hound

hi gang, sorry i've been neglecting the thread. '58 and '59 tonight!

lol Finn, from the same blog post you linked to:

My buddy Junie Booth played bass with the Sun Ra Arkestra for many years, he told me when they went to Birmingham, Alabama for Sunny to be presented with the key to the city, midway during the ceremony Sunny turned to him and said-"I hate this fuckin' town, that's why I always told people I was from Saturn".

1958, pt. 1

(all quotes from the campbell et al. discography)

1. sun ra and his rays of jazz (three tracks)

Sun Ra (p); Marshall Allen (as, fl); John Gilmore (ts); unidentified (eg); unidentified (b); unidentified (d); Clyde Williams (voc).
Live at Budland, Chicago, 1958

These tracks were unearthed by Michael Anderson and issued in 2011 on The Eternal Myth Revealed Volume 1 (Transparency 0316, a 14-CD set). The recording was made live at Budland, with the tape recorded parked on the bandstand. Clyde Williams was featured on all three numbers but is markedly off-mike; the influence of Joe Williams is nonetheless noticeable on "Roll 'em Pete."

listen to the original joe turner track (no sun ra involvement) on youtube

2. le sun ra and his arkestra, "hours after"

Le Sun Ra (p); Everett (E. J.) Turner (tp); Marshall Allen (as); James Spaulding (as); John Gilmore (ts); Pat Patrick (bars); Ronnie Boykins (b); William “Bugs” Cochran (d); Alvin Fielder (d).
Rehearsal, Chicago, mid 1958

Saturn J08W0245/J08W0246 was a 45 rpm single with a gold label, released in October 1958. According to paperwork preserved in the Alton Abraham Collection (Box 16, Folder 6 part 1), Saturn placed its order for this single with RCA Victor on September 26, 1958, and received a shipment of 275 copies on October 2. (Meanwhile, the J prefix duly indicates that the records were pressed by RCA Victor in 1958). “Hours After” was the A side. The only copy of the single yet to be located is in the possession of Leonard J. Bukowski. The track was reissued in September 1996 on The Singles, Evidence 22164 (2 CDs).

a different recording of the same tune appears on "jazz in silhouette" (1959). original is linked below.
listen on youtube

3. the "pershing ballroom all-star jam"

J. J. Johnson (tb); Gene Ammons (ts); Pat Patrick (bars); Sun Ra (p); Ronnie Boykins (b); Robert Barry (d).
Pershing Ballroom, Chicago, August 15, 1958

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4072/4668541360_ab6c27cec7_b.jpg

Thirty-three minutes of music from a genuine all-star jam session are preserved on this tape. Pat Patrick, J. J. Johnson, Gene Ammons, and Sun Ra all solo at length. The sound is pretty good, except that J. J. Johnson is off-mike during the first two numbers. "I Can't Get Started" is a feature for Pat Patrick and "Don't Blame Me" is reserved for J. J. Johnson. Personnel identified by Michael Anderson; members of the audience helpfully call out "J. J." and "Mr. Jughead." All four tracks were released in 2001 on The Eternal Myth Revealed Vol. 1, a 14-CD set compiled by Michael Anderson.

4. le sun ra and his arkestra, "great balls of fire" (B side of "hours after")

Le Sun Ra (Wurlitzer ep); Lucious Randolph (tp); John Gilmore (ts); Pat Patrick (bars); BeBop Sam Thomas (eg); William “Bugs” Cochran (d); Alvin Fielder (d); Jim Herndon (tymp); unidentified (perc).
Rehearsal, Chicago, August or September 1958

http://matsgus.com/discaholic_corner/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/hours2.jpg
listen on youtube

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/bebopsamb.jpg
"BeBop Sam Thomas (second from left) in 1957 or 1958, from The Cry of Jazz."

“Great Balls of Fire” came from a different rehearsal with much better sonics than the session that produced “Hours After.” (Alton Abraham said it was a studio session; if so, Robert Barry would be one of the drummers and not Alvin Fielder.) Personnel identified by rlc and corrected by Alvin Fielder (the first edition of this discography identified Ronald Wilson as the baritonist but Fielder does not recall working with him in the Arkestra). According to Alvin Fielder, Sam Thomas was the only regular guitarist in the Arkestra at this time, though Art Jobs worked with Ra briefly. Fielder also says that when the Arkestra used two drummers, he worked with William Cochran, not Robert Barry. He places the session in “late summer or early autumn 1959.” (This is probably right about the season but definitely wrong about the year). Saturn Records placed an order for J08W0245/0246 on September 26, 1958, and received a shipment of 275 copies on October 2, 1958.

5. sun ra arkestra (four tracks, live)

Sun Ra (p, Solovox); Marshall Allen (as, fl); John Gilmore (ts); Pat Patrick (bars, cl); BeBop Sam Thomas (eg); Ronnie Boykins (b); unidentified (d).
Budland, September 23, 1958

listen to 'tequila' on youtube

6. "star time" rehearsal recording

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturn406act.jpg
listen on youtube
listen on bandcamp

In 1959, "Star Time" was being considered for inclusion on a Saturn LP to follow Jazz in Silhouette. The plans were abandoned, but one of two trial versions of an LP side survives as K8OP-2864-2, a custom pressing done for Saturn by RCA Victor, with "Star Time" as the third of five tracks.

The track did not see release for several years. It finally appeared on an LP first issued (in a generic Tonal View of Times Tomorrow cover) by Saturn in 1966 as SR 9956-11E/F, Lady with the Golden Stockings. In 1967, this album was given the catalog number 406; by the end of 1967 (according to Vein) it was retitled The Nubians of Plutonia and by 1969 given a new cover by Richard Pedreguera. Subsequent reissues (on Impulse AS-9242 in 1974 and Evidence 22066 CD in 1993) have used the later title. We obtained titles and personnel from the 1969 Saturn and Impulse issues.

7. six cuts w/ the cosmic rays

The Cosmic Rays: Calvin Barron (voc); Matt Swift (voc); Lonnie Tolbert (voc); unidentified (voc); with Sun Ra (Wurlitzer ep); E. J. Turner (tp); Marshall Allen (fl); James Spaulding (as); John Gilmore (ts); Charles Davis (bars); Ronnie Boykins (b); Robert Barry (d); Jim Herndon (tymp); Pat Patrick (space lute).
Rehearsals, Chicago, 1958

https://img.discogs.com/uiwiZNg8ES9JQ2qWFwl58K9BOBA=/fit-in/600x591/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6450215-1419537495-9291.jpeg.jpg
listen to 'bye bye' on youtube

really swell guitar solo on "great balls of fire" imo

okay, looks like i messed up #7. the date and personnel there are not the same as the single for which i've provided a photo and link. that was a different (rehearsal) session, unreleased until the 2003 atavistic CD comp. i'll get to the single version in '58 part 2

1958, pt. 2

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/herndonb.jpg
"Jim Herndon in 1958. From The Cry of Jazz."

(all quotes from the campbell et al. discography unless otherwise noted)

1. the cosmic rays, "daddy's gonna tell you no lie" (rehearsal take)

The Cosmic Rays: Calvin Barron (voc); Matt Swift (voc); Lonnie Tolbert (voc); unidentified (voc); Sun Ra (dir).
Rehearsal, Chicago, 1958 or 1959

not released until 1983, as a 45 on saturn with "foggy notion" by the nu sounds as the flip side (rec. 1955, see upthread)

http://artyardrecords.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Daddys-Gonna-Tell-You-No-Lie-400x400.jpg
listen to the demo version on youtube

2. the cosmic rays, "bye bye" b/w "somebody's in love" (first track linked to and pictured upthread). the correct session info:

The Cosmic Rays: Calvin Barron (voc); Matt Swift (voc); Lonnie Tolbert (voc); unidentified (voc); Le Sun Ra (p -1, dir); unidentified (eg); prob. Ronnie Boykins (b); Robert Barry (d); Jim Herndon (timbales -2).
RCA Studios, Chicago, c. August 1958

listen to 'somebody's in love' on youtube

3. three rehearsal tracks with a vocal group called the crystals

The Crystals: four unidentified male vocalists; Sun Ra (p).
Rehearsal, Chicago, November 21, 1958

After Alton Abraham's death in 1999, a rehearsal tape with a previously unknown vocal group called The Crystals gained legendary status. The surviving tracks were released in 2009 on Norton CED-352, Sun Ra: Interplanetary Melodies, and Norton CED-353, Sun Ra: The Second Stop Is Jupiter.

"Little Sally Walker," unlike nearly everything else that Sunny did with vocal groups, is a rock and roll performance. (A member of the group can be heard at the end of track, complaining about spending 3 hours on "Little Sally Walker," but listeners today might think the results are worth it.) Little Sally Walker rides, of course, on a (flying) saucer. "Honey in the Bee Box" sticks closer to the original children's song, and at times the singers have some trouble taking it seriously.

The rehearsal date was provided by Michael Anderson. Ra's tapes also included "Eddie C Rock," a live tape from around this time of the Crystals (and possibly of members of the Arkestra) backing bluesman and occasional rock and roller Eddie Clearwater. This was so poorly recorded as to preclude reissue.

to which i say: JUST PUT IT OUT ANYWAY YOU DORKS

listen to 'little sally walker' on youtube

4. the cosmic rays, "dreaming" b/w "daddy's gonna tell you no lie"

The Cosmic Rays: Calvin Barron (voc); Matt Swift (voc); Lonnie Tolbert (voc); unidentified (voc); with Sun Ra (p); Ronnie Boykins (b); Robert Barry (d); Tito (cga).
prob. Sheldon (Chess) Studios, Chicago, poss. August 1959

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturnsr401soltzsmall.jpg
listen to 'dreaming' on youtube
listen to the 'daddy's gonna tell you no lie' on youtube

5. juanita rogers / lynn hollings recordings (two cuts, released 1960)

Juanita Rogers (lead voc); Lynn Hollings (narration); 4 unidentified males (voc); Mr. V [Sun Ra] (p, dir); unidentified (ts); unidentified (eg); unidentified (d).
Somebody's living room, Chicago, 1958 or 1959

Thanks to Michael Arlt for alerting us to this release; he describes the sonics accurately by saying it was “made in somebody's living room.” James Jacson confirmed Sunny's involvement and says that the release derived from an “old, old paper tape” in Sun Ra's private collection. Sun Ra recorded paper tapes on his Sound Mirror from 1948 until at least 1954 (when he reportedly recorded some very early solos by John Gilmore on a paper tape—nothing more is known about these items, unfortunately). However, Robert Pruter dates these sides from 1958 or 1959, based on the vocal style. It is not known whether the Five Joys are the same as the “Five Jays” (male lead, female lead, three male backup singers) whose publicity photo is in Robert Pruter's collection. However that may be, Sun Ra told Arkestra members that he wrote the arrangements for this date. On “Teenager's Letter of Promises,” the episodes with Hollings as the (heavily reverbed) narrator have obviously been spliced in by an amateur.

https://img.discogs.com/RA-9kJaTXbh0kKCEXrTHalXmRT8=/fit-in/429x500/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9657745-1484326343-5856.jpeg.jpg
listen to 'teenager's letter of promises' on youtube

6. multiple sessions, with multiple personnel changes, for the "lady with the golden stockings" AKA "nubians of plutonia" LP. all are rehearsals, chicago, 1958 or 1959. along with the "star time" rehearsal, all of the material for the LP was recorded in either 1958 or 1959

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/saturn406frontct.jpg
listen to 'plutonian nights' on youtube
listen to the full album on bandcamp

a. plutionian nights (ra)
b. lady with the golden stockings (ra)
c. nubia (ra)
d. africa (ra)
e. watusa (pitts-sherrill; arr. ra)
f. aiethopia (ra)

szwed on "the nubians of plutonia" (p. 171):

With this record Sonny showed his response to the burst of interest in Latin rhythms set off by the mambo in the mid-1950s and the calypso craze of 1957-58. And like many big bands, the Arkestra's take on these rhythms was less specifically Latin than a North American impression of these rhythms within dance-band conventions. The Arkestra was in effect reinventing these rhythms. Where Cuban musicians might layer a few discrete rhythms together to interlock and form an emergent new rhythm, North American musicians often heaped a number of percussion instruments together, all playing the same rhythm. Despite the comparative complexity of many of these pieces there is a tendency for them to simplify when the solos begin -- to turn into the blues or a rhythm jam with no chordal accompaniment. (...)

The implication of these recordings is that a piece of music could be built out of the simplest of elements: a continuing string of drum rhythms and a series of melodies based on a chord or even a single note. Or nothing. On one hand it was a primitivist gesture, but it was also a stripping away of the previous generation's obsession with harmonic complexity.

sun ra bandcamp:

Research herewith on vocal ensembles for tracks 5 and 11, variously identified by historians as The Nu Sounds or The Cosmic Rays: These groups are not the same ensembles, nor do they have overlapping members. The actual vocalists on these tracks might not be either group (the original Saturn LP back cover says "Arkestra" on "Africa"). Lacking session logs, any identification of vocalists on these tracks is speculative. The vocalists on "Black Sky" are unknown and could have been overdubbed at a date later than the original recording.

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-nubians-of-plutonia

"track 11" referring to a bonus track on the bandcamp page

Thanks for this! I don't have much to contribute, but I'm enjoying it, and I know it's a lot of work.

you're welcome :)

campbell et al.

While the Arkestra enjoyed its long initial run at Budland, Sun Ra stopped coaching vocal groups. During 1958 and 1959 Sunny renewed his interest in them. He mentored several ensembles (including Mr. V's Five Joys and the Qualities), but the Cosmic Rays were his pride and joy. The Rays were four young men from the West Side of Chicago; their manager, Raymond Dancer, lived on the South Side and had been acquainted with Ra for a little while. Ra, of course, named the group the Cosmic Rays. Sun Ra was a serious believer in community outreach, and he hoped to change their destinies, but despite his efforts it has been said that all four made bad exits from the planet many years ago. (The lead singer, Calvin Barron, died in the 1980s, supposedly in a murder-suicide.) "They were connected with a barbershop. I taught them other things."

john gilmore on the cosmic rays:

We’d go down to the barber shop and rehearse them. Sun Ra had them singin’ some beautiful stuff. I think he probably was saving them from themselves. He heard them, heard their potential, snatched them off the street, and started making them do something constructive.

http://artyardrecords.co.uk/sun-ra-singles-the-definitive-45s-collection-1952-1991/

john corbett:

Before they were the Cosmic Rays, Barron and company were a nameless vocal quartet working outdoors in Chicago’s black neighborhoods during the mid-‘50s. It was on the beach at 63rd and Jackson Park that a man named Raymond Dancer first heard them, liked them and suggested that he manage them. Like Sun Ra, Dancer was a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and he’d seen Ra lead a big band in Birmingham in what must have been a return engagement at a masonic hall sometime in the very early ‘50s. Late in ’56 or early the following year, Dancer met Sun Ra at Budland, during one of his Arkestra appearances at the club. He told Ra about the group and it was Ra’s suggestion that he bring them by and informally audition them.

At this point, sometime in ’58 or ’59, Ra took the group under his wing, became their musical director, dubbed them the Cosmic Rays and began to rehearse them. Dancer, who was the “money man”, rented a meat-packing union hall (near DuSable High) for rehearsals, which generally ran as Arkestra rehearsals first, the Rays waiting and listening, then joining or rehearsing with Ra while the band took a break. Dancer recorded most of the rehearsals himself. They might also rehearse after Ra’s Monday morning gig (8am-12pm!) on 48th Street. He remembers Ra passing out writings suggesting what could be accomplished, philosophically, and the way things should be. They performed a couple of times, once at Budland and once at McKee’s, as special guests with the Arkestra.

"Edited from John Corbett’s liner notes for the compilation ‘Spaceship Lullaby’ (Atavistic / Unheard Music Series) and the book ‘Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein’ (Duke University Press, 1994)"

(same link as john gilmore quote)

Lovely! I've been in Sweden the last week so a bit behind, will enjoy catching up over the next week.

Wrt the 1958 ones available on the Eternal Myth boxset, I'll upload them tonight/tomorrow.

"not released until 1983, as a 45 on saturn with "foggy notion" by the nu sounds as the flip side (rec. 1955, see upthread)"

sun ra covering the velvets would be such an awesome thing

who am i kidding marshall allen's arkestra probably did it with yo la tengo at some point (the arkestra's contributions to "little honda" are super fine)

the spotify playslist is updated (the new batch starts with "hours after" and ends with "aiethopia")

daddy's gonna tell you no lie is infectious. i skipped ahead to the cosmic rays material on the afternoon that all of this started, and it's been one of my favorites ever since

I'm still imagining... some fan is at a Sun Ra show in 1983, goes to the merch table, grabs what they think is a new single, and then when they put it on they get 50's doowop with no context or date.

"not released until 1983, as a 45 on saturn with "foggy notion" by the nu sounds as the flip side (rec. 1955, see upthread)"

sun ra covering the velvets would be such an awesome thing

who am i kidding marshall allen's arkestra probably did it with yo la tengo at some point (the arkestra's contributions to "little honda" are super fine)

― Arnold Schoenberg Steals (rushomancy), Tuesday, January 23, 2018 8:00 AM (eleven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha yeah, meant "a foggy day" obv

many more typos to come!

KM, i was gonna say i get "daddy" stuck in my head for days and days. something about the way he says "record shop"

the crystals song i posted above has some really funny "studio" banter at the end. like, "c'mon man, we've been practicing this song for THREE HOURS."

after i posted that i remembered i do have something that sounds like sun ra covering the velvets - the cover of ferryboat bill by ahh! folly jet from the '90s japanese velvet underground compilation "rabid chords". they basically sing "ferryboat bill" over "love in outer space". i'd link to it here but it's Too Obscure for Youtube. i've been looking for ahh! folly jet's full-length album "abandoned songs from the limbo" for decades.

sorry for the digression. i like the demo version of "daddy's gonna tell you no lie" way better than the "proper" version. that's basically who i am, though. i also love "teenager's letter of promises" so much, although now that i have some kind of reasonable understanding of how it came about i'm slightly disappointed. it's one of the most alien sounding things i've heard from sun ra.

1958

Pershing Ballroom, Chicago, August 15, 1958

Chi-Town Blues

Just You, Just Me (Raymond Klages, Jesse Greer)

I Can't Get Started (Ira Gershwin, Vernon Duke)

Don't Blame Me (Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields)

J. J. Johnson (trombone); Gene Ammons (tenor sax); Pat Patrick (baritone sax); Sun Ra (piano); Ronnie Boykins (double bass); Robert Barry (drums).

Youtube Link

is 1959 time? i've been loving the singles but i'm ready for the thread to start hitting all of these amazing albums!

hi KM, yeah. i was really hoping to blast through 1959-63 or so but uh, just life stuff. idk, hard week.

really appreciate everybody on this thread for tuning in. will try to get it together and make some arkestral manoeuvres in the next couple days.

oh hell yeah

1959

hey everyone, me and budo jeru are going to tag team this for a while. i’m going to do 1959 today, and then 1960 sometime this week. i am winging it, so if i miss something important please help fill in the gaps. as with the rest of this thread so far, a lot of the quotes and information come from
http://campber.people.clemson.edu/sunra.html and http://www.sunraarkestra.com/sunradisco/list.php. i don’t know what we’re going to do when we reach the end of the chicago years (around 1960-61) and the scope of the clemson guy’s research expires, but for now, it seems to be pretty authoritative (he often identifies

as always, don’t forget there’s a spotify playlist that evolves along with this thread. it lines up with this thread as things are posted, and then anything on it that’s beyond the thread is just kind of a non-comprehensive hodgepodge of upcoming material that might not be in the proper order yet.

1. Jazz in Silhouette (Recorded March 6,1959; Released May 1959)

https://i.imgur.com/027hPDl.jpg

Jazz in Silhouette originally had a silk-screened cover, attributed to one "H. P. Corbissero," with an abstract design and the title (variants can be seen in Geerken and Hefele's Omniverse Sun Ra, and in Pathways to Unknown Worlds, p. 46). Copies are known in pinkish red and black and in golden brown and black. John Corbett has suggested that the silk-screen design was done by Ra himself.

In 1961, Saturn was ready for another pressing run from RCA Victor, placing an order for 300 copies at 33 cents an LP on October 28, 1961.

the 1961 repress cover:
https://i.imgur.com/x92oeqa.jpg

Le Sun Ra-p, celeste; Hobart Dotson-tp; Bo Bailey-tb; James Spaulding-as, fl; Marshall Allen-as, fl; John Gilmore-ts; Pat Patrick-bs, fl; Charles Davis-bs; Ronnie Boykins-b; William Cochran-d.

recorded March 6, 1959 (according to research done by the clemson guy. previously, it was thought to have been recorded in late 1958.

(this was Dotson’s last session with Sun Ra. he was apparently developing a robotripping addiction which caused problems with the non-drugtaking Ra, and after this session he hopped on a BB King tour and then moved to NYC, where he ended up recording with mingus in 1960 and 1965)

Side A:
Enlightenment (Dotson-Ra) (5:02)
Saturn (Ra) (3:37)
Velvet (Ra) (3:18)
Ancient Aeithopia (Ra) (9:04)

Side B:
Hours After (E.J. Turner) (3:41)
Horoscope (Ra) (3:43)
Images (Ra) (3:48)
Blues at Midnight (Ra) (11:56)

one more interesting tidbit about Jazz in Silhouette to help understand how Sun Ra’s music was being received (or wasn’t) during this era:

As for Jazz in Silhouette, it didn't get one single review in the jazz press. Its importance wasn't understood until it was reissued by Impulse 15 years later.

2. Sound Sun Pleasure!! (Recorded March 6,1959; Released 1970)
https://i.imgur.com/NHI63Y0.jpg

these songs, mostly standards, were recorded during the same session as Jazz in Silhouette (an insane one-day marathon that produced two full LPs!), but it wasn’t released until 1970.

same personnel as Jazz in Silhouette, above.

Side A:
'Round Midnight (Hanighen-Monk-Williams)
You Never Told Me That You Care (Hobart Dotson)
Hour of Parting (Schiffer-Spoliansky)

Side B:
Back In Your Own Backyard (Jolson-Rose-Dreyer)
Enlightenment (taken from Jazz in Silhouette) (Dotson-Ra)
I Could Have Danced All Night (Lerner-Loewe)

3. “Interstellar Low Ways” ((Recorded March 6,1959; released 1966 (or 1965) (or 1967)
“Interstellar Low Ways” was also recorded as part of that absurdly productive 3/6/1959 session, but it wasn’t released until the 1966 album Interstellar Low Ways (or 1965 or 1967 - even the Clemson guy doesn’t know). There will be more on that recording in the 1960 update.

4. “October” (Recorded 1959, Released 1968 and then reissued on Singles compilation)
this was a one-off recording session with a slightly smaller group: Sun Ra (p); Walter Strickland (tp); unidentified (tb); John Gilmore (ts); Pat Patrick (bars); Ronnie Boykins (b); poss. William Cochran (d).

5. Cry of Jazz (premiered April 3, 1959)
https://i.imgur.com/1gl3C0o.jpg

The Cry of Jazz was not a documentary about the Arkestra, though the narrator refers to the "The Sun Ra" is an innovator in jazz, and "Call for All Demons" is presented as an example of his music. Rather, the Arkestra's function is to illustrate the stylistic evolution of jazz. Members of the band are shown on screen performing a Dixieland number (title uncertain), Swing (Bland stretched a little by choosing "Urnack" as an example), bop ("Super Blonde"), a Cool number ("Who, Me?" by Paul Severson), and "The Sun Ra." A quintet is shown playing "Blues at Midnight" (as an illustration of improvising over chord changes), and Sunny appears at the piano thrashing the same passage over and over (to illustrate the lack of growth potential in jazz; the passage is exerpted from "Lela" by Eddie Higgins, from another Paul Severson album). During part of this scene the trombonist from the "Dixieland" band is also present, barely discernible in the murk. The film then shows flames about to consume slum tenements while a distorted fragment of the Dixieland music shrlls on the soundtrack. The Arkestra can be heard but not seen during another segment (playing "Demon's Lullaby”).

“The Cry of Jazz premiered on April 3, 1959. It ran for a week, two showings a night, at the Lincoln Center (700 East Oakwood Boulevard). A single private showing followed on April 28, at the Union Nations Building in New York City. Another showing took place at the Sherman Hotel during a party for the Playboy Jazz Festival in July; still another at Gerri's Palm Tavern (446 East 47th Street) on August 23.”

the cry of jazz is on youtube, as of this posting.

—

i think that’s it for 1959! everything covered in this update was on spotify, so the playlist is updated through “October”. we’ll have 1960 ready to go in a few days. there’s a one-day recording session that takes place in 1960 that is just O_O. if you have any corrections or additional material or or images or links to writing about this era or other cool things, be sure to post them below!

“Ancient Aiethopia” is my favorite on Jazz in Silhouette. it borrows the main theme and tom-heavy percussion from the song “Aiethopia” (recorded in 1958 and later released on various comps), but it goes off into lots of other wild directions over the course of 9 minutes, including a ra piano solo that takes over halfway through and dissolves into a really weird vocal chant (which involves singing/speaking through the mouthpieces of the horns, i think?). after a short drum solo, the way that the bass and piano re-enter sounds so natural and yet ahead of its time, somehow. a lot of the rest of Jazz in Silhouette plays it relatively straight, so this track always stands out for me and points toward some interesting directions i know we’ll be hearing loads more of as we proceed.

things take such an amazing leap in 1960 :)
i'll post an update later tonight (although i guess the weekends aren't a great time for this thread? i could wait til tomorrow too)

Sorry about no update. Getting ready to watch SPACE IS THE PLACE (1974) on the big screen, though :D

funnnnnnn!!
where?!

Thanks Karl and Budo for this thread. I'm catching up and have got to Jazz by Sun Ra so far. I appreciate the hard work in doing this.It certainly works for me that it's taken a breather for the moment.

hi thread!

1. thanks to KM for temporarily taking the reigns.

2. i've decided to take an indefinite leave from all internet activities besides checking my email 2x / day. if anyone would like to take it from here, please feel free. if not, perhaps we can all meet back here in a few months and start where we left off. either way is fine with me. i'm so very pleased that so many people have enjoyed the thread so far. sorry i can't stay on as leader.

peace 2 u arkestral admirers !!

Peace to you too budo x

budo jeru take as much time as you need, no worries at all. i'll get in gear and keep it going, and then hop back in whenever you're feeling better. i definitely have an idea of where you're coming from. hang in there man.

hang in there!
thread regulars may be amused to know that my music appreciation students were introduced to sun ra this week via his version of "take the A train" (we listened to several traditional versions last week)
they were perplexed, but enjoyed the costumes

apologies to everyone for not getting in gear and keeping this going. especially to budo jeru, who i explicitly promised to keep the torch burning!
i have been working nonstop on a project that has consumed pretty much all of my free time, but the deadline is tomorrow and then i'll suddenly have lots of spare time!

so i understand if you don't believe me, but i'm pumped to get this started again. my own listening sometimes outpaced this thread, but i didn't let myself get too far ahead, and i'm eager to dive back in later this week.

i trust everyone is caught up with the thread? ;)

was thinking about bumping this, hi y'all

on to 1960!!

i’m going to do 1959 today, and then 1960 sometime this week.

-― Karl Malone, Saturday, February 10, 2018 11:43 AM (two months ago)

as promised, here we are, sometime next week, somewhere between time and space!

before crossing the threshold to the 60s, i wanted to share some 50s-era images and artifacts from University of Chicago Library’s exhibit “Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra and the Chicago Years, 1946-1961”. see the gallery for more.

https://i.imgur.com/wt2JlkS.jpg
(undated, early 1950s). sonny blount/sun ra used to hang out in washington park in the south side of chicago, writing and passing out flyers.

https://i.imgur.com/DVjiQ8d.jpg
(1956) a holiday card to promote a Saturn Records single by The Qualities)

https://i.imgur.com/WWlU7jX.jpg
(1957) the press release for Super-Sonic Jazz. i love this: “THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, BUT THE MUSIC OF THE SUN IS NEW BECAUSE SUN IS THE PACE-SETTER OF TOMORROW”

https://i.imgur.com/1dhbv95.jpg
undated

https://i.imgur.com/iDIIkGy.jpg
one of several space harps that Ra used throughout his life. featured on Angels and Demons at Play (1960).

https://i.imgur.com/uHwb5RY.jpg
an arkestra cymbal (looks like either a small ride or large crash to me)

——
i should have 1960 up later this afternoon, and as usual, i’ll update the spotify playlist as we go.

yeahhh

if you want a small taste of what a nightmare it is to try to determine any sort of chronology for this:

the date for that promotional holiday card from above could be totally wrong. the UChicago exhibit description says "this holiday card may have been printed and mailed out in conjunction with the 1956 release of Happy New Year to You! / It's Christmastime". but the clemson site says that the songs weren't recorded and released until 1960/61, while also noting that some believe the songs were recorded in 1956 but not released until 1961. so apologies for posting a 1961-related image before we get there...it was a goof

this does a nice job of setting the scene for 1960, so i'll excerpt it at length:

If we could go back and witness a concert in Chicago (the best we can do is catch a few snippets in The Cry of Jazz), we would find some parts familiar, other parts less so. The lineup then was mostly Ra compositions, plus a few standards, heavily reharmonized. No screeching or low rumbles from the saxes — they didn't acquire those techniques till after they moved to New York.

...Probably the first thing you'd notice was Sunny's lack of stage presence. The 1955 photos from the Parkway Ballroom show him in his customary position — seated in the back of the Arkestra. (On smaller stages he would sit at front left or front right.) Sunny was writing poetry and pamphlets in those days, and the Sun Ra philosophy was already well developed. John Gilmore and Marshall Allen would even hand out Sunny's newsletters on street corners, though interviews indicate that most of the Arkestra musicians were nonbelievers. But Sunny didn't sing or preach to his paying audience until 1970. In fact, he didn't say much to the audience at all. His barely audible call of Sound of Joy and a couple of very quiet tune announcements for alternate takes from the session for Jazz by Sun Ra are the only recordings of his voice on Chicago-period items intended for release.

Costumes, on the other hand, were already in evidence. In The Cry of Jazz, band members are seen wearing dark suits in some scenes and white suits in others, but the filmmakers wouldn't have wanted Dixieland and Swing numbers performed by Arkestrans in tunics and sequined headdresses. Glitzier garb soon became the norm. According to Marshall Allen, Sunny on one occasion obtained outfits that a local opera company had discarded after performing William Tell. No doubt these were the inspiration for the space-age Robin Hood uniforms the band sometimes wore in later years. Art Hoyle remembers "loud green and orange concerns" in 1956. By 1960, Arkestra members were sporting purple blazers, white gloves, and beanies with propellers on top that lit up. And they would release wind-up toy robots into the audience. There were no dancers yet, but the musicians were supposed to jump up and down on designated numbers.

Sunny had been talking about outer space for a while, but in the early days his vocal numbers were meant to be performed by the cabaret-style singers who worked Chicago nightclubs, or by doo-wop groups. The space chant, a simple ditty that could be sung by band members (and the audience, if so inclined) didn't appear till 1960. Once he started writing them they stayed in the band's repertoire for years: Interplanetary Music, We Travel the Spaceways, Rocket Number Nine Take for the Planet Venus.

https://i.imgur.com/2xfWLEU.jpg
(sun ra + arkestra, 1960)

1960 recordings

holy shit, 1960 was a GOOD year for the sun ra arkestra. june 14, 1960 looms large. during an insane one-day marathon session they recorded over THIRTY songs, which are spread out over several of the releases described below. the bulk of these recordings weren’t commercially released for several years, though, and often they were repackaged with songs from completely different eras of the band (like Angels and Demons at Play, which snaps from a mindbending 1960 exotica Side A to the frenzied bop of 1956 on side B). i’ll try to keep the focus on the 1960 recordings here:

We Travel Spaceways
mentioned upthread, We Travel Spaceways was released in 1967 but consists of music recorded in Chicago in 1959-60 (there’s also a track from 1956). there are some really, REALLY good tracks on here, but “Interplanetary Music”, the delirious opening song, stands out with its group vocals and otherworldliness.

Angels and Demons at Play
also mentioned upthread, and also released in 1967, the four songs on Side A of Angels and Demons at Play were all recorded in Chicago in 1960 (the Side B tracks were recorded in 1956). There’s definitely a tropical/exotica vibe on these songs, which include writing credits by Ronnie Boykins and Marshall Allen (bass and alto sax/flute, respectively, and both longstanding key members of the arkestra.

Interstellar Low Ways
https://i.imgur.com/beZxDVO.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/eNaRLnx.jpg
first released as Rocket Number Nine Take Off for the Planet Venus in 1966, and then reissued as Interstellar Low Ways in 1967, made up of 1960 sessions. i love the patience and quietness of the title track and “Space Loneliness” (there’s another good version of the latter on We Travel Spaceways).

Fate in a Pleasant Mood
https://i.imgur.com/Iudh1hx.jpg
most of these songs were recorded during the same epic 6/14 recording session. “Space Mates” is my favorite. it starts with an odd diversion that soon stops and reforms as a lovely flute-led (played by Marshall Allen) ballad, then a drum solo that sounds like water being poured between toms.

Holiday for Soul Dance
https://i.imgur.com/feDdRSR.jpg
a collection of standards released in 1970, but made up entirely of songs from the 6/14/60 session. these songs don’t really thrill me compared to a lot of what they were recording in 1960 (even on the same day!), but ymmv.

“Space Loneliness” b/w “State Street”
part of the a few hundred copies of this single were released on Saturn Records in 1960. reissued as part of The Singles comp in 1996.

“The Blue Set“ b/w “Big City Blues“
same deal as the single above. has sold for over $1000 on discogs, it seems. as the titles would suggest, these songs steer heavily toward the blues.

Music From Tomorrow’s World (live)
a live album recorded in Chicago 1960, released in 2002. here they are playing a Gershwin song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WhYvZi9A8E

forgot to mention - Fate in a Pleasant Mood was released in 1965. so basically, out of everything just posted, only the two singles at the bottom were actually released in 1960.

listening to "Angels And Demons At Play" on Spotify right now

yep, me too! :) i love it. the 1960 cuts (side A) are so good, it must have been amazing to be in the same room.

oh, also - spotify playlist is up-to-date through Interstellar Low Ways.

oh, also - if anyone has any other cool images or artwork (record or otherwise) of 1959-61 era they particularly like, please post it! i haven't really found much online - they weren't heavily documented during their Chicago years.

I regret selling my nice 70's Impulse reissue of Fate In A Pleasant Mood, it had new art by then though

I have this vague memory that Fate In A Pleasant Mood was unusual because it was just released under the Sun Ra name, unlike most other records from the era?

if i was a crazy millionaire guy who didn't know what to do with all his money i would go on a global quest to collect original copies of THE ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY, and then display them in my fancy sun ra wing

xpost the cover looks like it just said "Sun Ra", but the clemson page includes this photo of what they claim to be a first pressing, and it seems to show that the arkestra was credited on the record label, at least:

https://i.imgur.com/UlH5oHo.jpg

can i just say that i really like the way that label looks blending in with the rest of the white ILX page? just saying, looks real nice

wow, so the single version of "Lights on a Satellite" on Fate in a Pleasant World (it's a bonus track) is pretty trippy. they drenched everything in tons of reverb and echo, and it comes off sounding like a more upbeat version of the Caretaker's current project.

yeah, when "secrets of the sun" comes up the whole thing's going to be an enormous pile of echo

it's too bad that the most coherent chronological discography that i've found online is locked up on pg 427 of a book (check it out!)

it's a great fucking book, though! totally recommended.

i don't know, there was an old one, i think by rlc, online that i thought was ok. "coherence" is always a difficult thing with ra.

i wish i would have read The Lives and Times of Sun Ra before! it's a real page turner. i've aways wondered about his creative process, and how they actually went about composing and performing these tunes with a continuously shifting lineup. it seems like he thrived on the unpredictability of the personnel and it became part of the process itself:

He needed a permanent body of musicians to play what he wrote, but without steady work for them it was tough. He resented his musicians playing with other bands, but there was little he could do, and he said
nothing about it to most of them. Though he wrote out each instrument's part in a hand that was so large and clear that it seemed like something out of a school exercise book, his music was too complex to sight-read, too full of unusual intervals and unexpected rhythms, so long rehearsals were necessary even in periods when they were working regularly.

With such individualized music a great deal of work was necessary to pull a piece together, especially if new players turned up at rehearsals, or if any players were missing or left the band. When one of their best drummers turned out to be unreliable, Sonny talked John Gilmore into playing drums and for years he kept a small set beside his seat in the saxophone section so that he could double on them. And since Sonny could not count on every musician being at rehearsals--or even at paying engagements-he tried to write pieces which were adaptable for any size group, from trio to twenty players, but sometimes wrote pieces to be
played only at a single rehearsal.

...Few people recall seeing Sonny composing or writing arrangements, since he worked alone, usually in the middle of the night. He wrote out parts quickly, instrument by instrument, as fast as he thought them up. It was all laid out in his head. Sometimes the musicians' parts would be two or three pages long, while Sonny's own part would be only a scrap, or something written on a matchbook. But since arrangements were corrected, embellished, and improved at rehearsals and each player was expected to make corrections in his own parts, every musician in the band was part of the composition process. Often arrangements were developed on the spot, Sonny calling out the musical line for every player so they could write them down. And while the band played the melody he would improvise a counter-melody on the piano and give that to another part of the group. This way he could arrive at a rehearsal with two or three compositions and leave with five or six.

the rest of Chapter 3 has all sorts of good stuff about that, as well as the grueling rehearsal marathons, his demand for discipline (including locking up band members in a closet for hours or making them sit up on stage but refusing to allow them to play as punishment for missing rehearsals, etc), issues with failing to pay his own musicians for their work (and writing credits, in some cases), lots of good stories from his bandmates, and a good, long discussion of ra's idea of "Space" and his general cosmology. it's really good stuff, and i wish i would have been reading it this whole time.

nice, I gotta check that one out!

Karl I swear I'm just gonna mail you a copy of the Szwed book...

no worries, i have a PDF! that's the one the excerpt above is from (Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra)

another interesting anecdote: one of the places they played a bunch in Chicago in the mid-50s was called Birdland.

So we stayed at Birdland two years. At one point there was some trouble: the Birdland in New York complained, and were going to sue. So I told the owner to change the name to Budland. He did, and we kept playing.

Budland ended up establishing a reputation as the place where the very best dancers came - "It was generally accepted that you dared not enter Budland unless you could flaunt serious dance moves". so much so, that even 15 years later, when they filmed the pilot for soul train in 1969, the dancers came from Budland:

The Soul Train pilot was shot at WCIU, and thanks to Ghent it was stocked with ringers—not the usual teenyboppers but the "baddest dancers" from Budland. When Sears exec George O'Hare saw the sample episode that he eventually was able to convince his bosses to sponsor, he was watching a group of adults re-creating the smoky, sexy atmosphere of a south-side club.

new albums on the Spotify playlist (thanks)! listening to Black Beauty now, never heard Transitions Three either.

Art Forms, of course, was heard by probably a lot of people on the Evidence 2-fer with Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy - am I correct in thinking it's the most "out" thing so far?

bump

I've been increasingly obsessed with the Chicago period and the late-70's glossy funky electronic stuff (Lanquidity, On Jupiter).

I finally started filing the LPs by recording date not release date, and by the earliest date on the record if there are multiples.

Angels And Demons, Nubians Of Plutonia, Holiday For Soul Dance, and On Jupiter have all been in heavy rotation

the Bandcamp site is so incredibly awesome, and some of the digital versions are significant upgrades or transfers, lost full stereo versions, unreleased outtakes, etc.

late 70s stuff is probably my favorite tbh, some of the aggro free-blowing dissonance of prior years gets sanded off and things get a bit more dreamy/sweeter sounding

any other recommendations besides the two I mentioned?

I also sprung for the new "Singles" 3CD, it's just amazing how much more has been discovered (in terms of previously unknown records, better sources, and session details) since that Evidence 2CD came out(checks Discogs) 23 years ago.

i was going to post here at some point saying i'm going to start again towards the end of the summer.

we're still in 1960 iirc so i'm afraid i can't help at the moment

Sleeping Beauty for sure, probably my favorite of that era.

Media Dreams and Disco 3000 are cool as well, albeit they do a bit of a different thing, what with the inclusion of the rhythm box/drum machine and a smaller combo - lots of weird synth playing, less of the swaying big band feel

xp

Strange Celestial Road also of a piece with Sleeping Beauty, "I'll Wait For You" is a definite highlight.

sweet, thanks!

been buying lots of those Scorpio LP reissues, they are super cheap and IMO sound just fine (except for The Magic City, get that on Bandcamp)

sorry for slight derails, yah let's talk about 1960, the last great Chicago year.

"Holiday For Soul Dance" is such a joy to listen to, all standards iirc and even vocals on one track

"Early Autumn" recorded at Wonder Inn, Chicago 1960.
The rest of the tracks were recorded at Elks Hall, Milwaukee June 14, 1960.

and LOL at:

Note that the personnel on the cover is known to be incorrect (dating from the mid-to-late 60s Arkestra).

also w/r/t the "Fate In A Pleasant Mood credits, I was referring to the Impulse reissue being under the "Sun Ra" name"

https://img.discogs.com/I5ZTvI1NfzmmL1PY9TMaYiUbqCA=/fit-in/560x509/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2600309-1296376853.jpeg.jpg

this totally screws up Discogs, where the same record is listed under both The Sun Ra Arkestra and Sun Ra depending on which pressing it is and what the credits said.

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-Sun-Song/release/6049178

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Arkestra-Sun-Song/release/1109731

oops sorry for stray punctuation there

yeah, pretty much all available online discographies are a fucking mess with sun ra

PRELIMINARY BUMP

I added a 2009-released single to the beginning of the Spotify playlist, this was originally recorded "in the early 50's" and I quote the Strut Records 2016 "Singles" 3CD here:

The earliest recordings on this compilation from the pre-Arkestra era. In these poetry and sound explorations, Sun Ra sets out fundamental musical, metaphysical, and cosmological concepts that have been consistently explored through the Arkestra's work. [...] Both recitations predate Ra's "cosmo-drama" sermons, a staple part of Arkestra performances from the early 70's onwards.

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-I-Am-Strange/release/2052787

in the Strut notes, credits for "I Am An Instrument" are 'Sun Ra: recitation, space harp'. "I Am Strange" credits him with recitation and piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2JR0Jzu8Vg&feature=emb_logo

https://img.discogs.com/7xr7AexkwIrMc6ZuD3WNKUf4jYo=/fit-in/397x400/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2052787-1261272418.jpeg.jpg

if anyone has any other Chicago-era odds and ends, plz discuss! we will start the NYC era on Monday.

nice, thank you! i'm not sure how we missed that at the very beginning, especially because that pair of track leads off the Singles compilation. but glad to listen to them now! "i am strange" in particular is way out there, just amazing. the liner notes on discogs say he ran tape for the recording himself, too? diy!

OK, picking this up where we left off, welcome back.

1961 - The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra

https://img.discogs.com/SE04jGMIWP3BgIAogBM7Y0oUPp0=/fit-in/600x599/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2676017-1449146371-7689.jpeg.jpg

The sleeve was designed by 'Harvey', a secretive graphic designer who made over 190 album covers for Savoy and its subsidiaries throughout the 1960s;
"Rev. Lawrence Roberts, long-time producer for Savoy Records... said that they never knew the identity of Harvey. Harvey lived in New York, and was very secretive. They would send him a title or concept and he would produce the painting. The paintings were not expensive, and they paid him in cash.”
I first encountered this record in the form of its cover-challenged reissue version “We Are In The Future”:

https://img.discogs.com/JdZn5Xl3OigUKZ9X-_dTAL233j0=/fit-in/600x591/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1222477-1514869311-2944.jpeg.jpg

This takes on a sad irony when considered along with this bit from the extensive Wikipedia history of the recordings.

Despite a heavy title and a cover painting of a conga drum swirling like a tornado through a valley of piano keys against an orange sky, the record was plagued from the start. Tom Wilson's liner notes were filled with inaccuracies: Distribution was almost as poor as it was with the Saturn records, and there was no reviews for twenty-three years, when it was reissued in 1984 as We Are In The Future.'

It’s worth noting that although numerous albums were recorded in the next two years, nothing was actually released until late 1963, and then it was on Saturn, not someone else’s label - that wouldn’t happen again until 1965, with ESP.

I’d also like to take a moment to focus on producer Tom Wilson, who hasn’t been mentioned so far but plays a key role, being the first person to record Sun Ra (as well as Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane, according to Szwed). Wilson, of course, went on to record Sun Ra throughout the 50’s and later produce The Velvet Underground and The Mothers Of Invention in the 60’s. This was recorded at Medallion Studios in Newark NJ on Oct. 10th 1961. The Arkestra wouldn’t work with Wilson again until 1965.

I’ll be honest and note upfront that I don’t particularly click with (at least some examples of) the open-air big room sound of the NYC Choreographer’s Workshop recordings that follow this album (we’ll get there next). I largely prefer the closer-mic’d (? I think) “professional” studio sounds of the Chicago RCA Studio era, and this record catches the Arkestra right in that moment of transition. I’m also less of a “free” fan than I am a modal/spiritual hat, bop/post-bop & older styles jazz fan.

The music itself, true to the title, jumps off from the 50’s post-bop into the future with increasing atonality creeping into the fringes, fun stuff. “China Gates” is my jam, I always love the songs with vocalists from this era. “Tapestry From An Asteroid” is as sweet of a ballad as you could want, perfection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAD-y6KFAU

BONUS LISTENING:

I moved the “Transitions 3” tracks to the spot right after this album in the Spotify playlist, the titles are all contemporary with this LP or earlier, think of it as a bonus disc. That way we start with the Choreographer’s Workshop albums proper. Maybe a day or two to listen/comment, and then on to the next one?

hi, great to be back ! thanks for taking this on, sleeve

a bit late on the chicago odd-and-ends, but would like to point out that earlier in 1961 was the july 13 session which resulted in "space loneliness" and "eve" (both eventually released in '67 on "we travel the spaceways"). these recordings were made at the pershing lounge, the arkestra's last chicago gig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKgjZ6vnArw

and here's campbell et al., at the conclusion of the chicago discography:

Cosmic forces were hard at work. Up to now, despite the feelers extended for gigs in Birmingham and in Ne York City, the Arkestra had never actually ventured farther away than Indianapolis. As the Pershing Lounge gig wound down, Sun Ra received an offer to play for two weeks at a club called El Morocco, on Closse Street in Montréal. The gig opened on July 31, 1961. As legend has it, the Arkestra was fired after two nights, but they scrounged and got other work in the area, playing for teenagers at St.-Gabriel-de-Brandon, a mountain resort about 60 miles north of Montréal; “When the Saints Go Marching In” was in their repertoire. Finally, they landed an extended engagement at The Place in Montréal. At this time “China Gate” and “I Struck a Match on the Moon” were in the book. Booted out of Canada after two months when their temporary visas expired, Sun Ra, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Ronnie Boykins, and Ricky Murray made their way to New York City.

Attempts to recruit some other Chicagoans (such as Art Hoyle and Lucious Randolph) proved unsuccessful. Trumpeter Billy Howell came from Chicago, but didn't stay. Luckily, Pat Patrick and Tommy Hunter were already in New York, and with their help Sunny began to rebuild the Arkestra. Rents were high, so they undertook the communal living that the Arkestra has since been known for. Financially, New York was cruel; the band got virtually no gigs for three or four years. Creatively, though, it was the right place to be. But that's a story for another site.

http://campber.people.clemson.edu/sunra.html

i'm going to be following along but as someone with minimal jazz knowledge and not much sun ra knowledge either, i probably won't be posting a lot. thanks for reviving and i'm looking forward to the discussion

So glad to see this thread moving again! I never knew about that Futuristic Sounds cover artist - so interesting. Found a site tracking the guys work across hundreds of albums: http://www.harveyalbums.com/ . In the article linked on the site, "Harvey"'s son and sister chime in in the comments.

this era always feels of a piece with late 50s exotica - a little woolier maybe but in the same universe as Martin Denny, Les Baxter, maybe some Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan etc

we had a bit of that same discussion on the other thread. here is szwed's take:

Sunny was listening to the Hollywood-inspired music being made by people like David Rose, whose lush, massed string writing could be heard as theme songs on popular radio programs; or to the exotica of people like Martin Denny, who recorded in Honolulu accompanied by animal noises, natural acoustic delay, and reverberation; and especially to the arrangements of Les Baxter, the premier figure in what was being called mood music.

Baxter developed a post-swing style in the late forties and early fifties of spectacular orchestral writing, full of timpani and hand drums, tumbling violin lines, harps, flutes, marimbas, celesta, Latin rhythm vamps, the cries of animals, choral moans, and flamboyant singers, creating imaginary soundscapes which he helped evoke with titles like 'Atlantis,' 'Voodoo Dreams,' and 'Pyramid of the Sun.' Sunny first heard Baxter on Perfume Set to Music (1946) and Music Out of the Moon (1947). Baxter went on to produce records which celebrated the Aztecs (The Sacred Idol, 1959), South Asia (Ports of Pleasure, 1957), Africa and the Middle East (Tamboo!, 1955), and the Caribbean (Caribbean Moonlight, 1956), all of which used Latin rhythms generically, as did his two big band records, African Jazz (1958) and Jungle Jazz (1959). Though later generations would understand this music in strictly utilitarian terms, and hear in it the sounds of air conditioning and the clink of ice in cocktail shakers, for Sunny it was music rich with imagination and suggestion. His genius was to take as raw material what others in the 1950s thought of as 'easy listening' and turn it into what in the late 1960s would be heard as 'Third World music' by some and as 'uneasy listening music' by others.

Never heard this one before, vibing hard to "China Gates" and "Jet Flight"

xps

the key difference here imo is that sun ra was using those musical textures, the novelty of which was the focal point of certain exotica acts, as a springboard to get to different, more complex places rhythmically and harmonically. his horn arrangements are already pretty gnarly and wild by 1960, and then additionally the space provided for improvisation on "futuristic sounds" makes for a more varied and imo ultimately richer soundscape than the efforts martin denny or les baxter (nothing against them)

you could say the same about ellington's early "near east" explorations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=121&v=oTEmX1tHOVY&feature=emb_title
"half the fun" 1957

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRelnWvKXw4
"arabesque cookie" 1960

in other words, i'm agreeing with szwed that this period of sun ra's work definitely transcends the exotica which was its sometimes-inspiration

yeah, its a springboard. it's interesting that it was a very different springboard from what most post-bop jazz guys were working from. Yusef Lateef maybe being the other big exception.

I have nothing to base this on but my assumption would be most of the cutting edge jazz guys of the time looked askance at exotica as silly and corny

i definitely think the intersection between exotica kitsch and serious jazz is a complicated one... sonny did a fair amount of mambo work, for instance, which was kitsch music but kitsch music that sprung from the afro-cuban work of people like machito, who _was_ very much taken seriously. it's that fringe, the Old, Weird Exotica... if you listen to early Ferrante and Teicher, "Soundproof" specifically, and listen to the massive amounts of prepared piano they're doing - put the opening of "mississippi boogie" vs. "winnsboro cotton mill blues" - "novelty" and "avant-garde" are both interested in doing new things and, particularly early on, trying to differentiate the two is often a false dichotomy. the interesting thing about people like duke and sonny is that even when "exotica" had coalesced into a series of tired tropes their use of that music remained fresh (listen, for instance, to the vocal version of "Afrique" from 1970's Conny Plank session). sonny of course identified more with fletch than with duke but he could still kill it on "sophisticated lady"...

moving on!

1961 - Bad And Beautiful

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0313628563_10.jpg

The first recording from their new NYC rehearsal & recording space. Quoting Szwed:

(Tommy) Hunter got a job at the Choreographers’ Workshop, a dancer’s rehearsal space at 414 West 54th Street. For the next three years this was to be the band’s studio for rehearsal and recording at nights and on weekends. when it was available they used the basement because it had a good piano and better acoustics, but they took what they could get. Hunter was now the second drummer with the band, but he also began to record all of their rehearsals with an Ampex 601 tape recorder he had bought for $800 at a pawnshop, and then to edit them with Sun Ra.

The definitive version of these recordings, like so many others, is on Bandcamp, where Irwin Chusid and Michael D. Anderson have been systematically remastering from the original tapes. Man, what Impulse did on the original release (see below) is practically criminal (granted, they had an uphill battle to start with). I’m going to quote the liner notes in full, they also show just how cleaned up and definitive the Bandcamp editions are compared to even the Evidence CDs of the 90’s.

The Bad and Beautiful was the first album recorded in New York by Sun Ra after he arrived from Chicago with a small contingent of the Arkestra in 1961. Its release was delayed for 11 years, finally appearing on Sunny's Saturn label in 1972. The album consists of four Sun Ra originals and three standards recorded by a sextet consisting of the leader on piano, accompanied by mainstays John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Marshall Allen, Ronnie Boykins, and Tommy Hunter.

The album finds the band at a transitional stage between the "hard space bop" of their Chicago days and the avant-garde direction Sunny's music would take in the 1960s. A superficial listen would seem to indicate the repertoire and style were retrospective, yet it's evident from countless flourishes in the arranging and performing that a group of brash newcomers had arrived on the Gotham scene. Despite a string of late 1960s Saturn LP pressings of recordings made in Chicago from 1956 to 1961, upon their arrival on the east coast Sunny and his ensemble began progressing beyond what passed for "polite" jazz. New York changed Sunny irrevocably by inspiring and challenging him. He didn't just find himself in a new city; he began exploring the deeper cosmos.

In many ways, Bad and Beautiful is a resume. It lays out what Sunny had learned as a pianist, composer, bandleader, and arranger during his Chicago years (and earlier growing up in Birmingham). It also presents the Arkestra as a tight-knit, yet relaxed ensemble, a team of professionals who play to each others' strengths with mutual respect. The album seems to say: This is who we are, this is what we did, we hope you like it, but don't expect us to continue in this fashion.

Then there's the issue of sonic quality. Bad and Beautiful sounds like it was recorded in a basement. In fact, it was: at the Choreographer's Workshop, 414 West 51st Street, which was the Arkestra's rehearsal space for several years after they arrived in NYC. The album's title thus acquires secondary implications: under bad conditions, beautiful music can be made. There's a genre called "garage rock." This is "garage jazz."

Two years after its delayed 1972 release, Bad and Beautiful was reissued with a lavish gatefold cover as part of a planned series of Saturn reissues and new recordings Sun Ra would make for the prestigious Impulse! jazz label. (That deal fell apart in two years, and a number of scheduled reissues and new projects were abandoned.) The Impulse! LP included the following technical note: "Many of the early Saturn recordings were recorded under less than optimum circumstances, and listeners are advised that certain portions of this album do not reach the standards of state-of-the-art recordings of the mid-1970s." That said, Impulse! proceeded to "fix" this admittedly "less than optimum" recording by mixing the monophonic tapes into fake "stereo" (attempting to replicate what had been lamentably done on the Saturn LP). Highs were boosted on one channel, lows on the other, producing a disorienting balance in which the left channel was noticeably inferior to the right. In addition, the tape was marred by sporadic flutter and dropouts, the tape speed ran slow, and the prevailing analog format made it difficult to remove transient noise while retaining the glorious lo-fi racket captured at the Choreographer's Workshop in 1961.

On this digital reissue we have retained the monophonic format. Working from the original tapes, we repaired a number of audio flaws and removed a scintilla of tape hiss, while retaining the raw energy captured by a historic band making great music in a less-than-ideal environment. These recordings aren't perfect. They will never be perfect. Trying to perfect them might inadvertently remove a layer of soul.

This remastered edition includes a previously unreleased session track, "Street of Dreams," featuring Pat Patrick showcased on baritone sax in a quartet setting. It appears here as track four, as found in sequence on the tape.

I believe this archival photo is from the Workshop:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8tRUd669B4I/Sca2lQrcYaI/AAAAAAAAAq8/ld44A2PvLyw/s1600/Ra+-+Choreographers+Workshop.jpg

Allmusic review:

Bad and Beautiful is probably the first recording made after the Arkestra settled in New York in 1961. Not everyone in the Chicago band wanted to make the move, and since they hadn't been in New York long enough to recruit new musicians, Bad and Beautiful features an Arkestra that's been stripped down to a sextet of Ra, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Pat Patrick (who had already moved to NY), Ronnie Boykins, and Tommy "Bugs" Hunter. Aside from "Exotic Two," the tunes are split between standards (apparently the last ones the group would record until the '70s) and blues originals, but there are indications of the direction the Arkestra would take throughout the '60s. "Search Light Blues" has some interesting percussion accents finding their way into the arrangement, and "Exotic Two" alludes more clearly to the percussion-heavy sound that dominated many of the '60s recordings. Sun Ra plays piano exclusively on this recording, and Gilmore gets lots of room to shine. A significant transitional LP, this is probably the last "inside" record the Arkestra would record as they forged new sonic paths into the mid-'60s

So yeah, this one still has its feet partly in the past, as noted. It’s the last one I fully click with for quite some time, and I think of it as a Chicago-era album in spirit. I’m gonna try to give the next 10-15 years a(nother) fair shot, I promise.

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/bad-and-beautiful

Youtube playlist

unfamiliar with this one

it's good! it's got the "big room" reverb sound of the CW era, but still pretty tight and dialed in

I was tempted to buy one of those cheap Scorpio reissue LPs of this - until I read the remaster notes...

i must have low standards for audio fidelity, because it sounds ok to me! i definitely get the vibe that it's recorded by one of the band members in a basement, but i can clearly hear what everyone is playing, and none of the instruments dominate the others. (maybe it helps that some of the first music i got into was really lo-fi (early Microphones)).

gilmore's sax solo sounds really good on Street of Dreams. it's amazing how restrained the band's playing is on the standards, knowing how far out they were about to go. i think that often with avant artists, musical or otherwise, there's a tendency to think that they went way "out" because they didn't bother mastering the basics. (not that **I** would think that way, hmph hmph). but clearly ra and his group had absolutely mastered the form, even by the late 50s. i love their spin on the standards.

oh yes, we will get to the "free" controversy tomorrow! I totally agree with you of course.

note: I believe both the Spotify files and the Youtube link are the newer, remasters Bandcamp version

this is nice, pretty laid back! Ra could be so confrontational and atonal I think sometimes it gets overlooked how pretty and gentle his arrangements could be.

1961/62 - Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorrow

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3284854152_10.jpg

Here we go into the wild and wonderful world of the Saturn 60’s. This record was recorded in two different sessions - album closers ”Lights on a Satellite" and "Kosmos in Blue" were recorded at the same time as yesterday’s Bad And Beautiful, the rest in early 1962. There’s a world of difference between the sessions - the album opener “Cluster Of Galaxies” is as out-there as any German obscurity from a decade later. The record itself was not released until 1965, continuing a long and maddening discographical puzzle. It’s one of the earlier ones that I got into, I used to have the Evidence twofer CD with Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy as well. I really dig these early experiments, they are pleasingly sparse and inventive (to my ears) for the most part. But all of these ’62 tracks except “Ankh #1” aren’t in the same universe as the Chicago sound. The train has left the station (also, they could now record on as many tapes as they could afford).

It’s unclear on how much the move to NYC affected the sound vs. how much was already there and latent, Szwed certainly seems to think the move made a difference. “Free” jazz had already gotten established there, not without controversy of course. In the course of doing research for this I found the famous story of Max Roach following Ornette Coleman off the stage after a Five Spot set and punching him in the jaw cuz the music pissed him off so much. With me, the louder it gets the less I generally like it, which is why I guess I gravitate towards stuff like free improv (Incus-style or later AMM) as opposed to the dense roar of something like Coltrane’s Ascension.

Worth noting that at this point the Arkestra had received their first national notice (in Downbeat), from a Cafe Bizarre gig on Feb. 18th. The ball was rolling, although they were still living in communal poverty - they had regular gigs at Cafe Bizarre, and they were doing side work as well.

More details at the Bandcamp link (and an extra track at the end, recorded at the earlier 1961 session like the two before it in the track order):

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/art-forms-of-dimensions-tomorrow

Youtube playlist

actually I'm gonna quote the Bandcamp writeup here:

"Cluster of Galaxies" and "Solar Drums" are modernistic percussion soundscapes, bracketing "Ankh #1," a swaggering R&B rework of a late '50s tune from the artist's Chicago years. "The Outer Heavens," sans rhythm section, echoes Third Stream chamber jazz, while "Infinity of the Universe" offsets a percussion battalion with thunderous low-register piano. "Lights on a Satellite" and "Kosmos in Blue," both recorded at an earlier Choreographer's session, ground the set on terra firma with some stylish hard bop. "Lights" remained a staple in Sunny's concert repertoire for the rest of his life.

another one I'd never previously got around to

But all of these ’62 tracks except “Ankh #1” aren’t in the same universe as the Chicago sound. The train has left the station (also, they could now record on as many tapes as they could afford).

it seems like the pawn-shop procured ampex recorder really is key, an impetus for creativity and experimentation.

do we have an idea of what their live sets of the time (early 60s NYC) were like? are there set lists?

this is one of those albums that's such a mishmash of composed and improvised pieces that it all blurs together. That's not a criticism, I'd just be hard-pressed to say where one song stops and another starts without looking at the tracklisting.

funny you should mention that - from the Wikipedia entry for Sun Ra:

After the move to New York, Sun Ra and company plunged headlong into the experimentalism that they had only hinted at in Chicago. The music was often extremely loud and the Arkestra grew to include multiple drummers and percussionists. In recordings of this era, Ra began to use new technologies—such as extensive use of tape delay—to assemble spatial sound pieces that were far removed from earlier compositions such as Saturn. Recordings and live performances often featured passages for unusual instrumental combinations, and passages of collective playing that incorporated free improvisation. It is often difficult to tell where compositions end and improvisations begin.

I don't think there are any early setlist examples (i.e. before 1968 or so), but I will dig around a bit and see what I can find.

has anyone read this? it looks like a good companion to the Szwed book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29639441-a-pure-solar-world

cheers for the heads up sleeve. i only own 5 or 6 of his albums so need help to decide where to go next

welcome!

thought this was a fine set, if not very remarkable or distinctive.

what tape delay unit(s) did Ra have at this point?

it's something on the Ampex itself that Tommy Hunter discovered by accident messing with input & outputs, I can post the relevant Szwed quote later this evening if someone else doesn't find it

(that heavy reverb that you hear on the first track)

ah yeah in-built reverb units were definitely widely available and a feature on lots of equipment in the early 60s. Tape delay units though (I think?) are another story.

1962 - Secrets Of The Sun

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3724095829_10.jpg

First, a word about the reverb discussed yesterday, cf. Szwed: “While testing the tape recorder when the musicians were tuning up one day, Hunter discovered that if he recorded with the earphones on, he could run a cable from the output jack back into the input on the recorder and produce massive reverberation:

”I wasn’t sure what Sun Ra would think of it… I though the might be mad - but he loved it. It blew his mind! By working the volume of the output on the playback I could control the effect, make it fast or slow, drop it out, or whatever.”

After a fairly straight opening track, we are confronted with one of Ra’s many “what the hell is THIS?” moments with new “space vocalist” Art Jenkins, singing through a ram’s horn to produce a natural wah-wah effect. The track dissolves into a reverbed-out percussion jam partyway through, then goes back to the whacked out space vocals and atonal meanderings. Getting pretty weird, this is an unusual one, but most of the album is more recognizably “jazz” although pretty free for the time. Again, the Bandcamp remaster is definitive, with improved sound and three unreleased tracks from the same session.

Per Bandcamp: “The album features an arsenal of percussion, often in the hands of Arkestra horn players, reinforced by the thumping bass of Ronnie Boykins. Sun Ra's developing Afrocentric consciousness inspired many of these relentlessly thunderous grooves. Despite the sustained pounding, there is a sparseness to most arrangements, fewer instruments in the mix, with piano often serving as counterpoint to the rhythmic clatter. It's less an orchestra than an expanded combo. There are few "genre" works on Secrets, and much less of what was conventionally considered "jazz" during Sunny's Chicago roost. New York, the artist's recently adopted hometown, was serving to liberate the composer's imagination. […] Several of these tracks — "Friendly Galaxy" and "Love in Outer Space" — became concert staples in years ahead.”

This record, although seemingly recorded at the same session or at least general timeframe in 1962, was not released until 1965, and then as a self-released Saturn LP. I’ve added it to the Spotify playlist.

Youtube playlist

Frustratingly, the next three songs recorded by the Arkestra in 1962 are not on Spotify or Bandcamp, but they can be heard as tracks 2, 3, and 9 of this Youtube playlist for the out-of-print Out There A Minute CD compilation, released in the late 80’s by Blast First (a collection of otherwise-unreleased 60’s tracks).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njrJ5Th0V4E

Tomorrow we’ll catch up on some particularly rare odds & ends and move into early 1963 (maybe, exact recording dates for a lot of this stuff are unclear, and there is disagreement about some of the tracks coming up).

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/secrets-of-the-sun

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeve!

thanks so much for reviving and doing all of this. :)

we're getting into unexplored territory for me

Again, the Bandcamp remaster is definitive, with improved sound and three unreleased tracks from the same session.

i think you referenced this upthread, but do you happen to know if the versions that are on spotify are the remasters, or the old ones? i'm happy to navigate over to the bandcamp page for listening, but i thought i'd check just in case.

they are the new remasters! you can see the unreleased tracks in the playlist.

this one I know. The most distinctive thing that leaps out about it to me is honestly Calvin Newborn's guitar playing. I'm not sure what confluence of events led such an R&B/blues-steeped player to Sun Ra, but he does some great relatively straight-ahead jazz guitar work here.

also one of a long line of Ra records that just feature downright odd mixing decisions. It's not that stuff is recorded badly per se, but so often things are foregrounded or obscured in unpredictable ways. You end up with these mixes, like on Friendly Galaxy, where the rhythm section and piano sound like they're in another room, muffled and muted, while the flutes are out front, clear as day. Tends to emphasize the otherworldly quality of the compositions as well, because it doesn't sound quite like a "live" recording nor does it sound like a carefully engineered studio session, it's some sort of strange mixture.

yes there's a specific Szwed quote about that that I considered typing in, I'll dig that up for tomorrow. "calling attention to the recording process"

huh listening more closely I realize that Newborn's p much only audible on that one track Flight to Mars...? which wasn't even on the original album

1962-63 - What’s New/The Invisible Shield

https://img.discogs.com/245040k5SAKv3--dogSPMejLfmE=/fit-in/595x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2903543-1306510624.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/jQUX7kmLo8YsYpRUyF-ZwJWa7K0=/fit-in/600x597/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-12070955-1527701249-2180.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/m6G3UfUYxECTaCS0AJFHQ_yRoeU=/fit-in/600x575/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-12070955-1527701249-7558.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/D2Pw5QSLxlj6DQi0NaSPMuZk9L0=/fit-in/600x601/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2903543-1439843296-5584.jpeg.jpg

The tracks from this era make up parts of the ultra-rare Saturn label releases covered here, two LPs not released until 1974-75 and then in a bewildering hodgepodge of different pressings, swapping out material between them (to make it even more confusing, there are also “hybrid” LP mixups with sides from Invisible Shield and Space Probe out there):

https://www.discogs.com/The-Sun-Ra-Arkestra-Whats-New-Sub-Undergound-Series/release/2903543

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Intergalactic-Research-Arkestra-The-Invisible-Shield/release/8014095

https://www.discogs.com/The-Sun-Ra-Arkestra-Whats-New-Sub-Undergound-Series-The-Invisible-Shield/release/7380383

The Invisible Shield is on Bandcamp with extensive notes (again with goodies - an extended version, three stereo mixes replacing previous mono, and one unreleased track), but I wish they had talked more about the discrepancy between their edition and the Szwed book, which credits the original LP B-side (tracks 7-9) as being from 1970. Apparently now the date has been revised to the 1961-1963 range (based on things like identifying the instruments and playing style, then cross-referencing with Arkestra membership or session dates). So I’m including them here… but the title track is gonna come later, they now say “recording location and date unknown, ca. 1966–68, possibly live concert excerpt.” A fitting mystery.

The record itself is another lovely romp, again cf. Bandcamp:

The Invisible Shield is an extremely rare LP. It was never officially released on El Saturn (tho it did have a catalog number—529), and just a few hundred LPs were pressed around 1974 and sold at concerts. It never even had a standardized, printed cover—each copy was hand-designed. Several tracks appeared on such other releases as Janus, What's New, Satellites Are Outerspace, and A Tonal View of the Times.

The A and B sides of the LP traced a mind-scrambling excursion from Earth to Elsewhere. The first side offered rowdy, early 1960s post-bop renditions of Tin Pan Alley favorites arranged for quartet (2) and quintet (3, 4, 5, 6), along with a well-crafted original, "State Street," for full band—a fairly mainstream outing by Arkestra standards. Side B opened with a locked-in Latin groove ("Island in the Sun"), before segueing into two jarring and uncompromising electro-acoustic soundscapes, probably recorded five years apart.

There's no stylistic bridge between the material. Sun Ra fans of the period were accustomed to new albums which were in fact compilations of older, previously unreleased material, often from different, unrelated sessions. The common denominator was the bandleader, who saw no need to stylistically unify the product. These albums were like samplers: Try this (hard bop), and if you like it, you might also like this (lunar beeps) by the same artist.

Sooooo… I don’t know what’s up with the digital rights to the Art Yard label, but the four tracks that were “originally” on the A-side of What’s New (rec. 1962-63, rel. 1975) are only available on a physical CD released in the UK by Art Yard, and not on digital media that I could find.

I managed to find three of the four tracks on Youtube - all but “Jukin’”

What’s New

Wanderlust

Autumn In New York

These are lovely, fairly straight readings of classic small-unit jazz, sweet and sentimental. I wish they were more widely available!

I’ve added the Invisible Shield tracks to the Spotify playlist, but I really recommend checking out the What’s New tracks linked above.

Regarding the weird mixing decisions discussed yesterday, here’s that Szwed quote:

“…Sun Ra began to regularly violate [recordings conventions] on the Saturn releases by recording live at strange sites, by using feedback, distortion, high delay or reverb, unusual microphone placement, abrupt fades or edits, and any number of other effects or noises which called attention to the recording process. On some recordings you could hear a phone ringing, or someone walking near the microphone. It was a rough style of production, an antistyle, a self-reflexive approach which anticipated both free jazz recording conventions and punk production to come.”

On these tracks, that’s only really evident on the outer-limits echofest of “Janus”, but there will be a lot more to come!

Gonna take a break until Monday and then fully move into 1963 (by our best guess, anyway) with one of my favorites.

huh yeah my ID tags on these tracks have them from 1974, but they do definitely sound like they're from an earlier era. I hadn't really bothered to dig into the details prior to this thread.

man the title track is definitely from later, there were no synths like that in the early 60s

totally, wild shit there but absolutely not from the 1963 era.

secrets of the sun is one of my favorite ra LPs, i just love the crazy reverbed-out psychedelic ambience, such great tunes too, friendly galaxy, space aura, love in outer space, all total standards... is this the first "love in outer space"?

I believe so, yes

1962 (addendum)

Weekend bump: I added some tracks from the Singles compilation that were also recorded in 1962, to wrap that year up. The first one ("Blue One/Orbitration In Blue") is a single that wasn't even discovered until 1997. Then there's a track from the aforementioned Out There A Minute compilation and a single they did backing up R'n'B singer Little Mack Gordon.

https://img.discogs.com/LPvC_doX_RMtIIILlmGi510PNTI=/fit-in/300x296/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-12411151-1534737929-9643.jpeg.jpg

Although not much is for sure with any of these release dates, the next record was at least partly recorded in 1963.

https://img.discogs.com/LPvC_doX_RMtIIILlmGi510PNTI=/fit-in/600x591/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-12411151-1534737929-9643.jpeg.jpg

1962 - When Sun Comes Out

https://img.discogs.com/PMryHvZVh-7k9a0PAQ_lGG3LNVY=/fit-in/500x500/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1042462-1260711729.jpeg.jpg

I was wrong, I think we’re still in 1962 :) The first of the NYC Choreographer’s Workshop (CW henceforth) recordings to be released in more or less a contemporary timeframe, this was recorded in either April or November 1962 (newer sources differ, but Szwed says ’63!! who the fuck knows.) and released as an LP on Saturn later in 1963.

Szwed on that year:

Off and on for the next year the Arkestra found work at pianist Gene Herris’s Playhouse, a MacDougal Street coffeehouse where they often played to an empty room. It was there that Sonny first met Farrell “Little Rock” Sanders, who sometimes was working as a waiter.[…] Sun Ra gave him a place to stay, bought him a new pair of green pants with yellow stripes (which Sanders hated but had to have), encouraged him to use the name “Pharoah,” and gradually worked him into the band. [not until 1964 though] […]The title song [“When Sun Comes Out”] introduced a second alto saxophonist into the band, Danny Davis, a seventeen-year-old from downtown […] saxophone duels would become a nightly showpiece for the Arkestra […] Sun Ra pushed the idea further, having the players mime the battles physically, jumping at each other or rolling on the floor.

As per Bandcamp, again the definitive issue in terms of sonics:

When Sun Comes Out is percussion-centric, and not just as backdrops—on many tracks whatever's being hit with a stick (or palms) is on top of the mix. Sun Ra's piano, some brass, and a quartet of saxophones compete for airspace with an arsenal of drums, congas and bongos, bells and cowbells, shakers and gongs (a good deal of it handled by the reed section). In fact, the mix often defies professional engineering standards, as musical hardware that usually provides the foundation occasionally dominates the lead instruments.

The horns are more aggressive than in the Chicago years, Sunny experiments with atonality on the keyboard, and on many tracks he dispenses with conventional structure. The Arkestra here includes four saxophonists (John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Pat Patrick, and newcomer Danny Davis, then just 17), who take liberties to extend the instrument's vocabulary, their solos often independent of the rhythm bed. Sun Ra was traversing the universe, and there's a lot of space out there. On this album the explosive drummer Clifford Jarvis makes his recording debut with the Arkestra, a relationship that would extend on and off for a decade and a half. There's also a fun ensemble vocal—identified as having been performed by "Arkestra Unit"—on a remake of "We Travel the Spaceways."

This remastered edition includes a number of sonic treats:

• The complete version of the opening track "Circe" (featuring wordless vocals by Theda Barbara); the Saturn release omitted most of the introductory gong sequence (by Tommy Hunter).

• The LP's side two tracks (here 6 – 9) in stereo from the master tape. All known pressings of the LP were in mono.

• The previously unreleased part two of the percussive composition "The Nile," featuring a haunting flute solo by Marshall Allen.

• The complete "Dimensions in Time," recorded at the Choreographer's Workshop around this time but released only in an abridged version (and titled "Primitive") on the mid-1970s hybrid release Space Probe.

So yeah, parts of this (tracks 6 & 7 especially) are serious skronkfests, but they are held together by new drummer Clifford Jarvis and his urgent, nimble pulse running through it all.

I love the way this records sounds, the semi-ritualistic percussive aspect to it, the opening vocals (presaging June Tyson’s involvement), the overall vibe. Definitely in my top 5 NYC 60’s recordings of his. I was previously unfamiliar with it until I started diving back into Sun Ra as a result of this thread, now over two years old. And don’t miss the rest of the session, which wasn’t released until much later as shown below.

The last track (“Primitive”) is from this era but wasn’t released until much later as part of the Space Probe LP, along with “The Conversation Of J.P.” included here in an abridged version (from the Exotica set) as the digital rights are with Art Yard and the full length 13-minute version is CD-only. The Art Yard CD version has a few additional tracks from these sessions. I love these two “outtakes”, percussion jams with 1 or 2 instruments over the top, mesmerizing.

Here’s the Youtube playlist for those CD-only tracks including the full-length “Conversation”

this was the earliest Ra record I got on vinyl and it definitely feels like the *beginning* of an era

1963 - When Angels Speak Of Love

https://img.discogs.com/2c1IuC2yNGLULBkhfGMcV8ORKVE=/fit-in/600x596/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7069000-1456571707-2334.jpeg.jpg

One of the rarest Saturn releases (estimated 150 copies pressed), I thought now would be a good time for this Szwed excerpt:

”Early in the 1960s Sun Ra was in Audiosonic, an independent recording studio in the Brill Building near Times Square, when he ran into one of their engineers, Fred Vargas. Vargas was a Costa Rican who had worked his way up from the garment district to a job in the REL labs with General Edwin Howard Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, and then on to becoming a recording engineer. Shortly after, Audiosonic was turned into Variety Recording Studio on 225 West 46th Street when it was bought out by Vargas and Warren Smith, an English teacher in Connecticut. Vargas and Smith were intrigued by Sun Ra’s music, and they began to record his small groups […] They extended him long-term credit, living with occasional bounced checks, and helped him cut costs (Sonny often saved fifty dollars by sticking his own blank labels on the records, keeping his cost for a 12-inch LP to 99 cents). Vargas and Smith allowed Sonny to press as few as 100 copies of a record at a time, when most recording companies had a minimum of 500. By handprinting the covers they could avoid printing costs altogether […] For the next thirty years (emphasis mine) Vargas recorded much of Sonny’s music, editing the tapes with him, mastering them, and helping him get his records pressed. He introduced Sonny to people on show business, like Gershon Kingsley […] who later helped Sonny program his first Moog.”

Can we get a hand for Fred Vargas, everyone?

This explains a lot about the territory we’re getting into, where some small-press vinyl editions were not rediscovered until years or decades later, and even then sometimes the recordings themselves predate the time of original release. We’ll get further into that later on in 1964, at the end of the CW era, when we discuss the loose ends.

Bandcamp intro:

When Angels Speak of Love, released in 1966 on Sun Ra's Saturn label, is a rarity, there having been limited pressings (150 copies, by one estimate), which were sold thru the mail and at concerts and club dates. The tracks were taped in New York during two 1963 sessions at the Choreographer's Workshop, a rehearsal space/recording den with warehouse acoustics. Ra spent countless hours at the CW from 1961 to 1964 sharpening the Arkestra during exhaustive musical huddles. John Corbett calls this "one of the most continuous, best-documented periods of Ra's work"; much tape from these seminal sessions has survived and been issued on LP, CD and digitally.

This release wasn’t reissued until last year!! I hadn’t listened until now, as I’m writing this up. It’s way more enjoyable and inventive than I was expecting. I though it was gonna be totally out there like we’re gonna get in the near future, but the real excursions are mostly saved for the epic B-side track. The first track in particular grabbed me, again a very sparse and arresting vibe like the beginning of yesterday’s When Sun Comes Out.

The Bandcamp edition has some newly-discovered stereo versions and a Sun-ra-created stereo edit of the 18-minute “Next Stop Mars.”

AMG review as per Bandcamp:

William Ruhlmann at AllMusic observed, "Sun Ra's music is often described as being so far outside the jazz mainstream as to be less a challenge to it than a largely irrelevant curiosity. But When Angels Speak of Love is very much within then-current trends in jazz as performed by such innovators as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Walter Miller's trumpet on 'The Idea of It All,' for example, indicates he'd been listening to Miles Davis, even as John Gilmore's squealing tenor suggests Coltrane; and, on 'Ecstasy of Being,' what John Corbett calls Danny Davis' 'excruciated alto' suggests Coleman. Ra himself plays busy, seemingly formless passages that are reminiscent of Cecil Taylor. This is a Sun Ra album that is more conventionally unconventional than most, with tracks you could program next to those of his 1960s contemporaries and have them fit right in."

cf. Szwed: “The record jacket carried a poem by Sun Ra […]”

WHEN ANGELS SPEAK

When Angels speak
They speak of cosmic waves of sound
Wavelength infinity
Always touching planets
In opposition outward bound

When Angels speak
They speak on wavelength infinity
Beam cosmos
Synchronizing the rays of darkness
Into visible being
Blackout!
Dark Living Myth-world of being

a lot of "when angels speak of love" was on the blast first "out there a minute" comp, though, right?

no, just the title track and the 12-minute stereo version of "Next Stop Mars" as far as I can see.

Szwed lists the unreleased tracks from that comp in his discography, but I did not actually realize it had previously-released tunes on it!

this is the kind of thing I was expecting to not be available tbh. I have Out There a Minute but am otherwise unfamiliar with these tracks.

1963 - Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy

https://img.discogs.com/8gBW2POOxPEo9-jeK0nNQ2G7sLs=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-10887314-1505976324-8906.jpeg.jpg

Fairly well-known, recorded in late 1963 but not released on Saturn until 1967. Repressed several times in the 60s and again in 1973. Later it was part of the Evidence twofer reissue series of the early 90’s, which is where I first heard it (paired with Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorrow). This one gets out there, but still stays fairly sparse and restrained for totally free music - Szwed refers to “the chamberlike quality.” The second half was recorded live at 10 in the morning at the Tip Top Club in Brooklyn, where Sun Ra could use their Hammond B-3. cf. Szwed “The acoustics are ad hoc, and on "Adventure Equation" the club's phone can be heard ringing during two passages.”

from the Bandcamp version writeup:

“Arkestra saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen are present, but playing bass clarinet and oboe respectively, while sax is covered by Pat Patrick and brash newcomer Danny Davis. Sunny plays Clavioline and percussion (as do others), but no piano. The Arkestra rarely plays in ensemble mode, but instead alternately deploys in smaller configurations, almost chamber-style.

Tracks are remastered, but no other extra goodies to speak of this time around. For some reason the Bandcamp version does tack on a bonus track recorded a year later, we’ll get to that at the proper time. On to 1964!

amazing posts, sleeve, thank you.

had this one for ages - the juxtaposition of sparse instrumentation that sounds at once both composed and improvised was not what I expected from "free jazz" when I first heard this record. It's creaky and shambolic and full of space and silences but it also sounds very intimate.

1962-1964 - Choreographer’s Workshop loose ends (excerpts from The Solar Myth Approach)

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-solar-myth-approach-vol-1

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-solar-myth-approach-vol-2

These reissues (originally issued as a double LP set) actually came out LAST WEEK, since I started this thread back up, as a definitive new remaster on Bandcamp. I’m going to forego c&p-ing the whole insane BYG/Charly/lack-of-documentation-or-provenance story (which you should all read), and give excerpts below.

BYG/Actual were ill-fated, it seems _ I didn’t know any of this previously:

Since the demise of BYG, the Solar-Myth Approach albums have been reissued without legitimacy in a series of ever worsening-quality packages in various formats. The Charly reissues were inferior to the BYG originals (and displayed different cover art), and a dreadful off-pitch, out-of phase 2-CD bootleg appeared on the Fuel label in 2001.

On a qualitative level, this 2020 Cosmic Myth remastering from best-available sources (tapes and discs) constitutes an upgrade.

With regard to today’s listening, four of the tracks from the double LP set are (by best guess) from this era. Essentially, most people used to think these tracks were contemporary to the 1969-70 era, but current research and deep listening has led people-who-should-know to draw new conclusions, dating four of the tracks on these two 1971 LPs to the CW years, 1962-64. Specifically:

Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive believes (and we concur) that "They'll Come Back" (from Vol. 1) and "Ancient Ethiopia" (from Vol. 2) were recorded either in Chicago, or at the Choreographer's Workshop in the first years after Ra settled in New York. Compared to everything else on the Solar-Myth Approach, the tight arrangements of "They'll Come Back" and "Ancient Ethiopia" are outliers. They do not sound like anything Sun Ra produced in the late 1960s—but they do sound comparable to his arrangements from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Reconsidering "They'll Come Back" in 2019, Campbell remarked, "I’d say Choreographers Workshop 1963–1965." […]Anderson also believes that "Realm of Lightning" (Vol. 1) and "The Utter Nots" (Vol. 2) originated at Choreographer's, in 1962 and 1964 respectively.

So, like the Out There A Minute release, the Solar Myth albums are grab bags of tapes, best illustrated by this excerpt from the Bandcamp writeup:

In a 2019 conversation, Ra historian/authority John Corbett explained that when Sun Ra and the Arkestra toured in the late 1960s and '70s, the bandleader often lugged along a cumbersome tape deck and a suitcase of open-reel tapes, which he would review during leisure time on the road. These tapes were a smorgasbord of styles, sessions, and band configurations from random periods in Ra's recorded history. According to Corbett, in several highly likely instances during overseas tours, Ra needed funds for return airfare or travel expenses, and would sell such tapes (or copies thereof) to European labels—a quick hand-off deal. Tape documentation could be scarce-to-non-existent, which would prompt labels to guess dates, titles, and personnel, or rely on skimpy (or fabricated) info provided by Ra. It's highly possible that BYG acquired the Solar-Myth tapes in this fashion.

This also accounts for the era-jumbled messiness of e.g. the Pictures Of Infinity LP on Black Lion, among others. I’ll try to slot the various tracks from these into the playlist where I can, given the sources available for dating them.

I’ve added the four tracks discussed above to the Spotify playlist. We’ll keep going into 1964 tomorrow, with the major work of the year.

the BYG/Actuel editions of vol 1 and 2 were some of the first vinyl Ra albums I was able to get (after Heliocentric Worlds, which always seemed to be in print) so they shaped my earliest impressions of Ra's ouevre. Had no idea any of these tracks dated from the early 60s though!

love the celeste (?) intro/interludes on "They'll Come Back". just an instrument I always love to hear.

1964 - Other Planes Of There

https://img.discogs.com/7KTw87pLAwYXMDvb4YXHF73x03c=/fit-in/455x448/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-8735044-1467656986-2537.jpeg.jpg

In Szwed’s book it refers to the original cover being the pink/blue color scheme above, but none of the early Discogs listings show that. What the hell, I like to imagine this was how it was first issued.

Recorded in early 1964 at the CW, released as an LP on Saturn in 1966. Only repressed once, that same year, and then out of print until the 1992 Evidence CD.

I got this a few years back when I went on an LP buying spree triggered by those newer cheap (bootleg?) Scorpio reissue pressings (they are $12 each new at my local store), but I think I played it once to rip it and then filed it, feeling unimpressed. On probably my second listen, it’s hard for me to see it as anything other than “The Magic City: Take One” as it follows the same format of a side-long 1st track and then a few (mostly long) tracks on the B-side. The 22-minute title track seems kinda unfocused to me, like a collection of solos strung together. Then a long mostly percussive improv, and a small-unit track called “Sketch” that’s really close to the earlier post-bop sounds. There’s a brief respite from the free swirl with the seasick quasi-ballad “Pleasure”, then “Spiral Galaxy,” a long (seemingly latin-influenced? I’m not a theorist) stately march-type thing to round it off - I much prefer the B-side tracks but I might just need more time with the epic. The Bandcamp version is remastered, but no extra tracks or anything. They say:

Rehearsing and recording at the Choreographer's Workshop gave ample time to develop ideas without a nudgy A&R exec watching the clock or chiseling the budget. This self-controlled environment (and the usual ad hoc recording quality) marks Other Planes. The arrangements breathe, they evolve unhurriedly, and there's much open space. This is music by process. In contrast to the muscularity of free jazz, Sun Ra's leader-directed improvisations have an orchestrated feel, a pace that juxtaposes the pastoral with sporadic bursts of frenzy and much rhythmic variety. Sunny's love of percussion permeates these sessions. The works proceed with great deliberation, but they move.

The cover most people know (and the one I have) is this one:

https://img.discogs.com/Ei2wiDdSQvdpTXVmqRjUIa1aBdk=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-2429717-1330663353.jpeg.jpg

On June 15, 1964, Sun Ra and a 15-piece band (the largest he had played with since Chicago) were booked at the Cellar Cafe, a coffeehouse on West 91st Street. Per Szwed:

“The crowd which turned out for this concert and one by Archie Shepp encouraged Dixon to stage a four-night festival of “the new thing,” a music still too new to be named or defined, but which was audaciously emerging in the face of a resistant jazz mainstream.”

This results in the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild, and some fortuitous connections will come from that later on.

ha that pink and blue sleeve always makes me think of the eye-bleeding color schemes of early Stereolab sleeves

1964 - Judson Hall, New York, Dec. 31, 1964 (Sun Ra With Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold)

https://img.discogs.com/uJ1XFDg4Bn5ETp6ur0XIaFC7ilY=/fit-in/600x588/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3968905-1351032631-5684.jpeg.jpg

Recorded as part of the “Four Days In December” concert series put on by the short-lived Jazz Composers’ Guild, released as an LP on Saturn in 1976, after two previous failed attempts to issue it. Some wild piano flourishes lead into a full fledged horn battle, and the music remains mostly free.

The Bandcamp version has what I think is the complete show, or near to it, with a lot of extra material added, as well as exhaustive notes on the gig. I was previously unfamiliar with this one. Clifford Jarvis continues to be a total badass on drums. John Gilmore was working somewhere else during this gig (see Bandcamp writeup) and is not present.

Important side note: In the audience at this gig was ESP label boss Bernard Stollman, and he liked what he heard. Soon he would put out the first non-Saturn LP since 1961.

before the reissues pharaoh sanders and black harold was one of the hardest ra albums to find bootleg copies of - as far as the "free jazz" era is concerned this is one of my favorite documents of it

MONDAY NIGHT INTERLUDE (added to Spotify)

"Twilight" - 1964-65

"Twilight," a previously unreleased recording that might have originated at the Tip-Top Club, is marred by significant noise, possibly from poor storage, tape degradation, or sub-par recording conditions. The track may have appeared on an obscure Saturn release or demo, as the surface noise sounds like a poor vinyl pressing or an acetate cutting. The instrumentation sounds like celeste, oboe, French horn, and percussion. Sunny had just two regular French horn players over the years, and Vincent Chancey wasn’t yet on the scene. That leaves Robert Northern as the only other possibility, which would date the track to late 1964 or early 1965.

Bandcamp link (track 6)

this sounds fine to me, and is lovely to boot

hey everyone I'm taking a break today, also I still need to listen to the last half of the Judson Hall concert

thank you! i'm doing some massive catching up

never heard Twilight or the Judson Hall show before

Solar Myth Approach Vol. 1 is an old favorite of mine. Adventures of Bugs Hunter! Great news about the new remasters.

this "Discipline 9" from the Judson Hall show is very pleasing, it's long and spacy. Karl asked earlier what the setlists were like, well this is the earliest example I know of - the next live things come in '66.

forgot to post before I left the house and my post is at home in a text file.

so everyone gets one more day of listening before starting 1965.

"Magic City" not on Spotify :(

Filed under "Sun Ra & His Arkestra"
https://open.spotify.com/album/4hqD5lN02dq75HeiP9TtNf?si=hHoIiEKASWOLMnM90b62LQ

we're not there yet! :D

(Heliocentric comes next, it was completed in April and Magic City wasn't finished until May)

I'm gonna go ahead and post that in an hour or two, still not home.

1965 - The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra

https://img.discogs.com/_3NIeJLoQmDWi0JmltCck5gZvFc=/fit-in/600x606/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6511976-1441561572-1664.jpeg.jpg

Szwed:

After meeting Bernard Stollman during the October Revolution, Sun Ra asked him to come and hear the Arkestra at a loft in Newark, and once he did, Stollman quickly agreed to record them.

I don’t think Ra was quite finished with The Magic City when this session took place, so I’m starting 1965 here. I can’t pin down an actual release date for the LP on ESP, but I think it was earlier in 1965.

I was previously unfamiliar with this one, although it is one of the best known as far as I can tell. Again, lots of emphasis on percussion and space.

From the “Sun Ra Sunday” blog:

Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 1 is rightfully considered a landmark recording and belongs in every serious record collection. It has remained pretty much consistently available (either legitimately or on bootleg editions) since the day it was released and its appearance transformed Sun Ra from the obscure Lower East Side eccentric into his rightful role as the globe-trotting emissary of interplanetary music. Heliocentric Worlds, Vol. 1 is, in a word, a masterpiece, but just one of a series of extraordinary recordings that Ra would make during this period.

after my third time through, I finally realized... there isn't really a drummer here! just various members on timpani, bells, wood block, "cymbal [spiral]," and "percussion" (by Jimhmi Johnson on tracks A3 and B1 only). still lots of space, though.

1965 - The Magic City

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a4103873125_10.jpg

A personal side note: Although I think the first Sun Ra I heard was Blue Delight, this was one of the first as well, a friend gifted me the 1973 Impulse reissue back in like 1992 (it turns out that it is more of the reprocessed-stereo garbage that is typical of the Impulse reissue series, see the earlier “Black Beauty” entry). But that 1973 edition still has my favorite cover design, hey why not hotlink them both:

https://img.discogs.com/nsM_qDlIi3anpjy1dja1P7LjB2o=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1037601-1229183494.jpeg.jpg

Recorded in April-May (side 2) and Sept. 24th (side 1) of 1965, released as a mono LP on Saturn in 1966, repressed twice (on Saturn and “subsidiary” label Thoth) in the 60s, reissued as part of the Impulse reissue program of the early 70s, again via the Evidence CD reissues in the 90s, and now finally in a definitive 21st century stereo version (see below).

What this most reminds me of is a symphony. It is so meticulously organized (is it composed? I’m not sure), it has so many moods. Is it jazz? I guess so, but largely because of the instrumentation used to make the music. Basically, what we are hearing in these recordings is musical telepathy by people who had been playing together for years.

Obviously this record is a goddam masterpiece, but all of you absolutely need to listen to the new STEREO remaster that the Bandcamp/Enterplanetary people put out in 2017:

"With supplemental material from the original tapes, the best possible sound and detailed research, this could be the single-disc reissue of the year." — NYC Jazz Record, Oct. 2017

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-magic-city-cd-lp-digital

In fact, I’m just gonna C&P most of the Bandcamp writeup:

Sun Ra albums like THE MAGIC CITY prove the categorical futility of "File Under: Jazz." When assessing the post-Chicago (1960–on) work of Ra, "jazz" turns out to be less a genre than a journalistic and marketing convenience. Jazz has a glorious tradition. Sun Ra was schooled in it, emerged from it, and grew to transcend it (though he never abandoned it). Even the cheeky term "Space Jazz" cannot frame the extremes to which Ra pushed his art in the mid-1960s. In this regard, THE MAGIC CITY was a pinnacle.

1965 was a turbulent year for the Arkestra and its leader, and many consider THE MAGIC CITY a flashpoint for that upheaval. Arkestra drummer Tommy Hunter, quoted in John Szwed's 1997 Ra bio SPACE IS THE PLACE, describes a typical performance of the period: "It was like a fire storm coming off the bandstand."

On the original 1965 THE MAGIC CITY LP, issued on Saturn, the monster 27-1/2 minute title track sprawled across side A. The "Magic City" to which Ra refers was his birthplace—Birmingham, Alabama. The term was the town's motto, emblazoned on a billboard by the train station near Sunny's childhood home, intended to reflect the city's explosive growth as a Southern industrial epicenter after the discovery of iron ore, coal, and limestone deposits. Birmingham was a place about which Sun Ra felt and expressed ambivalence: an outpost of racial segregation and grim smokestack-pocked landscapes, yet a city for which he felt twinges of nostalgia and affection. (His heirs still live in the area.)

Ra customarily supervised the Arkestra's improvisational process via keyboard cues or hand signals. He was always in charge—hence critic Simon Adams describing the title track as "27 minutes of controlled freedom." "The Magic City" was never performed in concert; saxophonist John Gilmore said it was "unreproducible, a tapestry of sound."

Although shorter in scope than side A's magnum opus, the four works on THE MAGIC CITY's flip side reflect the same improvisational approach, spatiality, and lack of structure. One session outtake, "Other Worlds," an alternate version of "Shadow World," is included as a bonus track. Also included are the final 90 seconds of the mono version, which were curiously omitted from Ra's own stereo version. .

-- THE MAGIC CITY: THE DEFINITIVE STEREO EDITION --

First-generation Saturn pressings of The Magic City were monophonic. The album was reissued on CD by Evidence in 1993 with the title track in mono and the LP side B tracks in stereo. A full stereo version had been issued on Sun Ra's Thoth subsidiary label sometime after 1969; however, it suffered from a technical flaw that prevented many copies of the LP from tracking cleanly through the first cut on side B. A 1973 gatefold LP reissue on Impulse featured reprocessed stereo, and a cheap, terrible-sounding bootleg LP—on a badly replicated "Saturn" label—has circulated in recent years. For this definitive reissue, Cosmic Myth Records used stereo sources which are superior to the Thoth pressing.

The “Sun Ra Sundays” blog (recommended reading, I’m gonna try to link/excerpt going forward) also has some good notes:

Ra had been working with the material that would become “The Shadow World” at least as far back as “The Outer Heavens” (on Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow) and it appears in rough form on Sun Ra Featuring Pharoah Sanders and Black Harold (there titled, “The World Shadow”). Here, the fiendishly difficult composition gets its first complete performance. A complex unison melody for saxophones is set off against a 7/4 rhythm and Ra’s contrary, angular piano. After a brief series of solos, saxophones return with the melody while trumpet states the counter-melody originally intimated by the piano. Szwed writes: “Sun Ra took considerable pleasure from the agitated difficulty of the piece, and noted that once during a rehearsal for a French TV show the producer was so disturbed by it that he threatened to cancel the show if they insisted on playing it” (p. 215). “The Shadow World” would become a fixture of the Arkestra’s live sets going forward, often performed at impossibly fast tempos.

for some reason Magic City is one I never got around to before. Heliocentric Worlds I know v well, in contrast.

Thanks for the Magic City spotify link upthread; I was searching for the studio "Shadow World" last month but could only find the College Tour live version...? I see the 2017 version has an alternate take of "Other Worlds", from the Heliocentric sessions.

Very enjoyable thread btw, valuable info.

thank you! nice to see you in here.

also Myonga there is a Spotify playlist for the whole thread:

https://open.spotify.com/user/weinventyou/playlist/4dAK9bNAV6C8zrf9twZpk3

Thanks sleeve!

1965 - The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra Vol. 2 (and Vol. 3, and The Sun Myths)

https://img.discogs.com/qgVXJnhBNMLm-pmtXijdoOEOlB8=/fit-in/592x595/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9011563-1473244115-8670.jpeg.jpg

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8tRUd669B4I/SiMGYVlORpI/AAAAAAAAA30/HUM2Vh5OPr4/s1600/Heliocentric+v3.jpg

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1841569126_10.jpg

Moving on into 1965, remember that The Magic City hadn’t been released yet. Also, everyone should listen to it! But at this time, Heliocentric Vol. 1 had just come out and was making waves.

Recorded in November, I assume this was a followup to the relative success of the first? From the Szwed book:

As soon as the ESPs were issued, Willis Conover, a Voice of America disc jockey, began to play them nightly on his jazz show aimed at Europe, where an intensely loyal following began to develop. […]And then out of the blue Alton Abraham suddenly released a flood of Saturn records which had been recorded over the last few years - Angels and Demons at Play, Fate in a Pleasant Mood, Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow, and Secrets of the Sun.

To go along with that, here is a flood of material, three albums worth (with one long track in different versions). I am gonna dive into this stuff over the weekend.

Detailed “Sun Ra Sundays” notes on Vol. 2 are here:

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/05/sun-ra-sunday_17.html

and regarding Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 3:

In 2005, ESP-Disk’ released Heliocentric Worlds Vol.3: The Lost Tapes, purported to be unreleased material recorded at the November 16, 1965 session that produced Heliocentric Worlds Vol.2. After some close listening, I am pretty certain this date is incorrect, although some of this material might have been recorded at the April 20th session for Heliocentric Worlds, Vol.1 (but then again, maybe not). Confusing? Yes! But these are the eternal mysteries of Mr. Ra! Nevertheless, the discovery of previously unheard music from the nineteen-sixties makes this CD essential listening for the Ra-fanatic.[…]

Is it possible that Heliocentric Worlds Vol.1, side-2 of The Magic City and tracks 2-5 of Heliocentric Worlds Vol.3 were all recorded at the same session on April 20, 1965? For that matter, is it possible that When Angels Speak of Love was also recorded during this time period? NARRATOR: I don’t think so The stylistic resemblances are striking and, taken together, all of this music demonstrates how intently Ra was developing his composed improvisational approach in the mid-nineteen-sixties. Heliocentric Worlds Vol.3 adds another fascinating piece to the puzzle, yet ultimately raises more questions than it answers.

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/05/sun-ra-sunday_31.html

Then we have the alternate takes and outtakes collected on the Bandcamp release “Sun Myth (African Chant)”:

A quartet of rare 1965 tracks from the Sun Ra Music Archive. The early version of "The Sun Myth," featuring a soundtrack of African chanting underneath the Arkestra's studio performance, appeared on the first pressing of The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 2. However, the chant is absent from the more commonly known commercial mix of the title. In fact, before it was removed from the mix entirely, the chant was mixed lower on the album's second pressing; it could be heard, but distantly. On the third pressing — no chant! How it came to be included in the first place was presumably Sun Ra's decision, and anybody's guess why. The origins of the recording are unknown, and as to why it was removed — see previous sentence. No documentation has been found explaining the evolution of the respective mixes.

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-sun-myth-african-chant

Also note:

After the digital release of Sun Myth (African Chant) in 2016, further research affirmed that "Interplanetary Travelers" had originated from the sessions for the album The Magic City, and the track was included on the definitive Cosmic Myth Records 2017 LP/CD reissue of that classic 1965 Sun Ra title.

Over the weekend I’m gonna try and write something more about late 1965 to early 1966, there’s a lot of stuff that happened during this time frame, plus some side projects.

some listening thoughts on the last batch:

I used to have Heliocentric 2 on vinyl, but I sold it. I don't regret that after re-listening, it's a little unfocused to my ears. On the other hand, the 1st-press "Sun Myth" mix with the African chant works perfectly as an epic side-long track. Go figure. I have no idea why it was removed.

I had to skip my first track in this project, the lead track on Heliocentric 3. Horns squeal, drums flail, I get bored. But I was then rewarded with some really phenomenal small-unit tracks for the rest of the record, I actually prefer this to Vol. 2 by a wide margin.

The other outtakes from The Sun Myth are enjoyable as well, big band tracks but coherent and integrated, definitely composed, and of a piece with the Magic City sound.

My offhand top ten of the 1961-1965 NYC era would be:

Futuristic Sounds
Invisible Shield/What's New
Magic City
When Sun Comes Out
Bad And Beautiful
Heliocentric 1
Judson Hall
Other Planes Of There
Secrets Of The Sun
The Sun Myth (African Chant)

Am I going too fast for people? Let me know. I've been able to listen to everything so far at this pace. Jamming Heliocentric 3 in the hot tub with a beer is a special kind of relaxation.

"The Shadow World" is one of the most difficult Ra compositions for me to understand; it's like one of those old Magic Eye photos - I just cannot hear the melody in there unless I'm listening to the right version with the right star alignment. Honestly, about this point Ra sort of loses me until June Tyson comes onboard.

1965 - Strange Strings

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2696443971_10.jpg

Another staggering achievement. Generally thought to have been recorded in 1966 but the newest sources say 1965 (I don’t know why, and the Bandcamp page doesn’t say, conventional wisdom was that the instruments were bought during the 1966 college tour of upstate NY and the page even repeats that detail). Again, who the fuck knows, we’re doing our best with dates here and it feels kinda right to revise this particular release in the timeline. It sure sounds more like The Magic City than it sounds like Nothing Is (from May 1966).

Released as an LP on Saturn in 1967, then languishing in relative neglect for 40 years (skipped by the 90s Evidence CD series) until a 2007 Atavistic CD reissue.

The definitive new 2014 version on Bandcamp and Spotify features an entire album’s worth of additional material. The album seems to have made quite the comeback buzz-wise from my admittedly limited vantage point. This is another sui generis exercise like the title track of Magic City, it has more in common with AMM than jazz imo.

After a series of concerts at upstate New York colleges (sic), Sun Ra purchased an arsenal of stringed instruments from curio shops and music stores on the road: ukulele, mandolin, koto, kora, Chinese lutes, and what he termed "Moon Guitars." In the studio, these were handed out to his reed and horn players in the belief that "strings could touch people in a special way." That the Arkestra members didn't know how to play these instruments was not beside the point—it was the point. Sun Ra called it "A study in ignorance." To this unconventional "string section" he added several prepared homemade instruments, including a large piece of tempered sheet metal on which was chiseled the letter "X." Art Jenkins was assigned intermittent improvised vocals.

Biographer John Szwed explains what happened next: "Marshall Allen said that when they began to record, the musicians asked Sun Ra what they should play, and he answered only that he would point to them when he wanted them to start. The result is an astonishing achievement, a musical event which seems independent of all other musical traditions and histories. The music was recorded at high volume, laden with selectively applied echo, so that all of the instruments bleed together and the stringed instruments sound as if they, too, were made of sheet metal. The piece is all texture, with no sense of tonality except where Art Jenkins sings through a metal megaphone with a tunnel voice. But to say that the instruments seem out of tune misses the point, since there is no 'tune,' and in any case the Arkestra did not know how to tune most of the instruments."

Check the extensive Bandcamp notes, apparently a double album was planned for 2018 release with even more material.

this era's all very familiar to me. Re-listened to Heliocentric World V. 2 last night - was unaware that there were so many versions of The Sun Myth (I've never heard the African chant one). Album is okay in general but nothing special.

Strange Strings otoh is something of a bizarre anomaly, just in the instrumentation. I have to be in a certain mood for that one.

1965-66 side project interlude

https://img.discogs.com/yhBolUvd4FyvVMYTvIPSnmtCCpk=/fit-in/600x603/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-14239502-1570755625-3548.jpeg.jpg

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0844597141_10.jpg

Two minor side projects added to the Spotify playlist. First, the late-1965 LP by the Walt Dickerson Quartet featuring Ra on piano (and arrangements I think). Nice mellow vibraphone cocktail jazz. Then we have some excerpts from the infamous Batman cash-in LP done in January 1966 with Tom Wilson producing and including Blues Project folks, weirdly only three tracks are on Spotify but the whole album is on Bandcamp.

Ra plays organ, replacing Al Kooper himself who turned it down (the rest of his band was happy to get a check). Ra brought along Gilmore and Patrick to play sax. I love this record! It has been widely bootlegged and I have a shitty vinyl copy. NANANANANANANANA BATMAAAAAAN.

This moves us into 1966, and one of the most important things that happens in this timeframe is that the Arkestra gets a weekly gig (on Mondays) at Slug’s Saloon starting in March 1966 that would continue every Monday for the next 18 months, and on and off until 1972, resulting in ever-increasing exposure.

from Szwed:

”And the musicians came. Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, and Art Blakey showed up. Dizzy Gillespie came (and as Sun Ra walked past, Dizzy leaned toward him and was heard to say, “Keep it up, Sonny, they tried to do the same shit to me”). One night Art Farmer, Mingus, Coltrane, and Monk all showed up. In fact Monk came a number of times, sometimes in the company of the Baroness Nica, who continued to be a doubter.”

1966 - Nothing Is (and associated tour)

https://img.discogs.com/hbFapJLFsyD_TY7IGaCQwm6Lfyk=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2091463-1326922373.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/JDqwbz5JhjaIV5PQhL5HwrqNKV8=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2091463-1326922391.jpeg.jpg

Recorded in May 1966, released (as an edited version of a long 2-set evening) that same year as an LP on the ESP label. Reissued many times since then with ever-increasing amounts of bonus material, ending up with a double CD’s worth.

The ”1966 St. Lawrence” release on Bandcamp is, as I understand it, the first set of two, and the 2nd set was edited into Nothing Is - which is, confusingly not available via Bandcamp (the whole thing is on Spotify). It’s probably some weird rights thing with ESP, whatever. These recordings provide the most exhaustive live document of the band so far. I added the full double CD version to the Spotify playlist.

As per the Bandcamp writeup:

In Spring 1966 Sun Ra and his Arkestra embarked on a tour of five upstate New York colleges. Recorded on May 18, 1966, at St. Lawrence University, in Potsdam, NY, this illuminating collection presents the full 70-minute first set, a partial recording of the evening's second set, and some pre-concert, soundcheck rehearsal takes.

The nature of the somewhat ad hoc 1966 engineering setup prevented a best-quality audio capture, and there are technical shortcomings in these recordings. Nonetheless, this historic set offers a spectrum of the band's repertoire, arrangements, and stage virtuosity over almost an entire evening. The performance roughly coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Arkestra's debut studio sessions in Chicago, 1956. The sets include the rarely performed "State Street," as well as alternate versions of "Theme of the Stargazers," "The Exotic Forest," "Velvet," and "The Second Stop Is Jupiter." The tour reportedly included SUNY Buffalo, Syracuse University, and several other unidentified colleges.

According to longtime Ra percussionist Tommy Hunter, the Arkestra often worked with two drummers during this period. A second drummer is audible on these recordings, but he is not identified in existing tour recording documentation. Saxophonist John Gilmore suggested Roger Blank or Jimmy Johnson as the second drummer.

This is the first known live recording since the Judson Hall/Black Harold show almost 18 months earlier. There may be even more recordings from this tour (Syracuse is mentioned) but only two nights have surfaced so far - the St. Lawrence College shows (early and late) that were edited into Nothing Is, and a show in Buffalo that is partially available in physical form only (no digital anywhere that I could find) on (again) the UK-only Art Yard label - in this case a 10” vinyl record.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3982250053_10.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/AojZuA8ELzgDEJc-5pDRWfKVDhQ=/fit-in/600x592/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-5462658-1393982817-1385.jpeg.jpg

This is a big chunk of sound, so I’m gonna take a break for a day or two as I only just got through re-listening to Strange Strings (which reminded me of some early Nurse With Wound and Anima as well as AMM this time around). Feel free to weigh in! We have around 125 records to go, by my rough count. So posting every few days will result in over a year of listening.

welp, that's my year, scheduled!

the year of the ear: sun ra 2020

i am enjoying the pace but am floundering a little bit. after spending so much time in the 1950-62 years, it's taking me a while to adjust to the new sounds. this thread is pretty much the #1 resource in the world (imo), a godsend

the Walt Dickerson and Batman records are great palate cleansers if you're burned out on the skronk :)

Yeah, love hearing anomalies like those or the doo-wop tracks pop up on the Spotify playlist during shuffle.

Been listening to said playlist for days now; it's wonderful hearing a decade's worth of evolution laid out in the proper chronology.

1966 - Monorails And Satellites

https://img.discogs.com/1vlEYA5YveNakPzhkkCdNlHkm5c=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7054180-1432636750-4517.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/ntm92L_huh-T2OLZsysf29CJDy0=/fit-in/385x388/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-5202933-1477367072-6196.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/fvI4DGHS0L_dg3yXNjYpSXpGz9Q=/fit-in/600x522/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-13127291-1548534494-9248.jpeg.jpg

A nice conceptual and musical break here. Sun Ra piano solo albums are quite rare in the overall discography, and this is the first example to surface. Recorded in 1966, the first volume was released as an LP on Saturn in 1973, and the second volume in 1974. Volume Three was only released last year in January (almost 53 years after the original recordings) as part of a complete set.

As per Bandcamp:
A tape of a third, unreleased volume was discovered posthumously by Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive. Released here for the first time, it consists of five originals and four standards, and was recorded in stereo.

Bandcamp also sez:

The playing here speaks less of a style, and more of a collection of statements. Some of the tunes, with their odd juxtapositions of mood, could be mistaken for silent film scores. Perhaps they were audio notebooks, a way to generate ideas which could be developed with the band ("I think orchestra"). Regardless of any secondary (and admittedly speculative) intent, they serve as compelling standalone works. The fingering reflects Sun Ra's encyclopedic knowledge of piano history as his passages veer from stride to swing, from barrelhouse to post-bop, from march to Cecil Taylor-esque free flights, with a bit of soothing "candelabra" swank thrown in. Sunny's attack is mercurial, his themes unpredictable. His hands can be primitive or playful, then abruptly turn sensitive and elegant. As with the whole of Sun Ra's recorded legacy, you get everything but consistency and predictability.

The listener also experiences something rare in the Sun Ra recorded omniverse: intimacy. His albums, generally populated by the rotating Arkestral cast, are raucous affairs. With the Monorails sessions, we eavesdrop on private moments: the artist, alone with his piano. These are brief audio snapshots of what was surely a substantial part of Sun Ra's life, infinitesimal surviving scraps of 100,000 hours similarly spent, most lost to posterity.

These compositions do seem meandering sometimes, but they have a nice flow. Improvised? Aside from “Easy Street” and the tracks on Volume Three, it would appear so. From “Sun Ra Sundays’:

While Sun Ra is highly regarded as a pioneer of electric keyboards in jazz, his prodigious gifts as a pianist have largely been overlooked, obscured by and subsumed within the Arkestra’s overall musical activities. Monorails and Satellites is one of the very few solo piano recordings Ra ever made and it is a fascinating document of his instrumental technique and singular musical thinking. Ra does not possess a dazzling virtuosity, but he approaches the piano as an immense orchestra, full of vibrant colors and contrasting timbres. Like a child at play, Ra delights in the resonant rumbling of the lowest octaves and the plinking, chattering chimes of the highest notes above. But Ra’s two-hand independence is sometimes truly astonishing: each hand in a different meter, in a different key, ten fingers layering multiple outer and inner melodies to create complex rhythmic/harmonic webs. Ra’s touch is aggressive yet supple, achieving illusionistic “bent” note effects.

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/07/sun-ra-sunday.html

From that same link:

Ra’s discography gets very confusing at this point, with various albums containing material recorded at different times and places, with a slew of singles thrown in to boot. This sort of confusion continues until well into the nineteen-seventies!

Yep, that will become very clear with the next entry…

Welcome back, earthlings. If your ears are weary of major statements like 2-hour college sets or triple LPs of solo piano, how about some sketchbook collections of “inside” performances harking back to the Chicago era?

1966 - Pictures Of Infinity a.k.a Outer Spaceways Incorporated (referred to here as POI) and Outerspaceways Inc. a.k.a A Tonal View Of Tomorrow Vol. 3 a.k.a. Spaceways (referred to here as “Spaceways”)

https://img.discogs.com/DkpgwTk_S8a49yPTZFrnxRp2IpU=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1037666-1326924273.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/NFxkbdHE2FeLPYx2fdWnsPfcK_I=/fit-in/600x604/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7405256-1471986032-6625.jpeg.jpg

It now becomes clear that full engagement with the Sun Ra discography is like reading the Necronomicon, it drives people to madness. Here’s the “Sun Ra Sunday” entries for these two “albums” (really a collection of random tapes, afaict), I’m including them both, even with repetitive parts, because it gives you the full clusterfuck picture (also, they have different and relevant bits of info). This guy gets really frustrated! I don’t blame him.

for “Pictures Of Infinity”:

This is yet another record with a horribly tortured history. In 1971, Sun Ra sold a stash of tapes to Alan Bates of the German label, Black Lion, who shortly thereafter issued this album under the title, Pictures of Infinity. A 1994 CD reissue added a previously unreleased bonus track (“Intergalactic Motion”) and all cuts were again reissued in 1998 on the three-CD box set, Calling Planet Earth (Freedom 7612), but there the album is stupidly re-titled Outer Spaceways Incorporated. I say stupidly because a 1974 album originally titled Outer Spaceways Incorporated (Saturn 14300A+B) was also re-issued in the same box set and inexplicably re-titled Spaceways, thereby creating all kinds of unnecessary discographical confusion. Be that as it may, this album (whatever its title) is drawn from an excellent stereo recording of a live performance in New York City circa. 1968 and provides a rare, hi-fi glimpse of the newly evolving “cosmo drama.”
https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/09/sun-ra-sunday_27.html

(Keep in mind that these recordings have now been dated to 1966 - this blog entry is from 2009)

for “Outerspaceways Inc.” a.k.a “A Tonal View Of Times Tomorrow Vol. 3” a.k.a. “Spaceways”:

This record certainly has a tortured discographical history! In December, 1971, Sun Ra sold a cache of tapes to the Black Lion label so as to pay the Arkestra’s traveling expenses from Denmark to Egypt. Sadly, much of this music was never released. In 1974, El Saturn released this album as Outer Spaceways Incorporated (143000A+B) – although it was sometimes entitled A Tonal View of Times Tomorrow, Vol.3. Inexplicably, some of this music also appeared on numerous hybrid pressings of later Saturn albums such as Primitone and Invisible Shield among others. Finally, in 1998, the German DA Music label released a three-CD box set entitled Calling Planet Earth (Freedom 7612), containing some (but not all) the Black Lion holdings, wherein this album is stupidly re-titled Spaceways. I say stupidly because another disc in this otherwise fine box set is inanely titled Outer Spaceways Incorporated, making an already confusing discography needlessly opaque. This is the kind of thing that makes Campbell and Trent’s Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra so absolutely necessary!
https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/07/sun-ra-sunday_12.html

The upshot of all of this is that YET ANOTHER hybrid version of these two recordings has been released as the Bandcamp version of Pictures Of Infinity (added to Spotify playlist). This does not have side 1 of the original Pictures Of Infinity LP, but it does have “The Wind Speaks” and “Outer Space (sic) Incorporated/We Travel The Spaceways” from Spaceways (i.e. about half of THAT album).

Confused yet? Me too! I’m not even gonna try to figure out where the other FIVE tracks on the new Bandcamp version came from. They say 1966, that’s good enough for me. Another lovely little curveball I had to sort out is that two of the “Spaceways” tracks have been retitled on the reissue versions (see below).

Regarding the music, the Bandcamp notes cover it pretty well:

In the mid-1960s, Sun Ra's commercial recordings and performances were reflecting new musical directions, many representing extreme departures from his Chicago (1956–1960) and early New York (1961–1963) approaches to jazz. Such albums as Other Planes of There (1964), The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (volumes 1 & 2; 1965), The Magic City (1965), Strange Strings (1966), and Atlantis (1967) pushed beyond the conventions of structured, beat-driven jazz to challenging frontiers. To many ears, they were no longer "inside" jazz at all. Rather, they were "outside"—groundbreaking musical forms that transcended categories. In jazz circles, this side of Ra sparked controversy, gaining him many allies, while losing others.

The 1966 recordings in this set, however, are largely "inside," and demonstrate that during this period Ra didn't abandon his jazz roots (in fact, he never did). These titles, many dating from his Chicago and early New York years, represent an updating of Sun Ra's early catalog (with some new titles). The playing is loose, but structured, and Sun Ra's featured soloists get ample opportunities to stretch out. Call it "harder bop.”

So at this point, we are missing the first track on side 1 of the original POI, the 15-minute “Somewhere There,” which is inexplicably greyed out on Spotify in the US. It is, however, on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1zLHflWp4

The 2nd track on POI side 1, yet another version of “Outer Spaceways Incorporated,” has been added to Spotify since it IS available in the US on one of the digital POI reissues.

The “Spaceways” LP has been reissued in its entirety physically, but not digitally aside from the two tracks on this new POI version. I couldn’t find those dual-titled tracks (“Chromatic Shadows” a.k.a. “Prelude And Shadow-Light World” and “The Satellites Are Spinning” a.k.a. “We Sing This Song”) on Youtube (sigh/wtf/shrug).

Aside from one other (very interesting) entry yet to come, this brings us to the end of 1966. The Arkestra was continuing to play at Slug’s every Monday, building their following. I wanted to excerpt this bit from the Szwed book as it provides some context for the globetrotting that was to come (see also: the bit upthread about the radio DJ in Europe).

“…Tam Fiofori, a Nigerian poet-writer who had come to New York in 1965 by way of London […] was beginning to write about the Arkestra in underground or arts publications […] He had attached himself to the Arkestra, and he could often be seen at work at the typewriter in The Sun Palace or traveling with the band. More than anyone else, Fiofori made Sun Ra known internationally. And he ambitiously drew Sun Ra deeper into the world of avant arts.[…] But Sonny was not about to let Fiofori or anyone else be his interpreter: “For three years (Fiofori) wrote down everything I said, publishing it all over the world, but he didn’t hear any of it.”

ZING!

One more note on this time period, as per Szwed, regarding 1966-67:

“Again a great number of records were released that had been previously recorded: Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth, Rocket Number Nine, We Travel The Spaceways, and When Angels Speak Of Love. And along with them […] Sun Ra’s first solo piano recordings.” (i.e. the previous week’s “Monorails” set)

I think the version of "Outer Spaceways Incorporated" on Pictures of Infinity was my first exposure to that song, still probably my favorite. Great set.

1966 - The Ankh And The Ark - Sun Ra and Henry Dumas in conversation

The last thing we have from this year. Recorded at Slug’s Saloom in 1966, a 24-minute conversation between the poet/writer Dumas and Sun Ra. Meandering but fascinating. And what the heck is that background music?

Added to Spotify, available on Bandcamp as well along with detailed and fascinating liner notes:

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-ankh-and-the-ark

1967 - Atlantis (side 2)

https://img.discogs.com/l8JmmgMEjOqQqNFV52zoZ8WdDh0=/fit-in/500x500/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1026849-1304464717.jpeg.jpg

Another stunner, but this LP is the first of (I assume) several that will be split up since different tracks were recorded at different times. Side 1 isn’t until September of 1968, side 2 (added to the playlist) was recorded at the Olatunji Center of African Culture, 125th Street, New York, August 4, 1967.

In terms of what was happening in Sun Ra world“It took almost seven years for the Village Voice to notice Sun Ra, but in 1967 jazz critic Michael Zwerin dropped into Slug’s to hear his band. […] nothing he had ever heard prepared him for what he saw that night.” (Szwed, followed by a lengthy description of the Arkestra in full freak flower).

Szwed quoting Zwerin’s review: “Sun Ra’s music is pagan, religious, simple, complex, and almost everything else at the same time. There is no pigeon-hole for it. It is ugly and beautiful and terribly interesting. It’s new music, yet I’ve been hearing it for years.”

Earlier in April, the Ihnfinity Inc. corporation was founded by Ra, Alton Abraham, and others as some kind of umbrella organization which I’m still not totally clear on.

The LP itself was released in 1969 on Saturn, and later part of the Evidence CD series. The new Bandcamp version corrects some Side 1 issues (to be covered later) and is remastered. Bandcamp sez:

“Atlantis" is an overpowering—and at times frightful—assault which refuses to coalesce into any conventional structure, and augurs Sun Ra's increasingly adventurous performances in the 1970s. The keyboards used were a Clavioline and a Gibson Kalamazoo Organ (which Ra re-christened the "Solar Sound Organ"). During this performance, according to biographer John Szwed, "Sun Ra rolled his hands on the keys, pressing his forearm along the keyboard, played with his hands upside-down, slashing and beating the keyboard, spinning around and around, his hands windmilling at the keys—a virtual sonic representation of the flooding of Atlantis." It is an uncompromising work by an artist unafraid to challenge his audience. The original 45-minute performance was projected for a full album, running across two sides. However, it was edited to fit onto one side of an LP, and is here presented in its commercially released form. A release of the complete recording is in our project queue.

45 minutes?!?!?

Sun Ra Sundays says:

The side-long title track was recorded live at the Olatunji Center of African Culture sometime after May, 1967 and is essentially one long Ra solo on the other new keyboard in his arsenal: a Gibson Kalamazoo organ. The Kalamazoo was a lower-priced copy of the Farfisa portable organ made famous by rock musicians of the time (think “96 Tears”). Ra attacks the instrument with unrelenting, two-fisted zeal, summoning forth a tsunami of sound that duly evokes the mythical flooding of Atlantis. It is a hair-raisingly terrifying performance and as menacingly psychedelic as any music of the period. After about fifteen assaultive minutes, an eerie calm sets in and the Arkestra plays an aching, moaning, richly voiced ensemble passage while Ra’s screeching organ threatens to overwhelm. The tension continues to mount until it is almost unbearable – then suddenly Ra cues the space chant: “Sun Ra and his band from outer space have entertained you here…” Holy moly! As Michael Shore puts it in his liner notes on the Evidence CD, “Atlantis” is “frightening, fascinating, enthralling, and finally overpowering music…(It) is one of the most monumental achievements of an artist who was always working in super-colossal terms.”

1967 loose ends: “The Invisible Shield” and “The Bridge/Rocket #9” 7” and the unavailable “Cosmo Dance”

https://img.discogs.com/lLE1JtHdu5SkWohiP7UuTIKIkAY=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6713009-1501167532-1631.jpeg.jpg

We touched on “The Invisible Shield” previously in this thread:

man the title track is definitely from later, there were no synths like that in the early 60s

― Οὖτις, Friday, February 7, 2020 9:34 AM (three weeks ago)

It’s interesting hearing this in the proper context as it is an appropriate companion piece to Atlantis.

Also recorded this year (there are relatively few recordings available for 1967 compared to most other years) was a rare 45 on Saturn, not released until 1982 (!!!).

“Cosmo Dance”, listed for this year in the Szwed discography and also not released until many years later (1979) on a rare late-period Saturn pressing, was also *probably* recorded this year. The record it appears on, “Song Of The Stargazers”, is otherwise made up of live 70s tracks and has yet to be reissued. The Sun Ra Sundays writeup sounds tasty - unfortunately I couldn’t find the track on Youtube.

Song of the Stargazers (Saturn 487 or sometimes 6161) was released in 1979 and is mostly a hodgepodge of various live recordings from the nineteen-seventies. But one track was obviously recorded much earlier, probably in 1967 or 1968, according to Prof. Campbell. Performed in a large, reverberant space in front of a sizable and enthusiastic audience, “Cosmo Dance” is an interesting quasi-modal composition featuring some evocative flute and oboe. Clacking wooden sticks set up a simple, repetitious rhythm with Boykins's bass and Pat Patrick’s “space lute” plucking out a droning three-note groove. Low horns and bowed bass enter with convulsively heaving whole-note fourths while flute and oboe and bass clarinet dance a medieval round. Flute and then oboe embark on expansive, Middle-Eastern sounding solos over the clacking sticks and throbbing bass/space lute, the audience bursting into spirited applause after each. Finally, the low horn/bowed bass whole-note fourths return, repeating several times before ending to more justifiably hearty ovation. Ra himself is not heard playing on this track, but the murky sound quality makes it hard to clearly make out who is doing what. Campbell says Marshall Allen is playing both flute and oboe, but that is impossible since both instruments are heard simultaneously during the ensemble section. So, is it Danny Davis on flute? It certainly sounds like him. There is also some talking barely audible throughout – is that Sun Ra lecturing the crowd or just random audience noise? In any event, this is a beautiful, prototypical Sun Ra composition of the period, perfectly realized by his Arkestra.

In other 1967 news:

“The Arkestra meanwhile had picked up a part-time manager, Lem Roebuck, who had gotten them concerts in the parks, sometimes with as many as thirty musicians, through Simon Bly, a man who staged musical events […] Roebuck had seen a singer and dancer in Bly’s series of outdoor musicals who, he told Sun Ra, would broaden his appeal. So Roebuck talked June Tyson into coming to a rehearsal […] She helped liberate Sun Ra from the keyboards, and made it easier for him to come to the front of the band[…]”

I’m not gonna quote TOO much more of the Szwed book at this point but suffice to say that June Tyson and her fellow singer/dancer Verta Mae Grosvenor (hired right after June was) brought a whole new dimension to things:

“June Tyson and I integrated the band,” Grosvenor said, “and we had to develop roles which fit the Arkestra. So we decided to be space goddesses.”

1967-68 - Solar Myth Approach (part 2) and A Black Mass

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2481139000_10.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/e8649Rre1edu7DqtzQY83plptKM=/fit-in/450x451/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1961188-1304249721.jpeg.jpg

Most of the Solar Myth Approach tracks are believed to have been recorded in this time frame, and have been added to the Spotify playlist (a few others come later, in 1969 and 1970, you can peek ahead at the detailed Bandcamp notes if you want).

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-solar-myth-approach-vol-1

We also have a recording of a play that Szwed says was recorded in 1966 with Amiri Baraka, but was released on LP in 1968. I’m not sure of the exact details, info is sketchy.

“A Black Mass” was reissued once on CD but isn’t officially available at the moment. However, it is on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=oi98wfZyqpU&feature=emb_logo

ok, i dug up my copy of "cosmo dance" from the record and it is indeed a very fine thing... here's a quick little temporary sendspace of it:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/mmu55h

thanks!!

1968 (or earlier) - Continuation (Volumes 1 and 2)

https://img.discogs.com/PctFBVZ2q_DATDNSdWl_yyp0jWI=/fit-in/350x342/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4653215-1371158552-2343.jpeg.jpg

Continuation (Vol. 1) was originally released as a rare LP on Saturn in 1970, and the origins of the tracks have been debated ever since. As usual, Bandcamp has the definitive version, including a 2nd disc of sessions originally released in rough form on the Corbett Vs. Dempsey label as part of a reissue.

The first track (ya gotta love the title “Biosphere Blues”) is a lovely stroll through older stylings, muted trumpets suggesting Louis Armstrong and older motifs, broken up by a more modern rambunctious sax. I don’t think many of these became Sun Ra “standards” so it’s interesting to hear these tracks for the first time (I’m ashamed to admit that I do have a Scorpio reissue of Vol. 1 on LP, but haven’t actually listened to it).

By the next track, “Intergalactic Research”, we are in full freak mode and the agonized groans and zombie shuffle tempo almost reminds me of the Viennese Aktionists. Weird shit. Percussion heavy, again, that’s one of the things I’m coming to appreciate the most as I work through the catalog this way, re-listening or first-listening as appropriate. Even his keyboard playing has a rhythmic surety to it.

Then we have a different version of “Earth Primitive Earth” (covered upthread under the weird Space Probe B-side Art Yard release) and a Bandcamp exclusive complete version of the track “New Planet”.

The B-side is all one track, as per Bandcamp:
The LP side-length "Continuation to Jupiter Festival" was reportedly recorded live at a club called The East, in Brooklyn, but there's no indication of an audience, including during quiet passages and after exciting solos; the constrained ambience of the track indicates a studio setting. Danny Ray Thompson, as reported by Campbell-Trent, "has a recollection ('not 100 percent') of performing this piece at The East." Indeed it could have been performed—but perhaps not recorded—there. Robert Barry is credited as drummer, but the aggressive stickwork (as Campbell and Trent note) sounds like Clifford Jarvis.

Sun Ra Sundays thinks this track is from 1969, but who knows. Also note: “The presence of Tommy Hunter and his echo-echo-echo machine on “Earth Primitive Earth” and “New Planet” makes me think these tracks were recorded prior to 1968. In fact, the overall ambience (and massively increased hiss) sounds like some of the Choreographer’s Workshop recordings (but this might just be wishful thinking).”

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/search?q=continuation

(added to Spotify)

Bandcamp on Vol. 1:
Several authorities believe studio tracks 1 thru 4 were recorded in 1968, but "Biosphere Blues" sounds as if it were recorded in the early 1960s at the Choreographer's Workshop. That location (and the year 1963) was cited on a limited-pressing Corbett vs. Dempsey CD of the album, linking it with early 1960s recordings which appeared on Secrets of the Sun and Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow. In 2014, Campbell-Trent offered a reconsideration: "normally dated 1968-69, but on stylistic grounds an earlier date is likely for these tracks."

The personnel listed below contains a slew of maybes. Based on the knowns and probables, as well as the sounds and instrumentation, Continuation closely reflects Sun Ra's album Atlantis, which was recorded in September 1968. In fact the Gibson Kalamazoo ("space") organ and the Hohner clavinet on "Intergalactic Research" are also heard on Atlantis, and Sun Ra did not use either in the early 1960s (the Hohner wasn't introduced until 1964).

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0507721803_10.jpg

Bandcamp on Vol. 2:
Continuation 2 would surprise Sun Ra, because he never released any such album. Around 1970 he did release Continuation, a limited-pressing LP of recordings whose origins have confounded experts. The Robert Campbell-Christopher Trent discographic atlas, The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra (2nd edition, pub. 2000), provides some guidance on personnel, but the citations contain many question marks. Several authorities believe these sessions date from 1968 or '69, yet they echo recordings made in the early 1960s at the Choreographer's Workshop. That location (and the year 1963) was cited on a limited-pressing Corbett vs. Dempsey 2CD set of Continuation, linking it with early '60s recordings on Secrets of the Sun and Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow. In 2014, Campbell-Trent offered a reconsideration: "normally dated 1968-69, but on stylistic grounds an earlier date is likely for these tracks."

Sun Ra Archives Executive Director Michael D. Anderson, who transferred these tracks from undated master tapes, insists they originate from '63 and were recorded at CW. That venue was a longtime Arkestra rehearsal space and ad hoc recording studio, a residency that began shortly after their 1961 arrival in NYC following the formative Chicago years.

The recordings on Continuation Vol. 2 (all in full stereo) feature small ensembles of between six and eight players, typical of CW recordings from the early '60s. At the time, Sun Ra was working largely with musicians who had come east with him, along with a handful of New York recruits. One of the few clues that argues against CW is the absence of the harsh warehouse acoustics characteristic of the Workshop basement. These recordings have a warmer studio feel, though they still reflect a low-rent setting.

So, I’m convinced. It seems that a lot of these tracks (especially the Vol. 2 ones) should have come earlier in the playlist, in the CW era, but I’ll leave them here. The record starts out normal with “Blue York” (I love it), and then gets seriously out on the next two tracks, swerving back into sedate cocktail hour with “Ihnfinity”, then percussive cosmic weirdness for a couple of tracks, then an early version of “Next Stop Mars”.

Please chime in if you have any thoughts on this music. I’m gonna start assuming that everyone here has read John Swzed’s “Space Is The Place” and go from there.

never even heard of these before!

1968 - Atlantis (side 1) and the “Blues On Planet Mars” 7”

https://img.discogs.com/ZVvsIveUpxh2Sova3WjmoKC6EsY=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-519911-1326849162.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/8HwyCAGj8yiUHtveCzWRKNivH18=/fit-in/600x594/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-14438349-1574863079-4262.jpeg.jpg

Side 1 of Atlantis and the two tracks on this single were all apparently recorded in September 1968. The LP (including side 2 discussed earlier) was released on Saturn in 1969. Then it was reissued in 1973 as part of the ill-fated Impulse program (with a truncated “Part 2” of the track “Yucatan” called “Yucatan II” substituted for the original Part 1), later reissued in original form as part of the Evidence series. The single itself is extremely rare, although a 1-sided version with just the A-side is more common (and released much later).

A lot of this is percussion-centered, percussion-only, or electric keyboard & percussion duets. Good stuff. The definitive Bandcamp version includes both parts of “Yucatan”:

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/atlantis

Could there be a better time than "strictly enforced social distancing" to bone up on my Sun Ra?!?! Whenever we go back to classes, I need to start my unit on jazz so heeeeeeyo -- thanks for the monumental effort of this thread!

I have read parts of Space is the Place (and have it) and know this-and-that about Sun Ra, but haven't ever focused super intently on his output. I saw the Arkestra on NYE a few years ago.

Hi LL! Nice to see you in here, please enjoy the amazing tunes!

Atlantis is epic but not one of my favorites tbh

apparently Danny Ray Thompson just passed :( RIP

Saw that. He had also played in DC funk/ proto-go-go band Black Heat

1968 - loose ends

STOP THE PRESSES! We have something to add in that we missed, released on vinyl by the US label Roaratorio. A set from May 1965 (!!):

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-His-Astro-Infinity-Arkestra-Other-Strange-Worlds/release/5457402

Not on Spotify, but the album is on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxxnXYC8iLw

There’s also track from Spaceways with June Tyson, mentioned earlier, recorded around ’68 that fits in here.

And then we have the first five tracks from Roaratorio’s album “Sun Embassy”:

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-And-His-Astro-Ihnfinity-Arkestra-Sun-Embassy/release/11599231

https://img.discogs.com/oJUV2ygx7W6sZr_DS1uzrF46LqQ=/fit-in/600x598/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-11599231-1519179330-2201.jpeg.jpg

These were recorded at various times in 1968, and have been added to the Spotify playlist. The last two will come in ’69.

This closes out 1968. As mentioned, Danny Thompson just died, at this point in the Szwed book it is noted that he had become the Arkestra’s de facto manager around this time.

Never even heard of these

they're new! Roaratorio released four albums in the last 5-6 years, all previously unreleased stuff.

so hard to catch up with this stuff! didn't get far with "other strange worlds", just sounded like a "strange strings" variation to me. i'm enjoying "cosmic strut", sounds sort of a ra-ified take on the "sanford and son" theme!

1969 - My Brother The Wind (Vol. 1)

https://img.discogs.com/CmiorZWim85ZPqdf1rg0bq1S-8I=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3351406-1326923289.jpeg.jpg

Blasting off to outer space on the Moog rocket, these tracks were all recorded on the new instrument in 1969, and released as an LP on Saturn in 1970. It was repressed a couple of times in the 70s, then ignored for almost 30 years, then there were two Scorpio LP pressings in the 00s, and finally a definitive 2017 Bandcamp version (added to Spotify).

From the Bandcamp page:

The original My Brother the Wind LP on Saturn (catalog 521) featured four tracks, properly sequenced here on as tracks 1–4. For this expanded release, tracks 5–7 feature three complete session takes of "The Perfect Man." The third and final complete take was issued in 1974 on Side B of Saturn 45 rpm single ES 537, reissued in 1983 on Saturn 9/7474, and included on the Evidence 2-CD set The Singles in September 1996. The alternate takes have not been previously issued.

Track 8 features the monumental "Space Probe," a solo Moog work recorded around the same time—and possibly performed on a Minimoog. This track was originally released in 1974 on the Saturn LP Space Probe, which appeared in a number of hybrid configurations during the 1970s. On at least one iteration, taped to the generic back cover was a typewritten card which claimed "Space Probe," described as a "moog (sic) solo," had been "recorded in Chicago, 1960's"—a fanciful claim at best.

The Sun Ra Sundays writeup is here:

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/08/sun-ra-sunday_16.html

This one is, uh… not really my thing, although it sure is adventurous.

I forgot one thing from 1968 - at the end of the year, the Arkestra moved to Philadelphia, where they would remain (more or less) for the rest of Sun Ra’s life.

1969 - Solar Myth Approach (two* tracks), Sun Embassy, The Intergalactic Thing
* - see below

https://img.discogs.com/r06mzyv_SlrnmET2a51r2OZBkl4=/fit-in/600x592/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-8493754-1462720148-3302.jpeg.jpg

Welcome back, my distanced friends. The perfect antidote for boredom and isolation, more Sun Ra!

I fixed the end of the playlist, some of the Solar Myth Approach and Sun Embassy tracks got out of order. Regarding the Solar Myth Approach tracks, please allow me this long Bandcamp excerpt:

The historical context of two other tracks merit reevaluation. The solo Moog synthesizer tracks "Seen III, Took 4" (Vol. 1) and "Scene 1, Take 1" (Vol. 2) are listed in The Earthly Recordings as being performed on a Minimoog. Ra acquired a Mini prototype in 1970—the year the instrument was developed—from Bob Moog himself and took it on tour. The prior year Ra had visited Gershon Kingsley's New York studio and recorded on Kingsley's modular Moog; those recordings were issued on Saturn in 1970 as the album My Brother the Wind. We asked Brian Kehew, a Moog historian (who wrote liner notes for the 2017 deluxe reissue of My Brother the Wind), to review the two Solar-Myth tracks and identify which instrument Ra played. His reply: "Sure sounds UN-like a Minimoog and VERY like the modular system. Ra plays a wider range on the keyboard than you could on a Minimoog. It's the longer keyboard of the modular system." As it turns out, on both volumes of Solar-Myth, Ra credits himself with playing "Moog synthesizer" — not the Mini. So in this one instance, it seems Ra was on the level.

But that's not all. According to Anderson, "Scene 1, Take 1" was recorded at the tape speed of 3-3/4ips, but for the original BYG LP it was—for reasons unknown—played back at 7-1/2ips. Hence, that track has always been heard at double speed. If you listen closely, at two seconds in there's a momentary voice which is clearly sped-up. The 3-3/4ips tape is too fragile for Anderson to run, but Kehew was able to convert the digital file to true speed. On this version, at four seconds in, you can hear the voice of Sun Ra at normal pitch. It's conceivable that Ra made the creative decision to speed up the piece for the album—although we cannot rule out engineer error. At any rate, here the original LP version remains as track #3 in the Vol. 2 sequence, and the true-speed version, which reflects what Ra's hands actually played, has been included on this remastered digital edition of Vol. 2 as a bonus track. (The way BMG acquired the tapes (covered previously)…) increases the likelihood of "engineer error" causing the incorrect speed of "Scene 1, Take 1," as well as explaining the incongruous stylistic mix of these two albums.

So far, aside from the newly-unearthed Sun Embassy tracks, all we’ve heard so far this year is Moog solos. The “slower” i.e. correct-speed version of “Scene 1 Take 1” is kind of a revelation, I think I prefer it to “Space Probe.”

The other major revelation of this sparsely-documented year isn’t available online at all that I could find, another Roaratorio vinyl-only release (a double LP) of previously-unreleased studio sessions from Philly called The Intergalactic Thing.

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-Ra-His-Astro-Ihnfinity-Arkestra-The-Intergalactic-Thing/release/8493754

This seems like the first truly major thing we’ve encountered that isn’t available for listening! I wanna hear it! The 1969 Sun Embassy tracks are quite good, particularly the funky keyboard workout on “Cosmic Strut.”

Notably, although The Intergalactic Thing says “Recorded August - November 1969, Sun Studios, Philadelphia, PA,” June Tyson is not credited. That will change very soon.

i gotta say i'm really enjoying "the intergalactic thing", absolutely my jam. there's another version of "saturn moon" which is a b-side of his i love, not to be confused with "moon over saturn" which is a different piece. this is a recording of the arkestra at their best, worth seeking out, thank you for bringing it to wider attention!

wait where did you find it? link?

oh nm you probably went to slsk or something

slsk it was!

Hi folks, taking a brief break today but I'll be back tomorrow to start the 70s!

i have so much catching up to do

GET ON IT, KARL

I expect a written paragraph on each record you've missed so far, 4 sentences minimum, due Wednesday

i will respond experimentally and intuitively, out of respect to the music

<3

Atlantis is the only Sun Ra I’ve ever heard, but it’s ace. A full-length 40-minute version of side two would be amazing.

xxxp i’m actually planning on something similar, to process my responses but i’ll probably post it here, soon as i get a computer so i can do some typing.

gonna make ya proud sleeve. real proud.

awww <3

oh hey I found a Youtube link for the live 1966 recordings released as "Spaceways" a.k.a. "Outerspaceways Inc." a.k.a. "A Tonal View Of Times Tomorrow Vol. 3", covered upthread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_nMNBqonrI

1970 - My Brother The Wind Vol. 2 plus “Journey To Saturn” 7”

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0949597874_10.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/-tsLZXOgxjIbC3crHzM1yCHKZzM=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3916768-1501167422-5845.jpeg.jpg

Enter June Tyson, her first appearance on record! Added to the Spotify playlist. Recorded in 1969 (the Moog side) and 1970 (the A-side), released as an LP on Saturn in 1971. A few Scorpio pressings, I assume from the 2000s, but other than that there was no reissue of this at all until the Bandcamp version in 2014.

The Bandcamp/Spotify version is remastered, but no extra goodies. One side of genius, one side of full blast Moog madness. As per their writeup:

The ensemble pieces (1-6) were recorded at Variety Studios, probably in early 1970. This is a tight band, and with the exception of "Contrast," these tracks feature something not found on many studio recordings by Ra in the 1960s—a groove, one closer to roadhouse R&B than jazz. There's a bit of Memphis blues, a touch of Booker T & the MGs, albeit with Sun Ra's usual disregard for Top 40 niceties. The horns contribute some characteristically spirited solos.

However, nothing foreshadowed what awaited the listener who flipped the platter.

As per the Sun Ra Sundays writeup:

The remainder of the album is taken up with five brief synthesizer experiments, Ra having purchased a brand new Minimoog of his own. “The Wind Speaks” explores white noise and fluttering filter effects while “Sun Thoughts” focuses on sour intervals and swooping, sea-sick portamentos. “Journey to the Stars” uses the ADSR envelope filter to create wah-wah-ing attacks and swelling sustained notes while “World of Myth ‘I’” consists of knob-turning pitch-shifting. Finally, “The Design – Cosmos II” conjures up some resonant, bell-tone sounds, with increasingly busy atonal melodies scattered over a repeating bass note. While these tracks may sound a bit tentative, the Minimoog would become a fixture of Ra’s keyboard arsenal in the nineteen-seventies and most concerts would feature a lengthy synthesizer solo full of apocalyptic bombast. Unfortunately, My Brother the Wind, Vol. II comes across as kind of schizophrenic: some of this material is the most toe-tappingly accessible in all of the discography, but the Moog experiments are tough-going for even the most committed fan. Even so, this is an essential album and a necessary companion to Vol. I.

And a side note from the same blog entry:

…another track found on Out There A Minute (Blast First CD) which was likely recorded at this session (or shortly thereafter). Entitled, “Jazz and Romantic Sounds,” it fits right in, with Ra’s bluesy, juke-joint organ, Marshall Allen’s impassioned solo and Patrick interjecting a honking riff here and there.

The link for that CD is upthread if u want to listen.

Lastly, we have the 7” single “Journey To Saturn”/“Enlightenment”, released in 1973 but probably recorded around this time.

1970 is gonna be a busy year, I count around ten entries from it!

weirdly, the first "My Brother The Wind" has vanished from Spotify since I added it last week!

you can still listen through the Bandcamp link above

1970 - The Night Of The Purple Moon

https://img.discogs.com/zHP6di0LYH4isDV2Ob2vc_08Rak=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6759048-1426146254-2182.jpeg.jpg

Another great one, well worth your time, the Sun Ra Sundays blog gets it:

In mid-1970, Sun Ra reentered Variety Recording Studio, this time with a bare-bone Arkestra and yet another new electronic keyboard in tow, the RMI Rocksichord. In his perceptive liner notes to this CD, John Corbett describes the sound of the Rocksichord as an “unforgettable nasal quack,” and that’s a pretty accurate description of this primitive, transistorized electric piano. In another person’s hands, this would sound cheesy and (now) hopelessly out of date. But Ra builds solid, evocative compositions around the instrument and it is, inexplicably, just exactly perfect. Unfortunately, the original tapes were unsalvageable, so this reissue had to be sourced from a clean LP. There’s plenty of surface noise present, so at least we can be thankful the producers didn’t get carried away with the noise reduction and de-clicking, which can often just make things worse. Although Impulse! was prepared to reissue this album in late-seventies, it has remained an ultra-rare artifact until Atavistic released this CD in 2007. Despite the less-than-perfect sound-quality, The Night of the Purple Moon is one of the great Sun Ra albums – and one of my favorite albums of all time.

Contrary to the decade-old notes above, the 2014 Bandcamp version says they salvaged and remastered the tapes, and includes some alternate tracks and *cough* a 1975 version of one track. An intimate, fun, beautiful record.

This LP was repressed three times in the 70s, unlike many of the Saturn LPs we’ve covered so far. And it’s also unusual in being originally released right around the time it was actually recorded, in mid-1970.

a fave of mine, i gave it a relisten lately to pick out my favorite tracks (one of my challenges with ra is to listen critically without being overwhelmed by volume). in this case my picks were "the all of everything" and "narrative". (in fairness to the '75 version, isn't that just a vocal overdub on the '70 recording?)

haha I believe you are correct, good point

1970 - Nuits de la Fondation Maeght Vols 1 & 2, etc.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1099621563_16.jpg

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3462538705_10.jpg

Starting in October 1970, the Arkestra embarked on their first European tour. But before that, in August, they played a few nights in France to test the waters. As per Bandcamp: “Ra's Fondation Maeght dates were not part of a tour. The Arkestra’s first European tour began on October 9, 1970, at Les Halles, in Paris. The Maeght gigs qualify as exploratory visits. Despite much controversy (see below), they were successful and led to the increased use of Ra's Earthly passport over the next two decades—to Europe and beyond. “

Sun Ra Sundays helpfully excerpts a relevant Szwed passage regarding said passport:

When they filled out the forms at the passport office in New York City, the clerk at the desk said to Sun Ra, “Sir, you’re going to have to give us better information that this. We need your parents’ names, your birth date…” [Dancer] Verta Mae Grosvenor recalled that Sun Ra said, “‘That *is* the correct information.’ After a few minutes, the clerk went back to speak with her supervisor. The supervisor was no-nonsense, but after talking to Sun Ra she said, ‘Sir, why don’t you come back in a few hours.’ When we came back there was another person there and he knew about it, and he said, ‘We’ll just give you the passport.’ It just got so out that they just gave it to him!”

That passport gained talismanic force over the years, and musicians shook their heads when they saw it. Talvin Singh, an English tabla player, said: “His philosophy was that either you be part of the society or you don’t. And he wasn’t part of it. He created his own. I mean, I actually saw his passport and there was some weird shit on it. It had some different stuff.” (p.278)

We’re starting to get into that weird period of the 70s where some of these live recordings clearly have a lot of visual elements as well, that don’t come through in the audio. At any rate, this is a solid set and probably my favorite version of “Enlightenment.”

Szwed again:
The audience had little or no knowledge of Sun Ra’s music, since his records weren’t widely distributed in France, and when they arrived they saw the Arkestra spread out before them like elaborate décor: musicians in red tunics, seated in a forest of instruments on stage, dancers in red dresses. On a screen behind them was projected a sky full of stars, then planets, children in Harlem, Indians on hunting trips, and newsreel footage of protests; a ball of “magic fire” rose slowly up to the ceiling; saxophonists began to battle like Samurai, then came together like brothers; and in the still center of it all, Sun Ra sat behind the Moog, creating the sounds of gales, storms, and waves crashing. From the very first note, an agitated woman stood up and cried out, “What is this?” Afterwards, she came up and insisted on seeing the written music. Europeans seemed to want to know whether there was music behind what they were hearing, as if it would assure them that this was rational activity, and Sonny was always happy to show them the scores. A man once blurted out that his “five-year-old daughter could play that!” Sun Ra readily agreed: “She could play it, but could she write it?” (p.279)

These recordings were originally released on the French label Shandar in 1971, and have been reissued and bootlegged numerous times. The brand new Bandcamp “remasters” are actually needledrops, as the original tapes are “unavailable.”

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/nuits-de-la-fondation-maeght-vol-1

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/nuits-de-la-fondation-maeght-vol-2

Tapes of these performances are currently unavailable. Transfers from first edition vinyl and digital restoration by Irwin Chusid

Sun Ra Sundays writeups are here for the curious:

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/11/sun-ra-sunday_29.html

https://nuvoid.blogspot.com/2009/11/sun-ra-sunday_22.html

Lastly, one stray track from The Solar Myth Approach is also from the Fondation gigs, and has also been added to the Spotify playlist.

oh man, love these records, some of my favorite Ra live sets

amazing cover photo of ra at the organ !

1970 - It’s After The End Of The World (Black Myth/Out In Space)

https://img.discogs.com/cQDi5NHVB5678QPB04AmKpd_NdM=/fit-in/600x591/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1756220-1535382606-9068.jpeg.jpg

Moving on to the 1970 European tour proper, this was originally released as a single LP on the MPS/BASF label, with parts of the Oct. 17th and Nov. 7th shows included. It was reissued as a double CD in 1998 under the title “Black Myth/Out In Space,” including (I believe) all of both shows. This record is NOT on Bandcamp, must be a rights thing again. But, the original abridged version is on Spotify and has been added to our playlist.

The full double CD is on Youtube is you want to listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvoEQoVDtFk

yes !!

this one is pretty rough going so far, lots of squealing

idk i thinks it’s great, lots of fun too

If you are not a reality, whose myth are you?
If you are not a myth, whose reality are you?

ok yeah I take it back, was listening to "Black Myth" at the time of that post

is this the first one to feature Alan Silva's insane string playing so prominently? Admittedly I have not absorbed the Maeght gigs in full yet either.

the two Maeght albums were the first Ra I heard. there's still too much I haven't heard but I still end up going back to them, every listen is like the first listen -- every time you think you've adjusted to the scope of this band or their intensity, they tear themselves open a little further, and then, out of nowhere, the electronics

still the ones I recommend to people asking for a good first impression because if nothing else they give you THE FULL RANGE

1971 - Universe In Blue

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3180346819_10.jpg

OK, I was wrong about 1970, things are still confusing and I thought there were more recordings in that year than we ended up covering. Moving on, we have another live recording - it looks like it’s gonna be a while before we hear a studio date again.

The 2014 Bandcamp/Spotify version of this is definitive, with newly discovered stereo versions and unreleased material:

Universe in Blue is a rarity. This collection of undated live club performances was issued in small-run pressings with two different LP covers on Sun Ra's Saturn label around 1972, but has largely escaped further notice. It's never been reissued on LP, CD or (prior to this edition) digitally.

There are also newer Scorpio pressings of the original LP, I have one. Sun Ra Sundays covers the album as well:

Released as Saturn ESR 5000 IGB in 1972 (in mono), Universe in Blue was recorded live somewhere on the west coast presumably around August, 1971. However, the greatly reduced Arkestra suggests that it could have been recorded “somewhere on the road” in mid-1972, as they straggled across the country on their way back to Philadelphia for good (see Campbell & Trent pp.172-173). To further confuse the matter, “The Good Doctor” at ESP-disk’ provides a firm date of August 17, 1971 but insists the venue is Slug’s Saloon in New York City (see below). Who knows? In any event, behind the striking, psychedelicized album cover awaits a tasty selection of smoky, blues-based compositions, dominated by Ra’s patented “space-age barbeque” organ.

Although not excerpted above, that blog entry also covers the initial appearance of the stereo takes and unreleased tracks (first heard in a 2008 radio show).

These recordings (unreleased track excepted) sound very much of a piece with the A-side of My Brother The Wind Vol. 2 to my ears, a soft and smoky late-night vibe.

cosmic strip club vibes for sure

loving this 12 minute wolf eyes cameo

1971 - The Paris Tapes: Live At Le Théâtre Du Châtelet

https://img.discogs.com/5vRQWNA6b4V99MdWrpKiRjo2VNg=/fit-in/600x534/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2497164-1579539284-3490.jpeg.jpg

Recorded in November 1971 at the start of the second European tour, but not issued until 2010 as a definitive double CD - not on Bandcamp, but it is on Spotify and has been added to the playlist.

I keep being reminded of the classic ILM thread “Do I Have Too Many Acid Mothers Temple Albums?” except here it’s “Do I have too many live versions of Discipline 27?” The real surprise in this set to me is a version of “Angels And Demons At Play” that pops up on the 2nd disc.

laser beams right out the gate ! an auspicious beginning.

probably my favorite discovery since your tenure as spaceship pilot, sleeve. i thank you for bringing this to my attention.

yeah this one is sounding good. a 22-minute "Watusi"! also note the early (first existing?) version of "Space Is The Place"

oh FFS I just screwed up the playlist order. Karl can you revert it somehow?

it's now sorted by "Date Added" instead of our meticulous curating

I was trying to make the damn album title field wider and sorted by album name instead :(

uh oh!

hmm...it still looks correct on my Spotify! Starts with I Am Strange and I Am and Instrument, ends with Untitled Synthesizer Solo from the Paris Tapes

oh good! anyone else, let us know if there are issues

god, the end of discipline 27 here reminds me so much of "brakhage" by stereolab

not sure whether or not it's a coincidence

this concert is a jam, is this the pre-mitotic d27?

Keeping in mind that it's not the only time they have borrowed from Mr. Blount, it is really too close to be a coincidence.

1971 - Calling Planet Earth (Copenhagen 12/5/71)

https://img.discogs.com/V2TWkUbxf06OB0V_X6TL70yqmOQ=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7652257-1445976349-1734.jpeg.jpg

An obscurity that wasn’t released until 1998 as part of a 3CD set (covered upthread as this set is one of the only ways you can get/hear Outer Spaceways Inc and Spaceways), and also as an individual CD and 2015 LP.

This is the first one in a significant run of albums that are NOT on Spotify or Bandcamp, and not even really on Youtube from what I can find. Here’s the one track that was available:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aBETuLd92M

That’s all I got this time around, I’ll be back tomorrow with more unavailable recordings!

1971 - The Egypt recordings (December 12th, 16th, and 17th of 1971): Dark Myth Equation Visitation a.k.a Nature’s God LP, Nidhamu LP, and Horizon LP

https://img.discogs.com/OOA36DJ1nEqs_EzYQ-lmN37BX8E=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6469455-1477078663-4812.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/tCZ9rDZ3NR62b7iDXczFGldnp20=/fit-in/600x602/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1905658-1496408187-6651.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/Ziuzg_qGJ5xnKxn2tUAMuQYBLF4=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2207362-1477077967-7306.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/A2lpB28n_m6F5aO3IiN6mmH_S5o=/fit-in/600x593/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9351796-1479082082-2088.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/TM10Q2OSIsSZN5k04Q6NZOLlbKk=/fit-in/600x596/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-8702297-1466935832-6790.jpeg.jpg

Legendary Cairo recordings made at Hartmut Geerken’s house, from a TV broadcast, and from two nights at the Ballon Theater. Specific details are in the liner notes of the DIscogs listings. The Szwed book goes into some detail which I will excerpt here:

“When they finished the Copenhagen concert on December 5 they decided at the last minute to go to Egypt instead of straight back to New York. Sun Ra sold some concert tape to Black Lion records (see upthread for the tortured history of these tapes, which are still missing) and they left on December 7, not knowing anyone in Egypt and not sure of where they would stay or how they would pay for it. […] With the help of Hartmut Geerken, a writer and free musician who was teaching at the Goethe Institute in Cairo, the Arkestra cobbled together a kind of local mini-tour. […] They intended to stay only a few days, but as usual it turned into two weeks […].”

In the end, band members had to sell their personal items to get the tickets back home.

Originally released as three albums on Saturn during 1972-73 and sporadically repressed through the 70s with a variety of increasingly-sketchy handmade covers. View the Discogs master releases on the 1st pressing links below to see all variants. My favorites are included above. These were mysterious rare artifacts until the CD reissues a decade ago, some pressings had no liner notes at all and some (iirc) miscredited the location of the recording as Holland.

Dark Myth Equation Visitation (Live In Egypt Vol. 1)
Nidhamu (Live In Egypt Vol. II)
Horizon

It looks like Recommended did some distribution of Horizon represses (or deadstock) in the 80s (more on that when we get there), and Art Yard reissued all of these as CDs in the late 2000s:

double CD of Dark Myth and Nidhamu, minus the interview on the original Dark Myth LP
single CD of Horizon with extra material

As usual for the Art Yard reissues, there are no digital rights in the US. Correspondingly, none of these are on Spotify or Bandcamp. It looks like a massive 5LP box set is (was?) scheduled for June of 2020 Record Store Day:

https://www.roughtrade.com/us/sun-ra/cairo-1971

https://images.roughtrade.com/product/images/files/000/191/817/hero/Ev8_HJWw.jpeg?1583360137

Here are some scattered Youtube links:

“To Nature’s God” from Dark Myth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwohk4ZT4R0

“Nidhamu” from Nidhamu:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dydQDMOfRQ&list=RD7dydQDMOfRQ&start_radio=1

and the entire expanded “Horizon” CD on Strut:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzB5FFaRRE

This brings us to the end of 1971, and I leave you with this astonishing 1971 video footage from Egypt and Italy originally shot by band member Tommy Hunter, courtesy of the internet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5azChH6Z7QA

and a 1971 interview from Helsinki that should have been posted with Calling All Planets yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMMWNwVhq5k

damn, that "Nidhamu" link is already broken

I listened to Horizon this morning but wasn't really feeling it

here's a different link for "Nidhamu"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dydQDMOfRQ

i want that egypt box sooooo bad

$86 is a pretty good deal for 5 LPs these days!

no kidding

1971 - France, 1/8/72 "Jazz Session"

Weekend bonus viewing, video shot in France on their way back home from Egypt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQUde8MOyc

oops that should read 1972, my bad

an uncharacteristic evening post:

1972 - Soundtrack to “Space Is The Place”

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0645369563_10.jpg

“Space Is the Place is an 85-minute Afrofuturist[1] science fiction film made in 1972 and released in 1974.[2][3] It was directed by John Coney, written by Sun Ra and Joshua Smith, and features Sun Ra and his Arkestra. A soundtrack was released on Evidence Records.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Is_the_Place

From that wiki link:

“During the late-1960s and early-1970s, Sun Ra and his ensemble made several forays to California. In 1971, Sun Ra taught a course, "The Black Man in the Cosmos", at University of California, Berkeley.[4] Over the course of these California visits, Sun Ra came to the attention of Jim Newman, who produced the film Space Is the Place starring Sun Ra and his Arkestra, and based, in part, on Sun Ra's Berkeley lectures.”

While the song itself is probably the Arkestra’s most well-known endeavor, true heads know that the soundtrack and the studio LP of the same name are different beasts altogether. We start with the actual soundtrack to this fully zonked flick which I proudly own as a legit DVD release.

I feel like this merits a lengthy excerpt from the notes to the 2019 Bandcamp edition:

Despite being called as much in its original 1993 issue, this album is NOT the soundtrack of SPACE IS THE PLACE. This is the music that was recorded by Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Solar Arkestra FOR the film. Most of the music on this album is not heard in the film except in short excerpts, and there's music in the film which is not on this album. Hence, this is not a soundtrack album. It's a first-rate Sun Ra studio album that stands on its own, apart from the film.

The film was produced while Ra and his entourage were based in Oakland CA. The bandleader booked a recording session at an unidentified studio originally thought to be in that city. However, Jim Newman told Sun Ra discographers Robert L. Campbell and Christopher Trent that the studio was “on Connecticut Street at the foot of Potrero Hill in San Francisco." The album features a mix of reworked Ra evergreens (e.g. "We Travel the Spaceways," "Satellites Are Spinning," "Watusa," and "Love in Outer Space") as well as tracks used in the film and appearing nowhere else (e.g. "The Overseer," "Cosmic Forces," and "Mysterious Crystal").

Singer/dancer June Tyson offers sparkling lead vocals on "Outer Spaceways Inc.," "Satellites Are Spinning," and "We Travel the Spaceways," as well as impassioned declamations on "Black Man." John Gilmore, one of the greatest tenor saxophonists of his generation, largely served as drummer on these sessions. Ra provides his customary cosmic pyrotechnics on a battery of electronic keyboards.

These tracks were first issued on CD in 1993 by Evidence Records; the package was subtitled "Soundtrack to the film" and featured different cover art. That CD is long out of print, but can be purchased on the secondary market. The contents of the album were issued on LP by Sutro Park in 2010, and they created new cover art. (So did we.) Yet another CD edition was included (along with a DVD of the film) in the 40th Anniversary coffee-table book published in 2014 by Harte Recordings.

The audio for this digital release has some minor improvements over the Evidence and Harte CDs (including the reduction of 60Hz electrical hum during quiet passages), but the respective editions are largely comparable. Wherever the tracks were originally recorded, they were well-recorded. However, according to Jim Newman, the original master tapes were destroyed in a studio fire. All that remains is a quarter-inch stereo mixdown tape.

i'm liking "mysterious crystal" quite a lot

OK I guess this still isn't the "actual soundtrack" - how about "used and unused cues and incidental music for/from the film"

1972 - Astro Black

https://img.discogs.com/ePtL-4AGnj7lJAlIyNKTJFD1Xvg=/fit-in/500x475/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-996671-1259614379.jpeg.jpg

The beginning of the “Impulse era” and the first studio recordings since 1970’s The Night Of The Purple Moon. Recorded in 1972, released on (quad) LP in 1973. This wasn’t physically reissued for 45 years! The new version has a much worse album cover which I will not link here. I was previously unfamiliar with this one, Sun Ra Sundays likes it a lot:

According to the jacket of Astro Black, Sun Ra’s first new recording for ABC/Impulse! was made at “El Saturn Studio” in Chicago on May 7, 1972, but that date is questionable since the Arkestra was just leaving California in May -- and the studio name is “strictly mythic” (Campbell & Trent p.186) Whatever the date or actual location, it was clearly made in a professional recording studio as the sound quality is exceptionally good. Sun Ra was obviously determined to take advantage of the mass exposure a major label could bring, producing one his finest albums. Notably, Ronnie Boykins makes a welcome return on bass after a long absence and he is prominently featured here, driving the band to great heights. The Arkestra is augmented with both Akh Tal Ebah and Kwami Hadi on trumpets, Charles Stephens on trombone, Alzo Wright on violin and viola, along with several conga players, who give much of this record its avant-exotica feel. But Boykins’s clearly inspires Sonny and his fluent explorations on organ and synthesizer throughout the album demonstrate a consummate mastery of electronic instruments. Astro Black is, in my opinion, one of Sun Ra’s crowning recorded achievements.

The 2018 Bandcamp edition is remastered, but has no extra material. The liners there give more detail about the Impulse deal:

After years of self-releasing albums on his own Saturn label, Sun Ra signed with ABC's Impulse jazz imprint in 1972. A reissue series of earlier hard-to-find Saturn LPs was undertaken, along with a few new projects. The first premiere, Astro Black, was recorded and released in 1973 in the now-obsolete quadraphonic format (tho it was playable on stereo phonographs). The undertaking signaled a noble campaign on the part of Impulse producer Ed Michel to mainstream Sun Ra and broaden his audience, without any sacrifice of artistic integrity.

But the effort was doomed: the label suffered commercial losses on the project and lost faith in avant-garde space funk. Within two years, after corporate reshuffling (i.e., firings and hirings), ABC's Sun Ra project was abandoned. The company clipped the corners of the cardboard sleeves and dumped the lavishly illustrated gatefold LPs in record store discount bins (or as some disgruntled fans claimed, UNDER the bins). Yet the Sisyphean venture produced some worthwhile new music.

remastered, but has no extra material

every once in a while, this is a relief to read :)

really enjoying "astro black" so far; this is the first time i've encountered this one. "hidden spheres" is particularly good, i love ronnie boykins's bass playing, reminiscent maybe of cecil mcbee from the same era. and i think i'm hearing a stray cuíca yelp towards the beginning ?

Impulse producer Ed Michel

i knew that michel had taken over for bob thiele (who went on to form flying dutchman), but i had never heard the reasons for thiele's departure. from wikipedia:

One of Thiele's last productions was the Louis Armstrong song "What A Wonderful World", which Thiele co-wrote and produced for ABC's pop division shortly before Armstrong's death. Although the musicians were apparently unaware of the drama, the recording session is reported to have been the scene of a clash between Thiele and Newton. When Newton arrived at the session he became upset when he discovered that Armstrong was recording a ballad rather than a 'Dixieland'-style number like his earlier hit "Hello Dolly". According to Thiele's own account, this led to a screaming match; Newton then had to be locked out of the studio and he stood outside throughout the session, banging on the door and yelling to be let in.

anyway, ed michel gives an account of how he signed the arkestra in "The house that Trane built: the story of Impulse Records" which i'll reproduce (partially) here:

Impulse was sensational from my point of view. Nobody involved with the operation knew anything at all about jazz. I was doing lots and lots of new recording, and lots and lots more reissues—the only time my presence was required anyplace besides the studio was during semiannual Sales Meetings. I would be advised that I’d be given perhaps half an hour to play excerpts from from upcoming new releases for the Sales and Promotion guys from the distributors.

I’d spent a bunch of time in meetings grousing about how swell it would be to do some interesting artist-signing, and pointed out, repeatedly, that Sun Ra had never had any representation on a “real” label.

[…]

Remember, this is 1972, when, in terms of radio play, “underground” press exposure, and an open-minded buying market, it seemed like anything was possible. So, after some telephone conversations and a couple of deal memos went forth from ABC to Saturn, into a meeting in Jay Lasker’s office went a fully enrobed Sun Ra and his Chicago-based business partner Alton Abraham. A standard Artist’s Contract was presented. Alton put it in his briefcase, shook hands all ‘round, and said, “We’ll look it over and get back to you,” and they were gone.

The following day, Alton was back with a retyped contract, turning everything on its head, with ABC, rather than Saturn, at the short end of the stick.

All the air puffed right out of the deal. I tried to explain the Inexplicable Behavior of These People, and pointed out that if it wasn’t possible to make a New Recording Artist Deal, perhaps it might be possible to make a Licensing Agreement for part of the Saturn catalog.

Amazingly, it worked. I still don’t know why or how. So an agreement was drawn up, under which twenty-one Saturn LPs were to be made available on Impulse, along with a sampler to be drawn from those sides.

also want to add this ed michel anecdote from the studio:

I liked to mix at the pain threshold. It was really loud. We were mixing it quadraphonically in a relatively small room. Sun Ra was sleeping deep and snoring loud. For some reason, I stopped the tape in the middle of the tune. He came awake, wheeled his head like an owl does—all around the room, checking everything out. He said, 'You Earth people sleep too much.' He put his head down and started to snore again.

1972 - Space Is The Place

https://img.discogs.com/N01RA8sg8TJ2doZI3fMUwdumRUs=/fit-in/400x400/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1029493-1416775517-2164.jpeg.jpg

An enduring classic, most of us gathered here have probably heard this. ILX’s own stevie writes for the BBC:

“By the time Ra recorded Space Is the Place in 1972, many of his contemporaries in jazz were also exploring the very Outer Reaches he’d made his own several years earlier. But even in the era of free jazz and fusion, Ra was plotting his own path.”

Originally released in 1973 on LP. I’m not sure if this was released on Blue Thumb because the Impulse deal didn’t cover this LP, or what. Most of what comes out around now is on Impulse. Weirdly, Impulse got the reissue rights and issued it on CD in 1998.

Sun Ra Sundays has some details as well:

“Hoping to capitalize on the impending release of the movie, Space Is the Place, producer Ed Michel brought the Sun Ra and his Arkestra to Chicago’s Streeterville studios to record an eponymous album for the Blue Thumb label on October 19 & 20, 1972. In all, enough material for four albums was cut on these dates although only two were ever issued (see Campbell & Trent pp.189-192). Blue Thumb LP BTS 41 was released in 1973 and reissued on CD by Impulse! in February 1998. Why Impulse! chose to release this instead of their own (arguably superior) Astro Black remains a mystery to this day. Still, Space Is the Place is an (almost) great album, cunningly compiled to represent the panoply of Sun Ra’s music from swing to bop to free-jazz to outer-space chanting and beyond.

By 1972, sixteen-track recording was becoming more common and it is apparent from the side-long title track that Ra (and/or producer Michel) was keen to take advantage of this new technology by the use of overdubbing and elaborate stereo mixing strategies.”

While this record is on the Sun Ra Bandcamp page, there is no remastering or other extra stuff, must be a rights thing with the master tapes. Added to our Spotify playlist.

https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/space-is-the-place

i introduced my students to sun ra this week :)

yaaaay!